I've not googled causes no, now I'm curious. I mean to me, if she has average to high scores on her phonological awareness and memory, how would she be dyslexic? Is it not a phonological disorder? And that's why I thought maybe we didn't need Barton, since it's to remediate phonological issues yes? She read the nonsense words fine, which was surprising as just a few months ago it was difficult. Single words she does ok, but reading in paragraphs are hard, hence my leaning now to it being purely a vision issue. Yes, I think you're right. She might not cross over into a disorder, but just needs very systematic practice..over teaching..for things to stick as if she's not necessarily processing it right then, it will take a lot of exposure for it to stay. She's artsy, and likes to design clothes and is into math and building (minecraft!). She's good at problem solving type things.

It's actually 3 of them. DS has an autism eval Wednesday. It's just all falling down over here lol. I don't suspect ASD with my girls, just with my 3 yr old son. I don't think OT will be covered at all for reflex issues. I was just thinking that since DS is in special ed prek, perhaps we can wait a bit for his therapy to start and do DD6 first for a couple months to get the exercises down and routine so that way we can continue on our own. That wouldn't be such a shock to the budget. Yes, she had a WISC and for the life of me I can't find the raw scores. She's mailing the full packet soon so I'll have another copy. If I recall, processing was on the lower end. You mention 2E..which I need to google as I'm not sure I understand. Does that mean gifted, yet with an LD? She scores super high in some visual/spatial things, doing some high school level patterns on the WJ and such. IDK what scores she would need to have to be labeled gifted though? The pysch honestly, wasn't that helpful. I likely will go elsewhere in a year for our achievement testing and look at some of this again with a different person.

Preaching to the choir! My mom has ADD. She told me straight up my dd needs it..yesterday lol. That a whole world could open for her. But I won't do it without exhausting all possibilities first. If reflex work and some supplements and modifications can help, we'll do that until it's no longer enough. Then I can come back to DH and say LOOK at her, struggling still with these specific things. She's only 6 so, I also have the she's just young thing in my head. She had a speech delay as a child and since she has never had her hearing fully checked, I want to make sure all is well there. Her speech tests within normal limits now.

Thank you! VT thinks about 6 months. We will see where she is at 3 though and reassess. I'm going to do the test again now that's it's been a while to see if there is any change. She wouldn't get the sounds wrong, just forget them kwim? Barton is so expensive too and dependent on me doing it well. I'm just so overwhelmed. But since I have it its worth a shot. I guess it'll be pretty evident early on if it's a waste of time. With OT, I will definitely get those books, simply because all 3 of them need therapy and copays add up crazy fast :( The OT was so nice too, I know DD would enjoy it, sigh.

Resources are divided among the counties and then among each school and then to each child. If and only if there are resources left over for homeschoolers to tap into, they can. There is not enough even for the kids enrolled, so no, we do not have access to therapy. We were able to have her tested for free under federal law, IDEA, but there is no federal mandate for schools to then offer services to students not enrolled. In our state, we are considered under the same umbrella as private schools. I will ask her to write a sentence :) The switching of the math problems, intrigues me too. With Singapore we almost always write it laterally unless we are doing the standard algorithm on purpose for a lesson. She does well in math, so long as it isn't timed. Timed things yes, tear her apart and bring her to tears.

As homeschoolers we have no acces to school therapists. We will stay home this year while she goes through VT. For dd6, Lord willing I can get her some OT too. DS3 goes to public special Ed prek right now which gives us a couple hours of quiet time a day to do schoolwork. I need that to be effective, planned and easy to execute with my now toddler running around. I think we can definitely attack WM at home. Thank goodness for that. Plus the metronome at the VT should help I think? In on exercise she had to look at a B, hold up her left hand in the shape of a b, then pick up a ball and throw it at the B on the wall. There was a D there too, as well as P and Q, so they went back and forth at random. I thought that was pretty genius. Dancing Bears looks promising, I'm going to do those placement tests for both of them tomorrow too.

I've suspected working memory issues after the Barton pretest tripping her up. Manipulating the tiles while keeping the sound in her mind, it was painful to watch the first time. The VT ran a couple tests too and on one she did fine and the other she very poorly. Combined with the below avg working memory subtest score in the WIAT, it seems to follow that's her issue. The school Pysch (I used them since they were free first) did not run the working memory subtests from the Woodcock Johnson, despite the fact that I explicitly asked for that to be tested. Those scores showed a clear discrepancy between IQ and achievements, all reading/writing was low but again, she chalked it up to her not having exposure and wouldn't give her a SLD dx, she has no IEP. So I'd have to come back to them with my private results to start this process all over if we ever decide to enroll.

