My dd is failing this year

[karenj]

I mostly post on ML. Not a lot, mostly a lurker. I am going to word vomit here. Not sure what to do and not sure if this belongs here or not. Just need words of wisdom or hair pats.

My youngest dd, Averi, is failing in school. She has made some strides socially but her grades are in the tank. She is going to a counselor who believes she has inattentive add. Doesn’t feel like she needs medication. Explains a lot but not sure where we go with that. She has been in counseling for about 3 months. We are not seeing any improvement in behavior or grades. She is very defiant to her teachers, constantly forgets homework or the book to do homework, doesn’t turn in finished work, doodles in class, really has no idea what is even going on in class. She has a wonderful teacher this year that has helped her out a lot. Unfortunately, this is not her only teacher and the other teachers don’t feel inclined to help as much. I understand that. They have a lot of students to teach and A takes a lot of time away from class.

We have a meeting with her teacher, the principal and A tomorrow. We are going to try to decide whether she needs to be held back or not. The problem is that A just will not do the work. And if she does it she will not turn it in. I get so frustrated. I can sit to help her but she just stares at the page. She has a big paper due at the end of this week and could care less. I think she feels that she is going to be held back (my H has used this as a threat) so why bother. I guess the old saying you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink really applies. I can’t do it for her and she doesn’t act like she cares. I think she does care but this is her way of “protecting” herself.

We are in a small private school so there are very limited resources. I don’t know what to do. I have asked the school if they thought tutors would be a good idea. She does well with one on one. Not with me, of course. They say no but don’t give me any ideas of what else to do. We could send her to the public school in our area. It is huge and has lots of resources but her teacher feels like A would be to overwhelmed and be “eaten alive”.
I know in my heart that it would probably be in her best interest to hold her back. I worry that her self esteem will take a hit. It is already pretty low. Of course, if she were to go on and not be able to handle it that would suck to. The class she will end up in if she is held back are vicious though and she will have to learn to deal with taunts and stuff that go with that. I am so upset for her. Feels like a lose lose here.

Trying to figure out what is best for her. She looks at me with these sad eyes as says “well at least if I am held back I will already know some of this stuff”. Man, parenting is not for sissies. Thanks for reading. Sorry I got carried away. I really have no one to talk to about this stuff. H is not much help.

[hopecounts]

Her issues fit inattentive ADD perfectly, she can't/won't focus, when she does focus and get things does can't get it turned in, etc.
Threats are not going to work because this is a brain development issue her ability to do the planning to get this stuff done and to keep her mind tuned in is compromised. She just can't do it.
Her counselor doesn't think meds are warranted yet (I like that the counselor isn't jumping to meds) what does she suggest instead?

When you say she just won't do the work what do you mean? Is she being defiant or just not doing it because she can't do it or can't focus long enough to get it done?
Has she been screened for a learning disability and ODD?
First step is to find out if she can't do the work due to an LD or because she can't focus well enough to actually learn it, or is she just defiant and refusing to do it.
Best plan for treating it will depend on that. If it is a focus issue then there are things you can do to help her be more successful, if it's an LD she may need other supports/differing education, if its ODD then that takes a special approach.

Private schools are very rarely set up to address SN, unless it is a school specifically dedicated to those issues. They also aren't required to create and follow IEPs. So you may have to reevaluate if this school is best for her right now. It may be a good time to move her and have her repeat the year with minimal social issues since the kids won't know her and won't really know she is repeating.

If she has just been doing counseling for a few months it may be too soon to judge yet. What is the counselor doing to help her? She should be evaluated by a developmental specialist and get an official diagnosis so you know what to do moving forward and how best to help her. 

[karenj]

Thank you for your reply. I feel like I just don't know the right steps to take. I have been leaning to moving her to a differnt school but my H is resistant because the public school is huge. I just feel that they may be able to help her more. As far as screening for a LD who does this? Forgive my ignorance.

[hopecounts]

A developmental pediatrician should be able to do a broad spectrum evaluation and rule things in or out including LD.
I would start there.
And no worries most of us had no clue about any of this when we started and we are happy to answer questions and share what we have learned.


