Preschool for a 2E

[GAPeachie]

(WOW! The board changed while I was away in evaluation-land!)

 

We have had a few more tests done and we are getting really wonky results.

 

His official diagnosis is severe ADHD and PDD-nos. Unofficially the neuropsych said that she thinks he is cognitively delayed/has a low IQ. My gut disagreed with that.

 

Then our psychiatrist sent us for speech therapy because she said his speech was very hard to understand. That shocked us but we did it.

 

Our private testing says that he has poor articulation. He is omitting sounds all over the place.

 

Then we had another meeting with the school system. Their developmental screening says that he is actually ahead of where he is expected to be at 3 years old.

 

We shared what we had found privately and they decided to do a full evaluation.

 

The evaluator was pretty taken aback by his behavior issues during the observation.

 

Today we did the school speech evaluation and she tested his vocabulary all the way up to 2nd grade before she stopped.

 

She agrees that he has some articulation issues. She told my husband (who attended the testing) that she really sees him as verbally gifted.

 

He does have an amazing knack for memorization and is very, very interested in music. Sometimes he memorizes lyrics after hearing a song just a time or two.

 

No other information yet. We do not have the report results from the school system yet.

 

But for my own information, what would you do next!? It has been clear from day 1 that he will be a poor fit for an institutional classroom setting. But he brings a TON of chaos to our homeschool as well.

 

We just aren't sure what to do next. My first thought is to interest him in more schooling (no pressure!) but maybe he could channel some of that energy somewhere. But then.. I dunno. I can barely get him to do other things!

 

(Thanks for listening to my rambling. I'm obviously still processing.)

[CarolineN]

Hugs! I know it's hard to process all the information at once.

 

I agree with your gut and disagree with the neuropsych about the low IQ, Ridiculous.

 

I would wait and see what the school offers. I have three sons on the autism spectrum and our school district has a really good autism preschool. My oldest didn't attend because he didn't have his pdd-nos dx at the time, but he would have loved it. The younger two have really thrived there. It's only 2.5 hours a day, but they love going. It might offer a nice break for you while someone else works with your son.

 

One thing you might want to do at home is work on poetry memorization. When I homeschooled I would have my oldest memorize seasonal poems as part of our curriculum. It was easy for him to do since, like your son, memorization came so easily to him and he enjoyed listening to the rhyming. You might also look into educational songs (like the Leapfrog CD). My sons have learned their letter sounds and skip counting from educational music.

 

I'll try to think of some other things for you.

[GAPeachie]

Ohhh good thoughts.

 

It sounds awful, but I need some busy work ideas, I think. LOL But I'd like them to have some value.

 

He has taught himself all his letters via Leapfrog magnets. And he is in the beginning stages of decoding CVC words. (Along with my 6 year old. She really doesn't understand how he is able to do that yet, but...)

 

He has zero interest in crayons/drawings-- unless you want to see how far he can throw them or how hard he can drop them to see how far they scatter on the floor.

 

We are getting him a mini trampoline for Christmas. And part of me wants to see about a keyboard (with headphones!) for him to piddle on..

[CarolineN]

I'll keep thinking, but an indoor swing is HUGE around here!

 

Also, our sons love to jump and crash. They jump on the trampoline and then crash into a bean bag chair.

[PeterPan]

Just so you know, I would do a little reading and see if you think that "articulation" issue is *apraxia*. Apraxia is motor control and often gets blandly labeled as an articulation delay. It should be treated totally differently, so it's good to make sure of before you start doing therapy.

 

Our SLP did some testing of my ds over the past couple weeks. I've said on the boards here for two years now that apraxia is motor control, not a developmental delay, blah blah, but I was starting to wonder myself. So in addition to the usual speech tests (VMPAC for motor control, blah blah), she ran a preschool skills test. Might even be the same one they ran with your boy. It had a couple sections of expressive vocabulary, a section for auditory recall, etc. And interestingly, my ds was 99% for auditory recall, like your boy. He's also off the charts active. His scores for most of the other sections were in the 95th% except for a couple connected to speech that were 85%. That's kind of amazing to me. So yes, like you, we were surprised how much gets lost in the shuffle of speech that isn't keeping up with IQ and is belying his abilities! She suggested I start K5 and 1st grade work with him immediately. :)

 

