Lillian question?

[lcdc1]

You may not see this in time but? I am preparing for Rans annual IEP meeting at 7 am and I had gone in again to school with her to work on her recent catching up stuff. I had a discussion wiht her Social studies teacher who also used to teach english in the past. She told me that she thinks Ran has a writing processing issue and that she is pretty sure she can find out what it is soon. It seems that something is showing up according to the teacher in writing that Ran has to do in Essays. She also told me how it might tie into the fact that she is getting F's on her tests. The science teacher also wrote a note that said Ran gets A's on the labs, but that teacher is concerned that when she asks Ran to take a test back on the active lab, In her words Ran is having difficulty processing familiar information?

I know it is not much to go on, just need some help understanding what to talk about in the newest stuff? thanks.

[lcdc1]

oh yeah, I forgot! The social studies teacher is cool, she is married to the sped caseworker that had Rans case last year. Another thing I forgot to mention was that what this woman suspected she was seeing she said would have a tie to some of the math processing issues and made sense to her? That confused me also.

[lillian]

Lcdc,

"Processing issues" are common with children who have LD's. Now, what is causing the processing issues is the question. If Ran has low processing across the board--reading, writing, and math--ADD is often the reason. If she is able to understand language well, able to construct sentences well, able to spell, and able to read, but she cannot organize her thoughts on paper, again, ADD is often the reason. Has she ever been evaluated for ADD?

As far as the issues the teacher is seeing being tied into the math difficulties, this is common. What are Ran's long-term retrieval scores? Students with poor long-term retrieval have difficulties taking from memory information they know, and long-term retrieval difficulties are commonly associated with math LD's.

[lcdc1]

hey you are still up!

Ok the tow tests Ran had, to refresh your memory were the Woodcock Johnson and the Keymath Revised test, her teachers in 7th grade and I did that Conners questionairre thing and recently my physc suggested testing for ADD.

So let me see, on the Woodcock Johnson the results were summarized as Long term retrieval RPI of 78/90. PR of 6, SS of 76 and the colored block shows her stanine in the number 2 low block. One other area the physc dwelled on in this test was Cognitive efficiency with an RPI of 38/90, percent of 9, and a stanine of 80. There are a bunch of other highlighted things on the WJ abilities-3 matrix too.

The original physcologist that tested her last year also commented on the visual-auditory learning subtest shows the effect of giving Ran too much to think about at one time.

On the data summary bar graph the 4 areas that show the greatest concern or well below the bar are; Visual, pair cancellation, M OPS (whatever that may be?), and M TOT (?). He also commented that Rans rate of working seemed to be noticably slower than most students seen for assessment.

Then the summarized BASC scale showed that overall she was in the 78th percentile. And that the highlighted areas of concern were in anxiety, attention, and adaptability.

On the conners the only highlighted area in 7th grade were; Cogg innattention, anxiety, and DSM innattentive.

I hope you understand all that? I all of the sudden have a headache and am going to take a shower and check back in. Your response above was helpful to me, thanks.

[lillian]

Long-term retrieval in the 6th percentile is very low and will give her a lot of trouble in math. I know from another post of yours that the school wants to do additional testing. Do you know if memory testing is part of what they plan to do? If I were you, I would want to see some thorough memory testing on her. What children have difficulty memorizing can often tell you a great deal.

From all the comments that have been made on the testing over the years, from the teachers' comments, from your descriptions of her difficulties, and from the psych's desire to evaluate her for ADD, I think ADD-Inattentive needs to be ruled in or out, at this point.

[lcdc1]

Ok, thanks for the input as always, when you are ready to start that little business we talked about, let me know! I have an investment for you!

I am very tired this morning as I only got a few hours sleep prepping for this at the last minute, but the info. you gave me makes me feel calmer about it all.

[lcdc1]

OK I am back from our 1 hours IEP annual meeting, it was good (I think), lots to process for me. The update on the math sounds positive, on state testing Ran has made progress and shown a peak in growth which amazes me and I am happy for it. She has either decreases or gone down until now, but her line is still way below the other lines to show the state and other population stuff.

Now for the rest that I have to digest and make a plan. The school is adding some things to her IEP to assist her with organization skills and test taking, I am glad. They are adding 5 things and when I get the IEP in the mail that we agreed to I can update you. They said I needed to take Ran to the doc and get or exclude the ADD diagnosis because it would be a medical condition kind of thing. I will have to figure all that out on my own I guess, then we talked about the memory and retrieval stuff for her. It amazed me that her caseworker did not know about some of the testing numbers on her stuff from last year? I ended up having to explain a lot of it to her. Luckily Ran has a group of awesome teachers that are very willing to help her out and like her.

So, help me with this you all! Do I start with our family doc on all this, do I ask my doc who does testing? Where do I go for that?

[charliegirl]

If I were you, I'd ask that great psych who is helping you whether he can do it or for a referral. A family dr or ped can diagnose it but would be more likely to misdiagnose if there is something going on that no one is picking up on.

[lcdc1]

yeah that is my thought process on it all barb, I want to cut straight to the chase at this point, I see my doc weds, I am going to ask him to do it or give a good referral. More money spent - it is worth it!

My doc has Rans testing from last year in his file anyway, I should just pay him to do it, he doesn't usually deal with kids though.

[lcdc1]

I got a referral for Ran from my physc and the lady called me back and we talked for like half and hour and Ran and I will meet with her the 29th for like 2 hours in the morning. She sounded pretty knowledgable and she knew what I was talking about when I did not really, just repeated things the school told me. I have to go to the school next week and copy the stuff from the file and the IEP meetings and the physc said soemthing about redoing the Conners and Basc with just two teachers this time, the math one and the Social Studies one. I also told her Ran is not wanting anyone to know of her challenges and tries to hide them and stuff, she had a plan for dealing with all that of course, so we shall see!

I hope she can figure it all out for the kid so she can get over the anxiety and see if anything else is identified and then we can make a plan to deal with it!