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[imojoebunny]

I have to go out, but I completely agree with screaming for learning disabilities. My DD was diagnosed with ADHD, in attentive type, but we no longer believe she has it. She got help for her learning disabilities, and a year later is an engaged and productive student.

[imojoebunny]

Screening, not screaming!

[auntie]

Apr 28, 2014 9:17:05 GMT -5 karenj said:

I mostly post on ML. Not a lot, mostly a lurker. I am going to word vomit here. Not sure what to do and not sure if this belongs here or not. Just need words of wisdom or hair pats.

I am the parents of a child with Aspergers, ADHD, GAD and dyslexia. My son started his school career in a private Episcopal day school and has also attended a special reading lab school and 3 large high achieving public schools. Some of what you are sharing here sounds freakishly familiar.

My youngest dd, Averi, is failing in school. She has made some strides socially but her grades are in the tank.

How old is this child? And what do you mean by "making strides socially"? Are all of her grades in the toilet or just some subjects?

She is going to a counselor who believes she has inattentive add. Doesn’t feel like she needs medication.

What do you mean by "counselor?" Is this person a medical doctor or a clinical psychologist? There is a protocol that should be followed to determine if your DD has ADHD (and the type of ADHD) or if she has something else that has similar behaviors associated or if she has some combination of things. Once that is determined, you can consult a psychiatrist to explore behavior mods and the possibility of supporting that intervention with meds. This is way outside the area of an educator or school counselor's expertise. It's just wildly inappropriate for school staff to even weigh in on this one way or the other.


Explains a lot but not sure where we go with that. She has been in counseling for about 3 months. We are not seeing any improvement in behavior or grades. She is very defiant to her teachers, constantly forgets homework or the book to do homework, doesn’t turn in finished work, doodles in class, really has no idea what is even going on in class.

If the counseling isn't working, maybe you need to drop back and do a full psychoeducational assessment. If you don't know what's causing the behavior, how can you address it?

TBH, some of this sounds more like an LD issue- the behavior thing is the classic LDer's MO. Better to be the "bad"kid than the dumb one. ADHD may play some piece in this, but only an evaluation will tease that out from other possibilities like ODD, ASD, anxiety, low IQ or CAPD.

FWIW, DS always doodles during lectures, it helps him concentrate even if it doesn't seem so. This is not a hill upon which I would die except when teachers tried to get pissy about it.
 
She has a wonderful teacher this year that has helped her out a lot. Unfortunately, this is not her only teacher and the other teachers don’t feel inclined to help as much. I understand that. They have a lot of students to teach and A takes a lot of time away from class.

The other dirty secret to private education is that some parents and teachers select this approach as a way to avoid kids who need a little (or a lot) more support in school. Bottom line? Private schools pay really poorly and many who choose to work at the lower pay resent having to do extra. The other thing is that, as a general rule and especially at the elementary level, public school teachers are more highly qualified especially around differentiating instruction for kid who learn differently.

We have a meeting with her teacher, the principal and A tomorrow. We are going to try to decide whether she needs to be held back or not. The problem is that A just will not do the work. And if she does it she will not turn it in. I get so frustrated. I can sit to help her but she just stares at the page. She has a big paper due at the end of this week and could care less. I think she feels that she is going to be held back (my H has used this as a threat) so why bother. I guess the old saying you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink really applies. I can’t do it for her and she doesn’t act like she cares. I think she does care but this is her way of “protecting” herself.


You have described the behavior of a kid with LD issues like an expert. 

Your DH needs to back off the threats, presenting school as punishment is never a path to success. If she's shown the door at her private school  that self esteem you aim to preserve will be shot to hell. 

We are in a small private school so there are very limited resources.

You still have the resources of your public district if you live in the US. You can ask the school district to perform a multifactored evaluation in all areas of suspected disability. This request needs to be made in writing (not email) and delivered to the local district's special services department. You can find templates for this letter at the www.wrightslaw.com website. The district will have 60 school days to complete the eval. Once you know what you're dealing with, you may need to reconsider where she attends school.

I would also suggest having a private psychoeducational eval done. Your pedi can point you in the right direction on this. It's always good to get a second opinion on this sort of thing, plus it keeps the district honest. Often the result of a private eval is a suggested plan to remediate whatever is causing her to struggle- maybe she needs a different curriculum, maybe she needs her assignments broken down, maybe she needs rote instruction on managing her assignments and materials (this was my hell in middle school)

I don’t know what to do. I have asked the school if they thought tutors would be a good idea. She does well with one on one. Not with me, of course. They say no but don’t give me any ideas of what else to do.

