Mabelen
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Posts posted by Mabelen
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Sorry, guys! When I said she was a late bloomer physically speaking, I meant in terms of puberty. She had her first period at 15 after her high school freshman year. She hit all childhood milestones normally. The only thing that was noticed in elementary school -around 1st grade- was that for a while she had a minor speech disfluency, like she would need to pause for a breath in the middle of a word sometimes. She was evaluated, didn’t qualify for any services and grew out of it. She was later found to have mild asthma, so we don’t know if that was a factor for her speech issue. She grew up bilingual with me using Spanish as my mother tongue, and my husband English as his main language (his mother tongue is a South Asian language but was raised trilingual from birth). She started Kindergarten recognizing some letters and sounds, and then she had a massive explosion in reading around her 6th birthday and was moved to the advanced reading group where she stayed the rest of Elementary.
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On 9/21/2020 at 6:41 AM, dmmetler said:
I was first DX'd with a "cognitive disorder NOS, Visual-Spatial processing" in GRADUATE school
Wow! Did you receive accomodations?
On 9/21/2020 at 6:41 AM, dmmetler said:The neuropsych couldn't believe I was a music major, because I shouldn't be able to read music (but apparently my brain is able to read music notation directly as sound
Fascinating! My dd loves to play several instruments and receives praise because of her musicality, but she does not like sight reading music and finding patterns in compositions.
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On 9/20/2020 at 7:08 PM, Storygirl said:
there are some things in the OP that might be suggestive of NVLD
I will read about NVLD, what are the particular things that you feel are suggestive of NVLD?
Her standardised testing so far has shown her slightly stronger in reading and language arts than math but not much more. She did have some difficulties in Honors Pre Calc last year (got a B), but she was not devoting enough time to practicing due to her extracurricular involvement.
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On 9/20/2020 at 1:11 PM, kbutton said:
but he needed serious, serious niche work going back to very foundational concepts
What assessments helped to figure out your son's issues? What kind of professional help did your son receive to resolve his language problems?
Something that she did once that seemed to help her process her reading was to read everything out loud in a British accent. She seemed to enjoy it, the only problem is that it was very time consuming so not really a solution.
What you mention about the crisis before the breakthrough was kind of what I initially thought might be happening when she started talking about her difficulties, but now I can see it likely is more than that.
ADHD is a possibility because of her distractibility and lack of focus, but what is confusing is that she really is very organized and usually gets a lot done. My mom I suspect had ADD issues, as myself and my oldest too, but all of us are/were weak in executive functioning and organizational skills, very unlike her.
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On 9/19/2020 at 6:29 AM, PeterPan said:
The school is only going to identify things that affect her ability to access her education.
This is my worry. How do you define "ability to access her education"? She is taking the most difficult classes available at her school and still getting decent grades, so they could say that if anything is going on it is not affecting her ability to do so. How do I jump this hurdle? Does the fact that it is costing her so much effort matter at all?
On 9/19/2020 at 6:29 AM, PeterPan said:She might get a 504 for accommodations like extra time, the option to use tech instead of handwriting, etc. etc. Extra time is a BIG DEAL.
Yes, realistically, a 504 is what I would think she may need.
Thank you for your insight on self discovery and self advocacy. Definitely pondering about what this all means for her in college.
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On 9/19/2020 at 5:43 AM, maize said:
Yes a learning disability can first be recognized in high school--a kid who has been compensating through grade school may really struggle with the more challenging classes and schedule.
I think it is worth getting evaluations done.
I wonder if low working memory and/or low processing speed are issues.
Go to bat for her; schools tend to not want to intervene if the child is getting good grades but three hours to do work that most can do in one isn't a reasonable burden to bear.
What aspects of my dd's difficulties do you think would indicate low working memory and/or low processing speed? The time she needs to take to get through the readings and her work?
