Yes exactly. 2E becomes a less useful label when you are grouping all these kids under that one label.

I watched much of the bright and quirky conference (and some of the video) and I agree that it was predominately focused on gifted/ADD/ADHD/ASD issues. There wasn't a whole lot of new info for kids like mine who are dyslexic with highly superior verbal comprehension and fluid reasoning. When I first came across the 2E label I thought it was useful because it captured the dilemma of struggling with some academic skills like reading and writing but also needing the intellectual stimulation of honors level academic work. But, I do think some of these types of schools have coopted the term to refer to primarily the ASD/ADD and gifted group, which as everyone has pointed out is a somewhat different set of issues revolving around emotional and social behavior. My kids have some ADD traits, as is typical for dyslexic kids, but would not likely be diagnosed as such. My kids also suffer from anxiety, but I think that is a function of being smart enough to recognize and be aware of the fact that they are struggling with things most kids find rather simple, like writing a paragraph. Most of the 2E newsletters and podcasts and such that I have found really do have a strong focus on ADHD and ASD. I have yet to find something like Bright and Quirky that is focused on language based disabilities.

What about DM does not appeal to you? I know some people think DM is too difficult, and I agree that it is rigorous. I have found that while 6A/B does not take a full year to finish, DM 7 and 8 take more than two years, so it works out well. DM is integrated, very much like the elementary math in its rigor and approach, and if you finish 8B you are into the equivalent of High School Alg 2. So I can see why some might want to move slower, or follow a more traditional B&M curriculum order (all valid points), but it doesn't seem accurate to say that Singapore just leaves you hanging.

I have used Singapore US ed. for three kiddos, and my youngest is currently in 5b. I always hem and haw about this, but then just end up doing SM 6 (or parts of it) and then moving on to Dimensions 7. I do not understand why the Singapore 7 and 8 are not used more frequently. They are fantastic, especially for kids for whom Singapore is working well. Both my older girls transitioned to either public or private high school math with no problem.

For many tasks that certainly seems true for my dyslexic kids. I have also noticed that they can have mastery over something (like a piece of music, for example), but have trouble retrieving it from memory. But, once they get started, it all comes completely back to them. It's weird in a neat and interesting way. I recently watched this conference presentation by Laurie Cutting from Vanderbilt who studies the neurobiology of dyslexia. It gave me a whole new understanding of the role of executive function in learning disabilities. It's about an hour long conference presentation, but completely fascinating and enlightening.

The thing that always gets me with classifying dyslexia is the sense that it is both specific and not specific at the same time. So many of the other things that are included in DLD or other reading difficulties, such as auditory processing, receptive or expressive language, visual processing, are much more hard wired in the brain than reading. The human brain has evolved for speech for more than a million years (also for certain types of visual processing). So it seems it is much easier to say that children with a speech articulation problem, for example, have a certain deficit or disability in the part of the brain that processes speech. Reading on the other hand has only been around for a few thousand years, and available to the mass of the public for only a few hundred, so there isn't a set way that the brain processes reading. The brain borrows circuits evolved to do other things (like facial recognition) and combines them with other circuits to complete the complex task of reading. There seem to be more or less efficient ways to process written language, but it is not done the same way by all brains. So, when it comes to dyslexia, it is not clear that there is a disability involved, but rather the brain is utilizing different, less efficient perhaps, circuits to accomplish a task for which it does not have a dedicated circuit. So I am always frustrated when dyslexia gets cast as one among a series of other disabilities or processing deficits because there is no clear "correct" or "non-disabled" standard to compare dyslexic functioning to (not sure if that makes sense, but it is a thing that has been bothering me as I have learned more and more about reading).

Thanks for posting that. I'll have to take time and listen. I think I'd rather see more, rather than fewer, diagnoses of dyslexia, simply because there doesn't yet seem to be consensus on its definition. The most workable definition right now seems to be an "unexpected" difficulty in reading (which I suppose would mean a difficulty that is not explained by one of these other factors). I see in the posted outline that dyslexia is covered under the category of phonological processing primarily. This is the definition people like Sally Shaywitz seemed to be advocating. What seems to be missing from this outline is the double-deficit understanding of dyslexia that includes difficulties with speed (rapid naming) as also a form of dyslexia. I think it's Wolf that makes the argument that dyslexia can be either a phonological deficit or a rapid naming deficit or both. All three of my dyslexic kiddos were super slow in the processing speed/rapid naming categories, and that seems to be a different sort of brain organization - probably heritable as well.

