Oh, thank you so much! This was on my list to buy, so I'm happy to save some money!

Yes, I do have plenty to do while I wait! And I didn't need anything else added to my plate. :) but seriously, I am thankful that we are finally in a position to be able to get all of this checked out this year. Really, really thankful. I am planning to continue with the AAR for her. I like the program. I used the first few AAS levels for the older kids and really liked it, too...other than the time it took to do with 4 kids. I'm already driving "further" bypassing our "local" children's hospital for the bigger city hospital. The first evals I got for the older kids were at the children's hosp about 35 minutes away and were practically useless. With the ones I just had (where NP said older DD didn't have dyslexia but get tutored for it anyway and then the Scottish Rite accepted her for tutoring) were at big city hospital about 1.5 hours away (more in traffic). I think I'll just go to the same NP that just saw my oldest DS and older DD. I'm hesitating a bit though. I could see someone else there, but maybe that would be awkward? ETA: I did check Learning Ally lists and a little on the state dyslexia organizations. No real help from either. Since insurance is paying, I'm definitely sticking to their list anyway! At least to start....

That is in the works. I have an appointment with her ped to get the speech and hearing referrals. That's what I did for the older children, too. The sheer number of appointments I have coming up is staggering!

Hugs to you! I hope you get some time to regroup. I hide in the closet/bathroom. We have a walk-in closet off our bathroom, so I can even lock myself in. I even have a little storage ottoman in there that I can sit on. (And sometimes I hide little treats for me in there, too. :) ) I desperately want a chef, too. Since our adventures into the world of food allergies, a huge part of my time has been spent either shopping for those special ingredients or doing the food prep itself. I never liked cooking to begin with, so this is quite difficult for me.

She is still toward the beginning. Capital K. I don't really know how she is doing, because the person I hired is doing it with her. The teen just had oral surgery, so I can't really bug her about it right now either. I did the first few lessons with Dd back in the fall, and she could barely rhyme back then. Now she is doing much better with that, at least. Just now, I "quizzed" her on some words and she was able to do better with the rhyming. I think I probably need to take back over the AAR part with her so I know what's going on! And thanks for the EZ Write mention. I am going to take a look at it....I'm so tired of HWT, plus I have bad associations with it since that's what I used with my dysgraphic kids. So *this* is the kind of handwriting the program produces!:) Silly, I know. Lol

Thanks for this post. I've been thinking on psychs wanting to see instruction part. I didn't get a chance to call them today, but I hope to call tomorrow and will definitely ask about this. I probably wouldn't have thought of this on my own, so thank you for bringing it up!

I had a really hard time getting an appt for evals the first time. I'd call and leave messages, but no one would call back or they just weren't scheduling or they said they'd call when they got a spot in the wait list?? or..plenty of other excuses. It was so hard when I'd finally gotten up the courage to call and then just to be blown off. I feel for you. I hope you find someone good soon! On the Barton screening, she missed about three that seemed due to working memory. The rest seemed more like she just didn't hear the slight differences in the sounds.

I can definitely see why you start LiPS first. That makes tons of sense in your situation. Thanks for sharing--that helps me sort out my situation better.

Goodness no. Didn't mean to imply that at all. She's done the first 3 workbooks in the Ready, Set, Go for the Code series, she's gone through all four books in the Developing the Early Learner series, she's done EarlyBird K Singapore math workbooks, she's currently doing pre-AAR, she's done plenty of alphabet puzzles, stringing alphabet letters together, she has an alphabet rug with pictures in her room that she plays with a lot, she knew her letter sounds at 3 (but no blending), she's completed 2 HWT workbooks, plus the HWT app, she's done quite a few iPad apps with letters/sounds/easy words, plus a bunch of random stuff I've had lying around left over from the others and someone from the family reads to her every day. She can definitely pick out quite a few words, but I think they are just sight words. She "reads" the items on my to-do list, but she's just very good at guessing since she knows what things I usually need to do. But…I've actually hired a teen (with an early childhood education interest/background) to come and help me, and she is the one who has ended up doing most of this seat work with my DD, just due to my lack of time. I guess that's why I was so surprised to see just how badly she did on the Barton pretest. Obviously, I need to spend more time with her myself for a better feel for where we are. Sigh. (feeling bad for not being more on top of this…I need to learn to how to manufacture time and energy) Got to go now, back later.

Yes, those pesky genes. But what about the expression of those genes?? Maybe I did that! Lol She'll be 6 in 5 weeks. Not so far away.

Yes, fuming is what I did in the past when doc 3 years ago wouldn't say dyslexia because the older kids were reading "at grade level". But years of work (in their case) is different than a few months of work, for sure. I guess the question is if the psych really looks, as you say. I'm a little concerned about the current one, too, since she wouldn't say dd has dyslexia even though phonological skills are weak and she recommended tutoring for dyslexia anyway. Sigh. But we've been over that already! Lol Thanks for the nudge in the right direction, everyone. I guess deep down I knew what I needed to do, but...this is my baby. And I tried so hard to do everything right this time, I ate much more carefully during pregnancy, I fixed so much I thought I did "wrong" with the olders, etc. I was convinced she was going to be like my one who has no learning challenges just because I did everything "right". I know that's not really how it works, but...somehow this...just hurts or something inside.

Yeah, I think you are all right, especially now that I had her do the Barton screening and saw how much she struggled. So I need to do LiPS with her. No problem, already have it, used it with all the other kids. But. Should I wait until after a NP eval? It took about 4-5 months to get the other kids in, so I'd probably be looking at a loss of 5 months or so vs. starting her right away. I made the mistake of trying to fix before evals previously. I don't want to do that again. Thoughts?