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My 16 year old started complaining last year that she was having trouble with learning. She was a late bloomer physically speaking and I simply thought it could be a matter of brain maturity. She has always been a very good student, organized, conscientious, and motivated to do well. She has always attended public school and there has been no change in that respect. She started having a tough time taking notes for her AP European History class last year. She says she finds it difficult to gauge what is important as well as making connections. According to her, she is working so much harder than her friends and getting much worse grades because she doesn’t seem able to grasp and retain the concepts as easily. Lately she notes that she is having a tough time focusing while reading and doing her work. She gets easily distracted. She says that she has gotten dumber and can’t really understand what she is reading a lot of the time.
She has always been very involved in extracurricular activities, marching band, water polo, swim, pit orchestra. She has always thrived keeping very busy. When covid hit, she did lose a lot and started feeling more and more down. Eventually she fell into a depression because all of the activities that she loved were gone while the academic demands remained, and distance learning was just bad. She started seeing a therapist a couple of months ago and just started seeing a psychiatrist as well. She is feeling much better now, but she is still spending an enormous amount of time and effort doing her school work. She said she needs three hours to do what her friends need one. APUSH is particularly taxing.
Her therapist suggested to get her assessed for learning disabilities. My daughter wants help. When I contacted her school counselor she was surprised because my dd still has good grades (mostly As) even though she is taking difficult classes. Her school says the first step is to meet with the Intervention Assessment Team. When my daughter found out she felt very stressed at the thought of having to meet with her teachers to discuss her difficulties. I think she would feel fine if it was just the counselor and the psychologist. I am very confused with all of this.
Is any of this normal? Any ideas what could be going on?
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1 hour ago, Pen said:
Fireworks probably would not exceed 300 feet up from where set, and likely would be lower too—but are hills 750 feet above the city? Or 750 feet above sea level and city itself is also well above sea level?
Good questions! The hills are 750 above sea level, the city itself and our home is at around 450 feet above sea level. The firing site is at 715 feet above sea level.
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The city next to us is doing fireworks from a new site this year. We are less than three miles away. There are hills 750 feet high between us close to the firing site. Also, there are hills 650 feet high in between next to us. Do we stand a chance?
What about if we go up to a spot in the close by hills 600 feet high?0 replies
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22 hours ago, Dreamergal said:
The "confused" part is more this and to do with how "Desi" these kids are
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-Born_Confused_Desi
I am sorry about the socialization of your kids. Many in our circle are like that too, but DH and I would like our kids to be exposed to more diversity so we picked a neighborhood like that and fortunately my son's friends are very much from many ethnicities. His best friend is Hispanic. My daughter is too small to have any friends.
Well, yes. The confused part applies in the same sense to each of my kids’s identities also.
They are Spanish, but how Spanish are they? They are Sri Lankan, but how Sri Lankan are they? Then we have the intersection of British identity for my English born kid. She is British, but to what degree when she left at age three? My youngest is American born, and both are growing up in the USA, how does that play in all this?
How all these parts of themselves interconnect gets complicated due to the lack of peers with whom to relate. They do share commonalities with other Desi kids, and are friendly and friends with some of them. My youngest keeps dancing kathak in part because she has a group of friends there that are important to her. It’s just that they don’t fit in completely because we are not your typical Desi family. They do share some commonalities with Mexican kids, and are friendly and friends with some, but again they don’t fit in completely for the same reasons.
We do live in a diverse neighborhood, and they have friends of many varieties. We value those friendships. All of that doesn’t make up for the feeling that there is no one like them. Hence the emphasis on confused, because for them, it’s just complicated.
ETA It doesn’t mean my kids don’t live happy fulfilled lives. They do. The just would like to meet someone with the same cultural background to crack jokes about starting the new year both with chocolate con churros and chicken curry and kiribath. 😊
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17 hours ago, gardenmom5 said:
where I'm at, saturday chinese/korean/japanese (even french) school is very common. At least a lot of the first gen asian kids I'm well acquainted with (kids friends, and children of friends) generally have good language skills in their parents native language.
dh's nephew's wife is chinese (they met in china). he said he's reached the point he can kinda argue in chinese. (I assume mandarin)
One of the more interesting culture bits I was introduced to was (I think it was japanese) stating their age when introducing themselves so those older and younger know how to refer to them.