This is very interesting. I have always felt somewhat intuitively that dyslexia made more sense when it was accompanied by noticeable speech or language difficulties. And, I know people told us to look for speech articulation problems or vocabulary problems in our young kids if we were concerned about dyslexia. In our case, none of that was present, which made the dyslexia so confounding. All three of my kids spoke well, in complex sentences and with great vocabulary from a young age. They all love listening to audio books and have good listening comprehension. They just have difficulty with reading text/spelling/ writing. To be honest, the medical and diagnostic terminology seems to be changing so fast, in an environment where the research is also growing, that it's hard to keep up with the meaning of terms. In this case, dyslexic becomes a broad, work in progress, category.

I'm a huge Barton fan. I know it seems expensive, but IMO there is nothing else like it for home teachers. I homeschooled three dyslexic children and didn't use Barton until the third (I tried just about everything else at one point or another), and if I could go back in time I would definitely use it for all three of my children. I agree that reading aloud and audio books are essential!!!! My kids were able to keep their vocab scores in the superior range even though it took forever to get them reading somewhat fluently. Reading is not just about decoding. Reading comprehension relies heavily on vocabulary knowledge and dyslexic kids can fall behind if they do not have access to rich reading material both fiction and non-fiction. Read aloud history and science and literature etc so that they can keep up with their vocab and content knowledge. Also, remember, dyslexia is a processing difference, so it can impact spelling and writing and math, not just reading.

My experience applying as a homeschooler was not positive. I ended up consulting a lawyer and filing an ADA discrimination complaint with the DOJ before my DD's accommodations for extended time were finally approved. They have streamlined the process for students in school who have IEPs or 504s, but be forewarned the College Board does not feel compelled to apply those 2017 policy changes to homeschoolers. It was a multi-year process for us and required two separate neuropsych evaluations. Make sure your neuropsych evaluation has a clear diagnosis and clear recommendations for accommodations. As far as the letter is concerned, if you have homeschooled you need to provide all the various forms of documentation that would otherwise have come from the school. You need a complete academic and developmental history - any problems at birth, any developmental delays as a toddler/preschooler, early academic environment (was she/he raised in an academically rich environment, read to as a child etc). They wanted a complete early academic history - when she was introduced to letters and numbers, when reading instruction began, what curricula we used (and we used a ton), when we first saw problems, who we consulted (pediatrician, other teachers), when she saw a reading tutor, how often she met with the tutor and for how long, what curricula the tutor used. I covered her progress at various ages - when she could read beginner chapter books, at what age she could read longer books, what problems continued (missing words when reading, difficulty with test questions etc, difficulty with non-fiction), what new problems we encountered (difficulty with writing, spelling and handwriting), how we addressed all of these problems. I also detailed any and all accommodations I provided at home (or in online courses), and how those accommodations impacted her performance. I thought all this detail was way over the line. The DOJ has a paper detailing the ADA requirements for testing agencies and it clearly states that testing agencies should rely on the recommendations of qualified professionals and not require excessive documentation. We were initially denied and the College Board asked us to get additional testing, which was out of bounds but we did it anyway. We were denied again, even after the additional testing and even though the testing report clearly stated extended time as an accommodation. It was only after I contacted my Senator and he helped me file a complaint with the DOJ that we were finally approved. Even though my DD was finally approved, it took until her junior year and she did not receive her accommodations in time to use them on two of her AP exams, which was extremely difficult for her, so it is good you are starting early. I know this sounds like a lot, but the College Board has all the power here, and they are, at this time, essentially an unregulated monopoly. Start early, be persistent and be aware that they are known for denying homeschoolers. But, if you have the documentation in testing, then don't give up.

