We could all buy land in southern DE. There's plenty of cheap farm land and all we have to report is number of days attendance. Dh is an artist and I could teach math and logic. We'd pitch in on the farm too. All organic is good for me. When do we start?

Marie - thank you for all of that information. That will really help me prepare for the meeting on Friday. Doodler - I am meeting first with two of the people who will be doing the tests. I know one is the school psychologist and I don't know the title or qualifications of the other woman yet. I will definitely keep in mind that I don't have to sign unless I am comfortable. As for the social skills OT, all we needed was some kind of Axis I diagnosis, so the GAD was enough. He has been going for four weeks now and loves it. I have tried many psychiatrists for an eval, but none are taking our insurance. I have not specifically tried a neuropsych though (although I think some of the ones I called were neuropsychs). They either don't take new patients or won't take our insurance. But I will keep looking. I found out recently that DE has this great autism program, but that to participate you actually need to get a diagnosis from the school district as well as a medical diagnosis. So it looks like I'm going to have to go this route regardless. As for the books, I am reading Attwood's right now. I told dh it's like someone has been following our son around and taking notes. I will look into the Stewart book too. Thanks for the recommendation. Any specific ones you recommend for SPD?

Love it! :D

:iagree: And yeah, Dr Sears has charts. In his The Baby Book he even calls for a pox on the heads on those manufacturers who refuse to put dosing info on the box. :lol:

:lol: I remember that thread. I guess it never did get resolved. *too lazy to go read it again*

I go more by pictures than names too. If I really know the poster the changing avatar doesn't mess me up too much, but many posters register in my minds as their avatars, not their user names.

This thread is great. There are days when I need these reminders.

I definitely know you by your name and posts now, but I have no clue who you used to be. But I only hang out here in bursts (usually on days when I am hanging at home over the summer).

Yep. I'm still here. :D

I'm not around enough to even notice the name changes. So now I'm wondering what I've missed. Do I waste the time trying to sleuth it out, or go back to planning the fall? hmmmm.....

Thanks. I just got off the phone with the school psychologist who will be doing the evaluations. she wants to meet with me first on Friday to determine which evaluations would be most helpful. She said she expects we will want a cognitive function evaluation and an achievement evaluation. She will do IQ if I want it and she said they will also do an ASD evaluation, but that it's unusual to do one for a 5th/6th grade child, as the diagnosis should have been done earlier. (Yeah, I get it. If he had been in the system, one of his teachers would have caught it, I'm sure. *sigh*) I found the appropriate section in Delaware's code: http://delcode.delaware.gov/title14/c031/sc03/index.shtml Sections 3121-3123(a) seem particularly applicable. Section 3122 makes me a little uncomfortable. Am I overreacting? Help!

I began homeschooling the oldest ds because I just knew he wouldn't do well in a school setting. Heck, his Sunday School teacher (who is a Kindy teacher) couldn't handle him once a week for 45 min in a room with 12 kids total. She suggested he may have ADHD or ODD and requested I sit in on Sunday School to help him behave. So, with homeschooling, he could learn at his pace and have flexibility for shifting gears or taking a break when he needed to. and I didn't care if he needed to tap his pencil or his foot incessantly while he did his work, as long as he was learning. But as the years have gone by, I began to wonder if it really was ADHD/ODD. I learned about Asperger's Syndrome and began to realize that he seemed to fit the description very well. I would be fine just trying to handle it myself, but I started to feel like I was in over my head. The freak-outs over certain sounds and textures make it hard for him to function in many situations. I can't have him running across the parking lot to get away from his brother who is coughing because it upsets him. And it's really hard to explain to the officials at the swim meet that my son won't walk across the wet grass to the staging area and that he will join his heat once they are walking on the deck. He didn't make our travel soccer team, not because he didn't have the soccer skills, but because the coach felt he was too immature and didn't seem to understand how to get along with the other players. I also came to realize that AS is behind some of his struggles with school. He is brilliant with math, science, grammar, spelling, vocabulary (anything with rules he can learn) but once the books he was reading advanced from simply stated storylines to ones where meaning is implied, he became lost and easily frustrated. The AS tendency for perfectionism has also caused many tantrums when getting just one or two math problems wrong on a test, or when a new concept didn't instantly attach itself to his brain. I have every confidence in my ability to teach any school subject, but not to someone whose mind doesn't work like the typical person. I was getting frustrated and needing help. I finally told his pediatrician that I wanted him evaluated, but didn't specify why (he was in the room). She started talking to him while typing up the results of the his physical and after 5 minutes turned to me and asked, "You're suspecting AS aren't you?" She gave me a brochure for a social skills OT program she had heard good things about and told me to go to a developmental pediatrician for a diagnosis. None of the developmental peds are taking new patients. I'm on several waiting lists. Meanwhile, he needed some type of Axis I diagnosis to get into the OT program, so after hours of searching, I found a psychiatrist who would do a simple evaluation. She diagnosed Anxiety NOS, R/O AS and R/O OCD. Oh, and throughout the interview she kept telling me how bright he is and how I really should get his IQ tested. With diagnosis in hand, we show up for the intake meeting at the OT program. Once dh is done, the evaluator sends him outside to play on the playground and tells me, "R/O AS??? He's classic AS!" She agreed that developmental peds are impossible to get in to see and she recommended I call the school district because they have to give him services. She said it could help me get a formal AS diagnosis So, I call the man at the district in charge of special ed and educational diagnostics. He is very kind and helpful, but also a little condescending in his tone. Maybe it was my issue, but I felt like he was explaining things to me very simplistically like I was a moron. And when he asked about schooling issues and if ds had a any siblings and if they were homeschooled as well, I felt as if his tone was judgmental. But I could totally be reading into it. He is going to get back in touch with me in a few days to schedule some evaluations, which will be at a local school. He gave me the impression that what they had to offer would be IQ tests and educational diagnostics, but it didn't sound like he thought his psychiatrists would be diagnosing AS, just educational issues. I know I could use this information to help me figure out how to more effectively teach ds, but now I"m getting freaked out about the school district being involved in our business. Am I letting my paranoia get the better of me? Isn't it better to get the diagnostics to help my son learn than worry about what people at the school district think of us? And meanwhile, I guess I'm back to waiting for a developmental ped to get back to us for a formal AS diagnosis. If you read all that, you must really have nothing to do today. ;) Any input would be welcome. Thanks!