Thanks. This is what I'm leaning toward though I don't feel like I have concrete reason right now. However, I did just give her the Barton screening test (for those familiar with it) and she failed spectacularly. She only got 4/15 correct on Part C, the 3 sounds section, 3/15 correct after repeat, and 8/15 just plain wrong even after 2nd try. Sigh.

So I have one child with ADHD and severe dysgraphia, one child with severe dyslexia plus more, one child with ADHD, anxiety, and aspects of both dysgraphia and dyslexia (but not getting full diagnosis on either), plus one child to whom all things come extraordinarily easily. Then the youngest, now almost 6. Unfortunately, this one's early history is following the path of the ones with the diagnoses. Same speech difficulties/delays, often mistaking words for similar words, not hearing sounds within words, and poor rhyming, though improved since we've been working on it for a year. Little things like her frustration level and intensity level are so much like the older siblings that have diagnoses. I haven't tried to teach her to read yet because...well, lots of reasons, but I guess deep down I'm afraid of what will happen when I do. :( So after two NP evals for the other kids this year plus some other big medical expenses, we will meet our deductible. (Yes, our insurance is covering NP.) I'm wondering if I should try to get her evaluated now at 6 since it will be fully covered this year? Has anyone been in a similar position? I know I wouldn't go if she were my first...but given the family history? (I do know she needs speech and hearing evals at a minimum which I'll do regardless.) I regret not going earlier with the others, but is this too early? I wish I hadn't begun remediation without a diagnosis with the others, but I don't want to teach her with "inferior" materials just to preserve ability to get a diagnosis! (If that makes sense.) Any thoughts? ETA: just did Barton screening. Huge fail. Should I do LiPS before NP eval or wait until after so as to not confuse things? (More info further down in posts)

Thank you! I will check them out.

Oh wow, that's really interesting. I didn't even know there was such a thing, but I can see this being a huge help for some situations. We don't have any located anywhere near to us, but I'm glad to know about them. Thanks!

Anyone know of a place that helps with interpreting all these test scores from a NP evaluation? I've tried googling without much success. I am looking at all of these numbers trying to figure out what they really mean. I already had my hour meeting with the NP for results, but I still have so many questions now that I can actually see some of these numbers. Some areas that seem low to me don't seem to have been discussed in the results/diagnosis at all? But maybe they don't mean what I think they mean! Lol

Yeah, that's a good idea. Why didn't I think of that?! So obvious! Lol Thanks!

Yes, I know all about the intensity! My 2nd son, who is currently being tutored at the Scottish Rite and actually has the official dyslexia diagnosis, tells me this at least 20 times each tutoring day (of course, to me, it sounds a lot like whining and complaining....lol). And yes, I am definitely going ahead with the tutoring for her. One of the SR tutors will be doing the tutoring, but offsite, and we will be paying her until dd's name comes up for tutoring at the SR. Then she gets 2 years free at the SR.

Well I just fell down the rabbit hole trying to research this! Wow, what a mess. Why on earth does this have to be so difficult to diagnose? So many sites (in my state) saying how hard it is to get a diagnosis and after reading about all the expected test results and variations, I'm more confused than ever! I am going to ask the Scottish Rite director whether she can diagnose. I'm thinking not...I think the tests they do are just for planning like you said.

I like this idea. How would I go about doing this? Another neuropsych or....?

Really? I wonder if our Scottish Rite can diagnose dyslexia? Do they all? I didn't think so because of something I read 3 yrs ago when 2nd DS was on the wait list, but maybe I am wrong. I will definitely ask the director about that. Ours is a pretty small place, but I will ask about loaner tapes as well. Dd has a diagnosis of ADHD (inattentive) but testing didn't really show problems with working memory or processing speed if I'm reading the reports right. Her working memory was the lowest of the WISC-V subtests but I'm not sure if it's a big enough difference from the others to matter? The testers didn't say anything about it. This is helpful, thanks. Dd is anxious for tutoring to begin (just one more week hopefully!) and your post makes me feel better that I won't be wasting money on this for her. I did get the official letter of acceptance from the Scottish Rite and she is actually only a year out on the waiting list since she got moved up due to her age.

I would also encourage you to get evals now. I didn't and regret it. So many people said oh, he's a boy, he'll grow out of it, he's just on his own timetable, he seems so smart, he's just fine, etc. I tried to remediate what I thought was the problem but just ended up confusing the matter probably. Then when I did get them, it was through a children's hospital that had such a backlog of kids waiting to be seen that it took a year (plus several months to even get an initial call back for making the appointment to begin with) and then they drastically cut back the amount of testing they did to try to get kids in faster. I should have done my homework better...they didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. It took almost two years for me to get up the courage/fortitude/money to try again with full neuropsych and then another wait...only 5-6 months this time. If I could have a do-over, I would have called a lot sooner to begin with, probably 4 years sooner, and I would have used that wait time from scheduling the appointment to the appt day to really research what kind of info I was going to get out of it. Then hopefully I would have canceled that children's hospital appointment and realized I needed better. Lol. But now I'm here with a teen boy who doesn't want anything to do with therapies and tutoring and such. But he clearly needs help. Things got slowly worse not better. So, I'd encourage you to do the evals. Don't take my path; I can't recommend it.

The director said she put her on the waiting list because she said her scores clearly showed she could benefit. She thought DD's phonemic skills should be a lot higher given her IQ. I don't think she can say it's dyslexia though, even if she thought so. I have a hard time deciding what to tell DD. She was relieved hearing she qualified for tutoring and asked if that meant she is dyslexic like her brother. She has a lot of anxiety about doing well and low esteem over her struggles in reading and spelling. I think a dyslexia diagnosis would make her feel a lot better, but I can't really tell her she has it!

Okay, thank you. Makes sense. I see that listed on their reports now.