On this same note, DS10and I were just recently listening to Arthur Ransome"s Winter Holiday (one of the many books in the Swallows and Amazon's series). I think it's set during the 40s. Anyway, the entire plot revolves around the fact that the kids are on winter break and one of them catches mumps, so all the friends have an extra month long holiday because they are not allowed to return to school (sounds like they are all at boarding schools) if they have been sick or exposed to any illness. They have to bring papers signed by a Dr. back to school with them.

I am in general agreement with the argument I keep hearing that the risks are rare and the benefits substantial, so from a whole population risk/benefit standpoint full immunization seems to make sense. The problem I have with this argument is that it seems to treat the risk as if it were random. Even the CDC doesn't do this. They do identify categories of people that are at heightened risk. But the categories are vague. So while the risk for some people may be one in a million it is decidedly greater for others. We accept that immune compromised people, for example, should be exempted, but there seems to be great fear that discussing an apparently healthy child's potential risk as greater than typical would undermine the entire project. For example, in my family the list of neuropathologies is extensive - OCD, Tourettes, depression, anxiety, autism, ADHD and learning disabilities abound. So it sees fair to say that we are a differently wired genetic pool. We also have celiac and scleroderma in the family - both immune system related diseases. Since we don't really have a firm grip on the origin of these problems, it always seemed logical to me that a doctor should sit down and take all that into account when planning how to immunize a child in this sort of family. Obviously, you might want to be especially careful about avoiding know neurotoxins and you should be more cautious when it comes to altering the immune system. I know the autism connection has not been shown to be true, but it certainly makes sense that that would have worried people when the studies first emerged. It's not like the Lancet was some internet rag.... Never, once did a doctor who wanted to vaccinate my children initiate such a conversation. Never once did they ask me for family history, either of vaccine reactions or any of the above concerns. I had to initiate all these conversations myself, even though the family history was a part of the medical record. I would love to see some sort of algorithm developed that would help patients to better understand the risk to their particular child (using genetic information or family health history). Because when we say the risks are rare, that same level of rarity doesn't apply to everyone. So it is simply not fair or true to say that we all assume a tiny risk in return for a great benefit. Some of us assume a much greater risk than others. I agree vaccination is important, but right now the conversation is not honest and doctors are refusing to even discuss particular risks.

I think we may have finally found something we can all agree on! 🙂

This is a serious and legitimate public policy position. While the constitution protects our right to bodily integrity/privacy as one of our most fundamental rights, it has also, for over 100 years, recognized that the state has the right to legislate and at times restrict our rights in order to promote the public good/ general health and welfare. This is, in many ways, the same conflict that gun rights and gun regulators argue over. So you are right here that we don't have a right to do whatever we want. But, I think it is also true that, as Eliana and Pen and others have pointed out, the rise in chronic diseases and our current inability to pinpoint the causes of this rise, as well as our inability to accurately predict everyone who will be immediately harmed by vaccination (hopefully genetic research will help here) places an extra burden on the state to care for (provide health care for) those who are harmed. Right now, our state in no way meets that burden. I think France is on stronger ground here because they have a healthcare system that provides universal coverage and is financed by national health insurance.

How so? A small number of people have serious vaccine reactions. We don't really know who they will be.

Seems to me there are a couple of problems with this consequentialist approach: First, the side effects (costs) are not equally distributed, so while they are inconsequential for many, they are devastating for some. We don't yet know how to identify who those some will be. The effect of not vaccinating (an measles outbreak for example) is also not evenly distributed. Most people who get ill will recover and do fine, but some number will not. So the effects for that some number are also devastating. Which devastating effect should count more here If the outcome of preventing countless deaths is the highest value, then why are we not confiscating the wealth of developed countries to build infrastructure - sanitation, housing, medical, transportation - in less developed countries. This would also prevent countless deaths. These are tricky ethical issues and they are not simply a numbers game. We have values and principles such as rights to self determination and bodily integrity, religious freedom, equality etc that sometimes run contrary to easy assertions of moral certitude. In such societies we are left with resorting to argument and persuasion in order to achieve public aims such as full immunization. We can sometimes force compliance by asserting an emergency status, but such assertions are seen as temporary precisely because they violate other cherished rights, such as liberty and self determination. If vaccinating is so self-evidently correct, then we ought to be able to make the argument for it and when we can't then we need to listen and understand the frameworks and yes fears that are making these arguments ineffective. Sometimes those fears are valid, sometimes not, but I don't think we get to just dismiss them as irrelevant.