I think it's important to keep in mind that more of what you've already tried won't work. I'm sorry you aren't being supported at her school- that's really sad. Does she have sibs there?

We could send her to the public school in our area. It is huge and has lots of resources but her teacher feels like A would be to overwhelmed and be “eaten alive”.

I call bullshit. I had lots of people tell me the same thing. It's a common bias. Big scary public school, yada, yada, yada. DS positively thrived in public school because they had resources to help him be his best self and had teachers who were highly qualified and capable of adapting their teaching style to his needs. IME, the biggest bully DS ever ran across in school was his first grade fundie teacher. Compared to her, middle school was a day at the beach.

FWIW, when DS bridged to public school after the lab school, his resource classes (math/RELA) were typically 8 kids. In middle school his classes were never more than 20 for academic subjects. His IEP called for academic social studies with organizational support and projects broken into rolling due dates- his 8th grade class was him and one other kid.

I know in my heart that it would probably be in her best interest to hold her back.

Here's the thing, if she's not doing the work or capable of learning as the material is being presented, another year wasted doing the same old thing won't make a difference. She'll just learn to hate school and herself even more.

I worry that her self esteem will take a hit. It is already pretty low. Of course, if she were to go on and not be able to handle it that would suck to. The class she will end up in if she is held back are vicious though and she will have to learn to deal with taunts and stuff that go with that. I am so upset for her. Feels like a lose lose here.

Self esteem is earned. You can give it to her, she has to earn it. It sounds like you need a plan B. If you could get her assessed privately before summer, you might be able to find a summer school program designed for kids with ADHD or who learn differently. Where I live, these run over the summer.

Trying to figure out what is best for her. She looks at me with these sad eyes as says “well at least if I am held back I will already know some of this stuff”. Man, parenting is not for sissies. Thanks for reading. Sorry I got carried away. I really have no one to talk to about this stuff. H is not much help.


I want to give both you guys a creepy internet hug. It's so hard to be where you are now. For DS, we had to pull him out of his first school and it broke our hearts, but they weren't good enough to teach him. He spent 2 1/2 years catching up around the dyslexia piece. He did Ok in elementary, a little better in middle school and made honor roll a couple times in high school. He's on the deans list in college and he loves school.

[karenj]

Thank you for your reply. Thank you for pointing out places to turn to. I really appreciate it. I am in tears reading it. A is 12. I will be checking into these resoruces. Thank you so much.

[karmasabiotch]

Did you say how old she is?

[imojoebunny]

Hey Auntie, can I butt in a bit and ask about the evaluation from the school system even if you are in private school? We plan to transition DD back to public school at some point. Her private school is awesome at handling her extra needs, and we are very pleased with it, but it only goes through middle school, and ideally, we would like to save the $60k+ it will cost to keep her there in middle school, if she can catch up enough by 5th grade to be able to succeed without all the extra support she receives. We moved to a public school district recently where there is some hope she can succeed because there was no way I was sending her back to the old one. BTW... Her private school, and many others here pay competitive wages.

I was told they would not evaluate her until she is already there?

OP, there is not much I can say that Auntie has not said, but i will say that if you do get an ADHD diagnosis, be sure to got to a neurologist for meds if you go that route. Our pediatrician was not very informed about meds for ADHD and was happy to keep DD on one for ages that caused significant disruptive side effects even after we kept a journal reporting crying, violent, and anger problems that lasted for hours, which is completely out of the norm for our child. The pediatric neurologist was much more knowledgeable and did not tolerate the side effects and lack of improvement. In the end, it was his feeling that we were not dealing with ADHD, which led us down the path of looking more closely at treating the LD and sensory/motor function challenges, which has changed not only our family life for the way better, but also the trajectory for DD. Last year at this time, I held little hope she would ever get out of elementary school, much less that I would ever see her do math or read confidently, she looked like an institutionalized child in a classroom, bobbing her head around, spacey stare, it's hard to believe she is the same child when watching her answer math questions in class and read and write her own stories this year.