Yes, so much of what she does is classic. Especially not being able to segment words well. Like take a chunk of a word off and move it to the end or, eliminate a sound and tell me what's left. Homeschool! I just know that since we move a lot, and right now DS3 is giving me a very hard time (autism eval next week), I may need to put them in PS. I'm beginning to reach the limit of what I can take and I don't have support from my husband to HS and with all these issues I sorely need it. That's the last box to check! I was hoping that all of these tests would be pretty clear so I could avoid it. DD6 definitely needs it done in the spring when she is 7, but now I wonder about DD8. I'll give them screening again in the morning. I appreciate the recommendation, my main question is what to in fact DO now. I can't just look at 3rd grade curric and throw it at her, and I don't know how to fill in the gaps when on the surface she would skate by totally fine.

Aside from the reversals, I'd say her handwriting is quite nice. What you're saying makes sense though! I wonder how else I can tease this out at home.

Well you have just totally blown my mind. :laugh: On the test, in the section for Rapid Symbolic Naming, those were to two subtests she scored below average on, classifying a "normative weakness". I've not had a chance to talk to the psych that did this one, she was out of town due to a death in the family at our follow up. So I just have the raw scores.

My 6 year old DD was flagged for ADHD last month. They suggested meds. We declined thanks to my husband and some advice here. I wasn't opposed to trying it, as she clearly struggles and I feel she isn't living up to her full potential. We had an OT eval and turns out she has Moro and ATNR retained. The symptoms of both describe her to a T, I'm floored at how she ticks off every box almost in some way or another. I'm not sure we can swing OT for her, with everything else, so are their resources available for me to do this at home? Or is this something I really just have to outsource? I just started a business at home, and a big part of doing it is so I can afford everyone's therapy, but it will be some time before that is profitable. As far as school goes, her attention span is so short, I'm not sure where to start. She will happily do reading eggs and math seeds online and she seems to be retaining information. I feel like that combined with good read alouds (whether she pays attention or not) and working on her grip somehow with copywork ( I was going to try HWT) will be enough for 1st? I'm just not sure how to get her reading on her own, I would love the structure of a program, but the things I'm familiar with seem very teacher intensive, and I'm terrified of dropping the ball with something like AAR.

Hi all, I'm back again with almost everyone's scores from the testing we've done. Overall I would say that I'm pleasantly surprised at the results. For both my girls, they seem to average to above average intelligence and a good foundation to work with. I'm going to make 2 posts in one thread, so that you all (and I lol) can keep it straight. First up is DD8, she'll be 9 in Oct and is starting 3rd grade. She just started VT a couple of weeks ago. She has some visual processing issues, convergence insufficiency and more. They will be doing some metronome work and right now she's working on tracking. They seem to always employ some multi sensory work with each visit. She failed the Barton pre test (later squeaked by) last year and I've suspected more than just vision so I took her through the schools, and then privately when I wasn't happy with their testing. So in the last 4 months she's had the WJ, WIAT, CTOPP and Test of Written Spelling and some other shorter assessments. Her scores are a bit of conundrum. It seems that her basic phonological skills are in tact, she scored very well on the CTOPP in awareness and memory, however the Rapid Symbolic Naming portion was in the 16th percentile both with numbers and digits. Grade equivalent being 1.7 It would seem then, that the reason she scored poorly on Barton was her working memory issues? Part C was really hard. Granted that was over 6 months ago so maturity I'm sure plays a part and being more comfortable with testing. I am thinking that for her now, it's been a combination of poor working memory and her vision issues that have barred her from obtaining reading fluency. It's a choppy mess where she skips words, inverts beginning and end etc. Her CTOPP tells me it's not dyslexia. What's surprising, though perhaps not, is that her scores indicate dysgraphia, which I honestly never considered. She writes well imo, not quickly, but I guess Ive nothing to compare it to. The psych thought that perhaps since all we've done is copywork, and I've never asked her to free write during school, that this would be why she scored poorly. She also has issues with reversals such that she has to think really hard to make them properly and that slows her down. I didn't realize that letter writing isn't totally automatic. Her spelling is very poor, even pretty typical sight words she can read. The psych was hesitant to label her with SLD writing. Thinking that perhaps with focused practice, she would be fine by year's end. I'm only concerned about a label so much that we always need to have public school on the table, and if she needs accommodations down the road like more time and such, I want her to have that. I guess my question now is what do I do? One SLP suggest an OG tutoring, which we can't afford with VT too. Would that be sufficient to help her with spelling? Will VT likely be all she needs to catch up? What spelling program should we do? What writing program? Does this mean we don't need Barton? I have level 1 here. I have a child reading in a mid second grade/late first grade level, should I still be doing a reading program? I went into this wanting to know whether she has dyslexia or not and man now that it seems she doesn't, I'm even more unsure of what to do!