The ACA mandated coverage of the required vaccines at no cost, provided you have insurance. Vaccines that are not on the required list, such as gardisil, depend on the insurance co. Regulatory changes under the Trump administration have allowed the sale of short term insurance plans that do not meet the ACA coverage requirements, so I don't know that those cheaper plans would necessarily cover vaccination. I assume these regulatory changes are being challenged in court as virtually all the current regulatory changes are tied up in court, so it's not yet clear how that will play out. As others have pointed out, there are some free or low cost clinic or pharmacy options if you live near them.

I tend to agree that the social responsibility, "take one for the team" type ethical arguments just can't begin to work in the US until we guarantee health care as a right. And, that probably means some sort of socialized medicine. As long as we treat healthcare as a 'you are basically on your own' type of thing, then we can hardly blame folks for taking an individualized approach. Civic responsibility works both ways.

I had a similar crazy experience with a school nurse. My oldest DD did not have the kindergarten pertussis booster because she did not go to kindergarten (she was homeschooled). Later, at age 16, when she transferred to her current high school we got a call from the nurse because that box was empty on her immunization record. At this time she was completely up to date and had already had the Tdap booster at age 12. The nurse was insistent that she couldn't enroll because that box was blank. I asked her what she wanted me to do since I was not at this time capable of returning her to age 6 and giving her that booster??? I ended up having to call the pediatrician and have her call the nurse to explain. I also had a crazy experience where the school nurse and doctor on campus (we live on a boarding school campus) showed up at a community BBQ we were hosting on the playground outside our building (the BBQ was just a summer get together open to anyone on campus who was around, and mostly for all the faculty kids to play together) and started giving vaccines to faculty kids. I was so annoyed I had to go inside. Who does that? Showing up at someone's party with a bunch of vaccines? It seems unethical at best. Even my veterinarian is required to do a well dog check before they administer a vaccine. It was indeed like a sort of zealotry that the end justified the means. Oh, and speaking of dogs, one of my German Shepherds reacted to her distemper shot around age 8. She got the shot, I took her home, sat down, heard her scratching and looked down and saw her face swelling up like a balloon. I took her back to the vet and as he was giving her a shot of benadryl he told me flat out "dogs don't have reactions to the distemper shot." I shrugged it off, but the next year when she got her shots the exact same thing happened. At that point the vet said, "oh well, we will just give her benadryl before we give her the shot next time." He still scratched his head and said dogs don't react to that shot. Doctors can't report adverse reactions if they are unwilling to see them. And, of course we now know that there was no need to give dogs boosters every year anyway, and the requirement that we do so was just a marketing ploy by veterinarians. It is hard to think rationally in such an environment.

This is funny! I also skipped ahead every time to avoid the intro. I just chalked it up to my own overly sensitive nature, but the music was like fingers on a chalkboard to me.