I always like Psalm 73. It's comforting and convicting when there appears to be injustice all around. Hunter - thanks for those suggestions. I like that Scottish Psalter link!

I would bet that all of the books in the series that focus on just one segment of Scripture would have this. Hmmm. But I looked at the book I wanted to use to start How to Study Your Bible For Kids and it specifies using NASB or NISB. I couldn't figure out which passages of scripture it was going to use the teach the OIA method, so I wonder if it will visit different genres to show how to use OIA throughout the Bible. Now I'm wondering if I should try that one first or one of the ones for a specific book/passage. I can't find anything on the website to indicate a recommended order.

You posted while I was typing. I'm glad to hear the ESV works okay with the Kay Arthur materials. Have you used her series for kids or only personally? A few women from my church go to BSF and love it. I would consider it, but it's not very close to our house and with our sports schedule it's really hard to take that much time out of a school day. But maybe I will talk to one of my friends to get more info. Thanks.

Thanks for the replies so far. SilverMoon - We used Victor the same year we used Vos's The Child's Story Bible. We enjoyed all the extra information and have used it as a supplement on other occasions. I never really thought of using it as a basis for Bible study. Your method sounds interesting. I guess I would just wonder about gaps since it doesn't cover everything in a given book of the Bible. I will have to think about that some more. As for your experience with the James study, do you think the Kay Arthur materials could be used with any fairly literal translation or would only NASB work? Oh Elizabeth - They each have their own ESV. One of them has the newer "ESV Grow! Bible" which has great helps for ages 8-12. Interestingly enough it has "4U" boxes to point out areas that contain application. Need I clarify that I didn't know this before I bought it? Would it kill children's publishers to use correct English? I know I could remove the covers or hide the offensive wording. Honestly, it is more a matter of questioning the overall quality of the materials. I don't know if it's worse that a publisher intentionally uses "4" instead of "for" or accidentally uses "have got" instead of "have". I know in this case my primary concern is for materials that help my boys read the Bible on their own, so I can deal with it if there's nothing better available.

I have been struggling with finding something for my boys for the last few years and I end up choosing nothing because I am too picky. I don't want character training. I don't want a children's Bible. We have previously read numerous children's Bibles. We have done Catechism. We have done Ferguson's Questions and Answers books. They are okay on theology and Bible stories, they need to learn how to start reading for themselves. They are old enough to take ownership of their own Bible reading, if they only had the tools. I would prefer something from a Presbyterian/Lutheran/Episcopalian perspective - something Protestant that doesn't put an emphasis on decision theology and focuses more on God's sovereignty and grace than on our moral behavior. Or something that is at least neutral in this respect. I am fine with doing an inductive Bible study, especially if it is in the context of showing how even OT stories point to Jesus. The only thing in my years of searching that I am finding even remotely close is Kay Arthur's "Discover 4 Yourself" series. But I'm seriously having convulsions looking at the "4" in the title and knowing that one of the books is titled, "Boy, Have I Got Problems!" *sigh* Oh, and I think I read somewhere that it is based on the NASB, which is one of the few versions we don't already own. So do I just suck it up and get over the terrible grammar and buy a NASB, or do I continue to wander in the wasteland of Bible materials for 8-12 year-olds? Any other recommendations for teaching my 9 and 11 year-old boys how to read the Bible for themselves without moralistic or decision theology baggage would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Praying!:grouphug:

Did you already do Grammar Town? If she jumped into Practice Town before doing Grammar Town, it makes sense that she is lost. MCT recommends finishing all of Grammar Town before starting Practice Town. We have only done Island and Town so far, but my strategy (which seems to have worked) was to do Grammar Town and Building Poetry together for the first two months or so and THEN do Practice Town, CE1, and Paragraph Town for the rest of the year.

I haven't heard anything about the B sample yet. No one posting here because there's not much to say? Dh and I were just saying how boring it has been this year (at least as far as the actual race is concerned). Does everyone just want to hand the thing to Wiggo? Is Sky really that formidable? Somebody do something interesting, please! *yawn* hehe

bump

WHAT??? I missed this completely, but I took the day off from TDF today. My husband is going to be shocked. Off to look for info....

:iagree: But I am not telling dh that. :D

Don't ever bring up the Dawson/Pacey debate in my house. Dh was all for Dawson and I was all for Pacey. I think he was angry at me for a few days after Joey chose Pacey. ;) Needless to say, it's dangerous to bring it up here. :lol:

57 for three whole weeks