It's really hard to accept that, you know, well trained mind and all that jazz, but you're right. I never would have guessed I'd still be teaching reading to a 9 yr old 3rd grader. With our last move and all these evals it seems all forward motion has stopped and I can't see the forest for the trees.

Down the rabbit hole I go! I just am trying to handle all of this. I don't want to put them in school, but seriously don't know if I can handle all of this on my own. So that makes 3 kids that each have two therapies to attend every week, when will we actually do school?!

Mini update: DD6 had an OT eval today and she's definitely got retained reflexes, some motor planning issues and will need help with her grip. We only talked briefly, I'll get the full report soon, but she was pointing out things that I d always thought were a little odd but nothing serious anyone would note..wow, it is SO nice to have someone validate your suspicions. That my child is struggling with something as simple as folding a shirt, she has no idea in what sequence to do things like that and shuts down. And no wonder she quit dance because mimicking someone else's movements is super hard too. Simply sitting in a chair is hard! So yea, great appointment. We can tackle these things before we consider meds. I'd like for her to get her full pysch work up in the spring and go from there. The ST that saw DS3 is also amazing! His receptive language is in the 2nd percentile. He actually expresses more than he understands! I asked her about Dd8 not getting a CTOPP and she offered to come in on her off day and do it personally..wow! So I can get that and the WISC and such the pysch will do and have all the info I need. The pysch will be able to dx SLD so they say, even without the CTOPP. But I need as much info as possible should they ever go to PS.

Thanks for the tips! I wondered about sld writing now too, though I had always thought that was mostly about poor penmanship. She has beautiful handwriting for the most part but it is is pretty slow apparently and that makes sense if she is still reversing letters so I need to read more about that. I will look at that site, I have another practice to call tomorrow, they claim to do full pyschoeducational testing with a specific one for dyslexia.

I was really hopeful. And again, the things I hoped would be done were not. The SLP did the CELF on her which she did fine on, so does that rule out anything for CAPD? For DD8 they did not do a CTOPP, even though I said that's what I wanted, and did a Test of Written spelling or something and she did not do well at all. She is sending me results soon. She couldnt correctly spell any sight words, mostly did everything phonetically, and would drop syllables completely in a couple. She did note how hard she was thinking about how to even write the letters, so would have recommended OT if not for me saying VT would address that. I also found out the psych I had scheduled for DD8 for dyslexia isn't going to do the CTOPP either, just a WISC and some other achievement test. I guess it really comes down to just paying the huge amounts for a neuropsych. Though I wonder what is the point now? At this point in time, I should just do Barton with dd8, modify my teaching for DD 6's inattention and get DS3 to prek. We'll see where we stand come spring, I'm just tired of it all. DS's speech eval is Tuesday, here's hoping that is better.

She has done bridging as of 2008 per the website. I'm not sure if she is working to be certified. As a layman I think his articulation is fine, but I thought it nice that she had that training to bring to the table.

Yes I think so on the CTOPP! And definitely yea, will wait to start therapy after the eval. I know for sure speech therapy is not covered unless it's under autism, so we will sit tight until we know either way. He would be level 1 if he is at all yes. And thanks I just stumbled onto this page, laid out all my concerns with the three of them and said IS THIS THE PLACE THEY NEED TO BE?! Haha. And for once, the receptionist said YES. Goodness some office folks I've talked to have been so cold, and it was refreshing hearing someone say yes.