It seems more helpful to me to think of the anti-vax movement not as a series of individual decisions made by morally decrepit or stupid individuals, but rather as a social movement that is located in a particular time and culture and place in history. When we look at it this was we can examine all the different things that are contributing to the phenomenon of vaccine refusal. I think anyone who wants to address falling vaccination rates needs to look at all the contributing factors, and address all the institutions that have contributed to this phenomenon. If you think about the cohort of women having children in the last 30 years or so you find an increasing number of college educated women, many of whom have left or cut back professional careers to stay home and raise children (politically and socially we have not figured out how to integrate women into the workforce and still provide for the care of children). These women are already better positioned to interrogate doctors and question authority figures because they feel on equal intellectual footing with medical professionals. They are also more likely to read and research for themselves, having successfully done so in order to complete college and often graduate school. So they are not as intimidated by medical authorities. Also, many women have either had unfortunate childbirth experiences, or have had to fight tooth and nail to have normal unmedicated births in a hospital setting. The rise of medical interventions and c-sections cannot be ignored when thinking about mothers' reactions to the medical establishment. And, I expect many women have had the experience of not being taken seriously when they made complaints to doctors . (As an aside here, my neighbor, a healthy 34 year old mother of 2, died of sepsis this past summer one week after the birth of her third child. She went to the emergency room twice and her OB office once during that week insisting that something was wrong and all three times they sent her home with a pat on the head and some ibuprofen for pain - as if she wouldn't know what normal postpartum pain would be. ) Combine this cohort of mothers with the actual news environment of the 90s and early 2000s. We saw regular news articles about the unexplained increases in allergies, asthma, autoimmune diseases and especially autism. These trends were a constant theme, and medical professionals did not have adequate explanations for them. We also saw the recall of some childhood vaccines, such as rotovirus, and the expansion of the vaccine schedule. Most of us did not have measles as children but I expect almost all of us had chicken pox. When the chicken pox vaccine was developed, all of a sudden chicken pox went from being a normal childhood disease to an extremely serious and even deadly disease. Now the disease itself didn't change, but one can hardly blame parents for wondering if perhaps the seriousness of measles was being overstated the same way they saw chicken pox reframed (I am not commenting here on the accuracy of these ideas or of the framing, just the logical perception of those who had had chicken pox as children). This news environment is located in a political environment. Changes in lobbying and campaign finance enhance the political power of pharmaceutical companies (not to mention the ability to advertise directly to the consumer), conflicts of interest within the pharmaceutical companies and the regulatory apparatus are evident (not clear lines between those creating and selling vaccines and those responsible for regulating them), and changes in access to health care and health insurance (increasingly large corporatized health care providers replacing single practitioners and family doctors, rise of HMOs, the health insurance crisis etc). So, most patients don't really have a family doctor who knows them and that they trust to look out for the well being of their child. I had this experience after my second dd had a vaccine reaction at 2 months. We were in a large practice and hardly ever saw the same doctor. Our concerns were belittled and dismissed, even though I already had a fully vaccinated 3yo and was familiar with normal mild vaccine reactions. I was extremely fortunate to land with a single pediatrician in her own practice who listened to us and helped us vaccinate on a more careful delayed schedule. But it was clear that the pressure on doctors was to vaccinate on schedule and not to take the particular family or medical history of any one particular child into account when making the decision about when and how much to vaccinate. In other words, in the increasingly impersonal medical system, no one was going to look out for my particular child but me (I will also point out that it is hard to get accurate numbers of unvaccinated children because public policy makes selective or delayed vaccination so difficult - parents whose children may be missing just a couple of shots end up filing religious exemptions because that is the only way to participate in school or activities). And, there are a host of other social trends that are mixed up in here too. The increase in homeschooling, which has empowered parents to buck the system and forge ahead on their own; the rise of the internet and social media, which has allowed parents to find like-minded groups across the globe; the rise of attachment and intensive parenting; the rise of anti-government conservative political movements and rhetoric really taking off in the 80s and continuing through the present; deregulation which has undermined the very organizations that are supposed to ensure food and drug safety; the trend toward Walmart health care; generalized distrust of institutions... the list could go on and on. I suppose my overall point is that the problem of vaccination refusal does not exist in a vacuum and it is not really about individual moral choice. Rather it is about parents trying to do the best they can in a complicated and ambiguous political and medical environment. Doing the things that need to be done to restore faith in our institutions, humanize and increase access to health care and control the exorbitant power of large corporate interests is more likely to improve vaccination rates than shaming individual parents.