I think there’s a range of language proficiency even within families. My oldest has always had stronger Spanish speaking skills than my youngest. In part due to interest/ability, in part due to place in the family. My youngest grew up with an older sibling with whom to speak English at home, my oldest didn’t.
My oldest has a best friend of Chinese descent (Taiwan on dad’s side, Hong Kong on mom’s) and her Chinese is very basic despite her mom’s attempts. She and her brother even attended Chinese school at some point but they dropped out because they couldn’t keep up.
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17 hours ago, Dreamergal said:
My kids are called ABD, American Born Desi. Desi is a catch all term for India, Pakistan, Srilanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desi
If people want to be sarcastic, my kids are called ABCD, American Born Confused Desi which I find extremely derogatory. I am called Indian because I was not born here, not Asian Indian.
My kids are definitely confused. My husband is a Sri Lankan Tamil, and I am a white Spaniard. They are yet to meet anybody else with that particular heritage. My oldest looks Indian, while my youngest has a more ethnically ambiguous look. There are large groups of kids in their schools of both Indian and Mexican heritage, and although those groups share similarities with our cultural make up, there are also a lot of differences. Their families tend to socialize with each other outside school too so that kind of leaves my kids on the outside.
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My dh grew up with three languages. At home, his mom talked to him in Tamil, the family’s mother tongue, a minority language in his home country. His dad used English, the ex colonial language. They lived in an area where Sinhalese, the majority language, was predominant. At school, he had subjects in all three languages. At the age of 17 he left his home country, and has lived in majority English speaking countries since. His entire university education and professional career have been carried out exclusively in English, but he can still speak his other two languages. He has obviously lost some vocabulary and fluency because he hardly uses them. He can still read both although with some difficulties, both have different scripts. And writing in either of them has not been tested for many years.
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3 hours ago, Ktgrok said:
Dear lord if it is just him, why doesn' the listen with earbuds???
He does. They are just plain old cheap earbuds. That’s why I was thinking good quality noise canceling earbuds would be helpful.
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On 6/12/2020 at 9:56 PM, LucyStoner said:
No one in my house can wear earbuds comfortably. And we are all neurodiverse with sensory issues about sound.
So we spent a lot of money on noise cancelling headphones. Do you want them to sit over the ears or in the ears? What’s your budget for this purchase? Do you is want wireless ones? I am happy to be your headphone personal shopping assistant. 😛
I am glad the OP’s issue seems to be resolving.
I would love to pick your brain. In our case, my husband is hearing sensitive, working from home, and our younger daughter needs to practice her instruments, especially piano. Because our older daughter is also working from home, next to the piano due to Ethernet cable issues, and taking and making calls for work, our younger daughter only has a short time frame to play, but then my husband asks her to stop if he is in a conference call even though he is upstairs and behind closed doors. We also have neighbor teens who workout in their garage and their bass bothers him a lot too. We did talk with them and tuned it down a bit but the bass is still somewhat annoying.
In the ear would be preferable rather than the heavy headphone type. Earbuds would work for my husband best probably. Modest budget but needs to be effective. Thank you so much! 😊
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My public school kid so far has not changed her AP plans for next year. She is planning to take two, and she took two this year as well. As far as I am aware, she knows of no cheating. I think her friends were too scared by the fact that their teachers will read their exams to try anything. I hope that if there is a need for remote exams next year, that the exams go back to the normal format.
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15 hours ago, Dotwithaperiod said:
Ballot harvesting isn’t even a legal term, and many states allow ballot collection with different parameters. The Heritage Foundation found only 107 illegal cases the past few decades, the biggest being the 2018 Republican fraud in Carolina. Voter suppression causes much, much more damage than any proven cases of voter fraud. Fact.
We know why certain people don’t want vote by mail. We all know. We just can’t say it here.
I had an online conversation where several people were claiming voter fraud because some US born who had acquired Canadian citizenship had received ballots. They claimed you lost US citizenship when you acquired a second one, therefore they could not vote. Even when I cited the relevant State Department quotes, they still didn’t want to believe that you actually couldn’t just lose your citizenship and that you actually had to formally renounce it.