Yes. She needs 7-9 months of VT..convergence issues, reversals the whole bit. The school did not give her a CTOPP despite a below grade level WJ and average IQ. No working memory was tested there either, but it showed up at VT so she'll get some work with that there. She barely passed the Barton pretest the second time (failed the first). So I have Barton 1 here for her next year if vision alone isn't what she is up against. I will not put her in school. It nearly tore her apart. She has anxiety, and since DS3 will be in special ed prek in the fall, I pray the 2 hours we have uninterrupted each day, we can get through reading and math. DS3 won't be dx until august, we'll see what all they suggest then. I don't think it's unreasonable to have a workbox system for a 9 yr old 3rd grader so she can read the instructions herself and proceed with a simple math page or two? Of course I still have to teach lessons, but I need to not have to be elbow to elbow reading everything to her. She is currently reading at a late first grade level. I just can't put them in school, at least not here. Especially not the school, that didn't bother to test them for what I asked for, knowing they both would likely get zero in the way of accommodations or extra help. I'd just having to do everything I'm doing now, but after school, when they are already exhausted from the day. If, and only if, I can get DD8 up to grade level in reading, her vision is better, then, I'll consider her going to PS for her. We move a lot too, so changing schools every year isn't something I want to do either unless we have to. I may have hit the jackpot just now? I found a practice that has SLPs that can give the older two APD screens (taps? she didn't say the name), phonological processing testing for DD8, a speech eval for DD6 and I'll explain all I'm seeing with attention, a PROMPT eval for DS3 and OT eval for him too. All for just copays at least for now until they run it through insurance. And all within the next two weeks! So maybe I can postpone a long expensive psych visit, and get some good info about where to go next with all of them. That same PROMPT slp is trained in OG and specializes in reading help. I'm hopeful she can recommend where to go for a full eval for the girls. I'll still keep DD8's appointment as a backup. Thanks everyone :)

You're right. My oldest has an appointment with just a psychologist. This practice seems to specialize in educational testing for dyslexia, SLD, anxiety, adhd etc. They said it would be 3 visits (intake, testing, results). I will see about both of them, as their cost seemed fairly doable with a payment plan. They also do testing for giftedness so, I'll just call back and see. They do take our insurance, though they said educational testing isn't covered. I wonder though, since DD6 now has an adhd label, if they could bill it somehow under that? Insurance stuff makes me crazy. Wow, really? :sad: We definitely don't qualify for medicaid. My focus has been on my oldest because I desperately need her to be reading on her own. I need for her to be able to take over some of her education so I can focus on the younger two. She focuses well (she actually took the same adhd diagnostic and passed with flying colors) and whatever mild issues she may have with focusing are likely due to her anxiety. She has visual processing issues as said by the VT, questionable working memory, potential auditory things too. DS3 is going to an autism clinic in August, it will likely be at low cost to us, as autism is covered. I just call a SLP practice and receptionist thinks they can do the APD screen. Yum, pie!! :wub:

I knew you would say this, I did! lol. I want to test all the things, truly I do. But I have three kids who need this all at once and I'm trying to keep my head above water. I need to get DD8 squared away with VT and true pysch eval. Then get DS3 squared away with his autism eval and speech. Poor DD6 is my sweet sunshine that may have to hang on for a bit. I appreciate the frankness about the meds. Best to be sure we know truly what we are up against before that, very good point. Yes, totally didn't engage. They had a thing on her head to measure her movements and such. She was just randomly pushing buttons :(

She was seen by an MD at the ADHD clinic that is attached to our pediatrics practice. Yes I suspect some auditory things too, but she is so young, I think I have to wait until she is 7 for anywhere around here.

Hi all again, I seem to be hanging here a lot lately. All three of my older children are having some issues. Today, I'm asking about DD who just turned 6 in April. Yesterday, we had a meeting with a doctor and she says it's likely ADHD. She recommends meds. Based on my questionairre responses and the fact that she did not engage, showed zero attention, in the 15 minutes she took her computer test. She loves computers, completely, so I found it shocking when I saw the results. She had her blood drawn and an eeg before hand and was pretty upset, so we repeated the test yesterday just to be sure that it wasn't just because she was upset. We got lunch, talked about it, let her sister be in the room nearby for support, she didn't want to but was calm, same results. She routinely says she's not smart. She dropped out of dance because she couldn't understand what was going on (couldn't keep up, fear of failure etc). I see her receding more and more and while I think meds in a 6 yr old is a bit much, I think that the doctor would not have suggested it if it weren't severe? I've come into the room to find her crying because she cant remember what I just told her to do. She's not hyperactive, an easygoing kid for the most part, but I am looking toward the next school year and trying to get her reading, but she can hardly track with me at all. We could not do any of the Barton pretest part c, none. My husband is vehemently against meds, and really any of the testing I've done for them. He thinks they should just deal, I homeschool, so accommodate and move on. My mom who got a the dx as an adult said the meds were life changing for her, she begs me to just try it. I don't know what to do. Wait til she is older? The doc also recommended cognitive behavior therapy and omega 3 supplements. What programs should I do in the meantime? She will sit and do Reading Eggs/ Mathseeds, she seems to have retained a lot, think that is enough for first? I have to work on writing more, she has a funky grip, so I'm guessing HWT? Anywho, Im rambling now, any good books I should read?