This is a good point. Most of the material is focused on one or two areas and is applicable to students with learning differences generally. Perhaps the 2E billing is just a sort of umbrella to try to pull together topics that often treated as distinct from one another. The whole labeling thing is problematic in that regard because there is so much overlap and mislabeling going on. I have found SBK's book Ungifted, and Todd Rose The End of Average, and Gail Saltz The Power of Different, to be really helpful books in thinking about the problems of labeling. I feel like I bounce back and forth between trying to think differently about differently wired brains and trying to find the best ways to navigate a world where thinking differently about differently wired brains is not yet the norm. The 2E label has been helpful for me in the latter instance. My DD entered the school system for the first time this year as a freshman in high school. The placement testing was pretty lame - just some vocab and reading comprehension that took less than an hour. From those results the guidance counselors came out and said they would put her in all honors classes. I knew that would be a disaster and requested a meeting to discuss her full neuropsych report, which I had had privately done a year before. They just wanted to wait and see what would happen, but since I already had the testing I did the meeting right away. From the report you could see her IQ and reasoning in the superior range, and her processing and spelling and writing in the low range. So you could see how even though you would expect high achievement based on her aptitude scores, what you were getting was average achievement that masked both her disability and her ability. And, even with accommodation this has played out in class. She is in mid level courses and with organizational help is managing ok, but it is a struggle. The 2E label has helped us come to terms with the fact that she is not just lazy or underachieving because of some lack of effort, but that she is extremely capable and just stuck in a system that doesn't fit well. I think the label just helps with the frustration and compromise that we are always dealing with.

My DD is a freshman in high school. But this is her first year in school. She has been homeschooled until now. She has a 504 plan, but so far it has not really addressed executive functioning, just her dyslexia/dysgraphia. All the students have Chromebooks, but she is allowed to use hers for all written assignments and written parts of tests. So she uses it when everyone else is using pen and paper. I feel a bit like the scaffolding needed changes over time. Sometimes things get better, but then the jump to high school makes it seem like she is a little kid again. There is a ton of just stuff to keep track of. There are 8 periods in the day and two portals. Some teachers post things religiously on their classroom pages, but others write assignments on the board or just post a monthly assignment sheet, so she needs to remember to take a photo of the board and check assignment sheets. And some teachers post digital copies of handouts so she can type her assignments and turn them in digitally. But, if she forgets to turn them in when she finishes, then there is no in class reminder because she is not turning in a hard copy. I have a hard time keeping track of it all.

I am feeling a bit of whiplash watching these interviews. A couple days ago I was all on board focusing on accommodating strengths and not focusing so much on weaknesses. Then I watched Seth Perler and it was like a lightening strike. He was describing my DD exactly. Of course she cannot keep track of all this on her own. She really is struggling with executive function and it requires constant upkeep and repetition to solidify those skills. This was something I had personally been struggling with. How much to step in. We just had the "dip" here a couple weeks ago when I had her check her portal and found she had a dozen zeros resulting in an f+ for one class (what exactly is an f+ anyway). It took a lot of careful intervention to convince her that she could get those things completed and get back on track. We are all so spooked about helicoptering that it makes us hesitant to see what is right in front of us, and that is that these kids are stuck in a system that absolutely requires skills that they don't yet have. If we are going to go the school route and not return to homeschooling then somebody has to help her get those skills in place. She is just not yet a strong enough swimmer to be thrown into the deep end of high school organization. With anxiety added to the top of that it's like trying to swim in ski clothes. Then today I watched Denise Pope, and really liked her focus on changing the system. We need different schedules and different teaching yada yada yada. But, that 's not what we have. My kid is overloaded but even if you could change the system, doesn't she still need to work on executive function skills. Those deficits are real, not just a result of a flawed educational system. It would be great if all tests were untimed and she weren't singled out as the only kid in class using a chromebook to type all her assignments and tests, and she certainly would benefit from more project based learning, but she still needs help to organize and plan or else all that awry as well. It's exhausting. I don't know what to focus on either.

I think the 2E category is so expansive that experiences can really differ. Some weaknesses are more easily accommodated and some strengths are favored or privileged in this culture, so that would all impact the experience of having a 2E kid. I am not a big fan of the whole failure is good/grit/ growth mindset stuff. If you listen to yesterday's talk, it seems pretty clear to me that he benefitted way more from his successes, which were sufficient to allow him to build up a reservoir of confidence and sense of competence, than he did from his failures. He had good family support (confidence) and years of seeing accommodations work to help him through school. So he really just dug into that reservoir when he failed his grad school exam and went back to the same things that had worked in the past (utilizing the supports and tutors available to him). Had he not had those supports as a child, and simply been allowed to fail all the time, then he likely would not have had the skill to work through the grad school situation.