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5 hours ago, Reefgazer said:
That's a feature, not a bug.
I am not going into the essence of that statement, but students can still submit SATs and have them considered in their admissions for the classes of 21 and 22, who are the ones who realistically may have been preparing already.
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On 5/22/2020 at 9:00 AM, SanDiegoMom in VA said:
We have been in a wealthy CA district and my daughter attended a school for a year with peers that called Berkeley "Westview 2.0". They all viewed their high school as competitive and stressful as Berkeley. There was no grade inflation -- these kids worked so HARD for their grades and were stressed all the time. A 4.0 from there does NOT compare to a 4.0 elsewhere. We moved, my dd attended a more well rounded high school, worked hard but a normal amount, and got a 4.2 overall when she graduated. If she had stayed, she would not have gotten a 4.0. She was actually heading for a breakdown from the stress.
GPA's are NOT the same. My high school had teachers giving students C's if they just came to class once a week. Not every day - once a week. My husband was 5th in the class with a great GPA and got slammed when he got to college -- he was so underprepared. He barely made it through his engineering program and tried to drop out of it multiple times.
Ending the SAT isn't correcting inequality. The bigger problem is having such a huge variety of public schools that are either preparing well, somewhat preparing, or not at all preparing kids for college. I think that is the real travesty that shouldn't wait until the college level to be fixed.
Oh, my! Are we talking the Poway Unified Westview? If so, my daughter attends the other “lesser” PQ high school and has several Westview friends. The academics are the same in both schools, but Westview has a lot more hard core academic tiger families and kids are more pressured to take a higher number of APs in any given year while also engaging in time consuming extracurricular activities and leadership positions. At the end of the day though, there is no real difference in what colleges kids end up. Kids with equivalent academic rigor etc end up being accepted to the same colleges regardless of the high school attended.
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On 5/12/2020 at 4:54 AM, Hadley said:
Nothing says fairness and equality like changing the rules for kids in the middle of the game. What about all those kids who have already worked their tails off to earn a good SAT score? Will California schools even look at them next year? I am so very thankful that my son has no interest in any California school.
I’m no cheerleader for the SAT, but at least it is a common standard for every student. I don’t know of a better plan...and don’t even get me started on testing collaborative learning. Gag! Does that mean that we just have kids take this test in groups?!
If a student has a good SAT score it can only benefit to submit. They have gone test optional, not blind, for the nest two years.
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Online classes, groups, summer anything? She cannot take part in competitions in the fall. Best if affordable.
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Thank you so much for your reassurance!
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Can environmental allergies cause only one eye to swell? My dd has complained in the last couple of weeks that one eye is itching occasionally, which I have put down to a possible ragweed allergy. Last night she slept over at a friend’s. Her friend lives in a more rural part of town and apparently they slept with the window open. She woke up with a swollen eye and took an oral antihistamine in the morning, which helped quite a bit. She has also washed her eye, and put antihistamine drops in it, but the eye is still red and a bit swollen. Could it be something else? Tomorrow she has water polo practice and I don’t know what we should do!
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Bittersweet. It’s beautiful that those students could help and make a real difference in the teacher’s life. At the same time, having witnessed my sister’s demise to ALS, I can’t stop thinking that it might not be that helpful for very long.
Can a learning disability be noticed in high school for the first time or is it something else?
in The Learning Challenges Board
Posted · Edited by Mabelen
The average in the US is 12.5 years, with 90% of all girls already menstruating by 13.75 years of age. She was 15.5 when she had hers and was the only one she knew like that. My oldest had hers a couple of months before she turned 14. The doctor was not concerned but my dd was. We were a bit concerned about her height for a bit, but test results showed there was nothing wrong. Her height basically stayed the same during most of middle school, then started growing again at the end of 8th grade and through 9th grade. That’s really what I meant. She still looked like a little girl in middle school while all the other girls were already full blown women.