So anyways, I don't know if that's a right there with you or what, but there you go. You ought to get a copy of those scores for yourself. She actually showed me the raw scores and percentiles, etc. in the scoring booklet. With an auditory recall of 99%, I would not *think* my ds is going to turn out to be adhd. I mean adhd is the total inverse of that and should be presenting with auditory working memory deficits, I would think. Or maybe it's not obvious till later? There's also the issue that the brain has to put the energy SOMEWHERE. So when he's not SPEAKING as well as he should be and using the energy up that way, the brain finds other ways to use it. So I think if you get some GOOD speech therapy (not with a lady who flips out or is surprised over his energy level), it might use up some of that energy and calm him down overall. I know when I work with my ds on speech it leaves him *dramatically* more calm and tired. It's all developmental energy that has to funnel somewhere. So, personally, I wouldn't hold to tightly to that adhd diagnosis at this age. Sure he could be, but it might be the misdirected energy. And the issue with kids getting a spectrum label and losing it after they get the speech better, that definitely happens, especially with apraxia.

 

As far as the apraxia, read about PROMPT and just check into it. There are degrees of severity, and having lots of speech but unintelligible is definitely one of the possible outcomes. A regular therapist will often miss it and isn't really the best choice if it is. It's just one of those things to check. We drive 2 1/2 hours each way for our speech therapy, which sounds outrageous, but she's incredibly good and the closest I could find certified in the technique. We go every other week and she teaches me things to carry it over at home in the meantime.

 

BTW, if it interests you and you get interested in PROMPT, I can send you a link for a recent 20 minute clip of my ds in speech therapy.

[PeterPan]

As far as channeling the energy, I try to have a stack of things to try with him and just sit down and work. In my stack I'll have puzzles and Kumon workbooks and Saxon K5 math and MFW K5 and AAS pre- and... Puzzles and games are really good. I just got some more from Timberdoodle with their sales. The saxon math is more vocabulary at this age, so I thought I'd try him on some of the RS A games pretty soon (Swim to 10, that kind of thing). So I'm talking small games that play in 5 minutes that you can play at your school table with him. If I spend an hour with him doing that, he's much calmer afterward. He also spends a LOT of time marching, hunting, that sort of thing. Yes, I have a mini-trampoline by our table.

 

The Kumon workbooks are really good. Ds will just sit and work and work and work on them till I'm ready to fall over in the chair. :lol: It's only a hoot to me, because dd was so the opposite!

 

Have you tried legoes on him yet? They have these mini creator kits that are small objects with 40-70 pieces. They'll take under 10 minutes to assemble. The instructions come with large numbers and each step clearly shown. You may find your ds is able to do them. My ds enjoyed the first one we did, so I got more with the TRUS (toys r us) sales going on. If you're feeling tired, you can go to lego.com and just order them. Just punch in mini into the search. They run around $5 each. Super good for their finger strength too. They also have some smaller sets that are like what the HSBC had gotten deals for and ran out of (safari, buildings, vehicles). And it turns out you can download the instructions for almost all those preschool sets as pdfs. So then you can put them on your ipad or print and build a thing each day. So you can see how you get an hour with 5-10 minutes for each thing (mini lego, 2 puzzles, kumon workbook, saxon math, coloring a dot to dot, etc.).

 

Has he had an OT eval or has the ped checked for low tone? We've got the low tone and sensory, so that's why we use the swing (SkyChair). Very calming. And knowing he's low tone, I want to be pro-active on the finger strength, etc.

[Clarkd]

You might find some good activities to handle his energy in the book The Out of Sync child Has Fun or others from that same author. An indoor swing may also help if you have space. Those nylon kids' tunnels can be added to make an obstacle course. Also, the Stomp Rocket gets out some energy. There's a pretty sturdy mp3 player called SweatPea2. It has preschool songs but you can also easily load stories and songs. It has a speaker. It is pretty indestructable. To accentuate his strengths download fiction and nonfiction stories as well as songs, including educational songs (think school house rock). Turn the closed captioning on your tv to encourage connection between words and print. We have an elephant that came with a remote control that makes him bellow. You hide the elephant then the child uses the remote to locate the elephant by the sound. It is a big hit at our house. You can tape a letter to the elephant each time he is hidden to spell the child's name or other early words. Then, as he continues to find the elephant he builds words. You might want to try starting All About Rading. Some kids with pdd nos can be early readers and this program has lots of manipulatives and little required writing. Hiding items in a ballpit or a bin filled with dry bean, sand or macaroni could be entertaining, but is pretty dependent on the child. A high degree of structure and awareness of schedule may help him. For example, from 10:00-10:15 we do this then when you finish we do x. Just some random ideas, for what it's worth. Best of luck.