[auntie]

Apr 28, 2014 13:06:00 GMT -5 imojoebunny said:

Hey Auntie, can I butt in a bit and ask about the evaluation from the school system even if you are in private school? We plan to transition DD back to public school at some point. Her private school is awesome at handling her extra needs, and we are very pleased with it, but it only goes through middle school, and ideally, we would like to save the $60k+ it will cost to keep her there in middle school, if she can catch up enough by 5th grade to be able to succeed without all the extra support she receives. We moved to a public school district recently where there is some hope she can succeed because there was no way I was sending her back to the old one. BTW... Her private school, and many others here pay competitive wages.

DS's lab school paid well. Their teachers were all Orton Gillingham certified- many through Columbia. Tuition that appraoched $30K a year makes it possible for them to attract talent. At most of the indie schools here, elementary teachers top out at about $45K, public teachers at the same education level in my district top out over $100K. Parochial parish schools pay even less but they don't necessarily have degreed or certified teachers. My parish does now, but this is surprisingly recent.


I was told they would not evaluate her until she is already there?

That's not strictly true. A child in private school is entitled to the same evaluation services any child who lives in the district is entitled to. I know people whose kids have never set foot in the public schools who had them evaluated several times- one of DS's car pool buddies had triennials done in district- mom's a neonatologist and dad's a psychiatrist- so it wasn't like $$$ was the issue.


If you do intend to bridge her at some point, I would ask for the eval in January of the academic year before she switches schools.That'll give them time to look at the reports you have from her current school and do their own eval to determine if she'll need services and craft an IEP before she starts. 

OP, there is not much I can say that Auntie has not said, but i will say that if you do get an ADHD diagnosis, be sure to got to a neurologist for meds if you go that route. Our pediatrician was not very informed about meds for ADHD and was happy to keep DD on one for ages that caused significant disruptive side effects even after we kept a journal reporting crying, violent, and anger problems that lasted for hours, which is completely out of the norm for our child. The pediatric neurologist was much more knowledgeable and did not tolerate the side effects and lack of improvement.

I agree that a PCP/general pediatrician shouldn't be managing psychoactive meds. I prefer a psychiatrist for meds management unless the child also has seizures. A dev pedi can also manage meds- but psychiatry is the medication specialty.

In the end, it was his feeling that we were not dealing with ADHD, which led us down the path of looking more closely at treating the LD and sensory/motor function challenges, which has changed not only our family life for the way better, but also the trajectory for DD. Last year at this time, I held little hope she would ever get out of elementary school, much less that I would ever see her do math or read confidently, she looked like an institutionalized child in a classroom, bobbing her head around, spacey stare, it's hard to believe she is the same child when watching her answer math questions in class and read and write her own stories this year.

I'm glad you found a good place for her. It's amazing what differeniated instruction can do. DS aced both his required composition classes- not bad for a kid who couldn't really read until he was 8.

[gnorah]

Apr 28, 2014 9:17:05 GMT -5 karenj said:

Unfortunately, this is not her only teacher and the other teachers don’t feel inclined to help as much. I understand that. They have a lot of students to teach and A takes a lot of time away from class.

I am so sorry.  This has to be so hard for you .  This sentence makes me sad, because she is JUST as entitled to an effective education as a neuro-typical child and it is so sad that she has teachers who are less committed to her success.  I'm not sure that holding kids back is really effective?  I don't have the studies on hand, but I know our system generally doesn't do it because the drawbacks generally outweigh any benefit.  

It does sound like they really don't want to make any accommodation for her and just kind of expect her to fall in line.  If she's got a learning disability, she CAN'T do what they are asking and it is sad that they don't recognize that.  

I like Auntie's suggestion of a psycho-education assessment, it can be a great resource to help you understand what she needs, help you communicate what she needs, and provide some kind of "official" document that her school might recognize.

It also might not be a bad idea to talk to the public school and see what they can do for her.  It may be a big scary school, but if they are committed to her success in a way that her current school isn't, it may be a good fit.

I'm sorry.  This is so hard, and I hope you can find a way that gets her excited about learning again.

[karenj]

Thank you all. I feel like at least now I have some idea of what I need to do. That has helped a lot already. I know all of this takes time.


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