Can I just say...

[FairProspects]

that if I would have had ds 2 first, I would have been sprinting to have ds 1 evaluated by age 4. I cannot believe how easy it is to teach many reading and writing skills to a neurotypical child.

 

It makes me so proud of ds 1 for battling through his difficulties :hurray: but it is also heartbreaking to realize just how hard he is working to achieve the same level of results :crying:. The older I get the more I realize that life is just profoundly unfair in ways I may never understand.

[Snowfall]

My #2 is still just a toddler, but I think that's true for us, too! We haven't gotten to schooling yet, but just in terms of the tantrums that lasted for hours on end...if I had experienced a child who didn't start doing that at 14 months of age, with it escalating for years, I probably would've insisted on testing dd much sooner. As it was, dh, who worked a lot and missed most of it, kept insisting I was overreacting and I didn't have a real basis for comparison, so even when I did finally get testing, it was for something different. Luckily, it was all found out at that time, but still. (I'm not trying to blame my husband, though. From his POV of not witnessing most of it, I was just having trouble dealing with normal toddler/kid behavior. He never knew anything was unusual until he was off work finishing his master's for 2 years and got a first hand experience, rather than just an hour here and an hour there.)

[merry gardens]

Yes, you can go right ahead and say it. It's amazing how easy it is for some and how difficult it is for others.

[DawnM]

Fully agreeing. Although my first is my biggest issue.....he didn't really present with his "issues" until age 2 though, after I had already given birth to #2.

 

My oldest struggled to read even Magic Treehouse at age 8 or 9. My 7 year old (typical child) read them at 5.

 

My hat is off to special education teachers......I don't think I could do it and I taught for 16 years.

 

Dawn

Edited December 6, 2011 by DawnM

[Tiramisu]

that if I would have had ds 2 first, I would have been sprinting to have ds 1 evaluated by age 4. I cannot believe how easy it is to teach many reading and writing skills to a neurotypical child.

 

It makes me so proud of ds 1 for battling through his difficulties :hurray: but it is also heartbreaking to realize just how hard he is working to achieve the same level of results :crying:. The older I get the more I realize that life is just profoundly unfair in ways I may never understand.

 

With my first, I didn't know what was normal. It was just hard, but I thought that's maybe just what it was. Then, since we were living abroad, I attributed so much to cultural differences, and was surprised when we came back and saw not all American kids were like dd. It's a little embarrassing to admit.

 

My #2 is still just a toddler, but I think that's true for us, too! We haven't gotten to schooling yet, but just in terms of the tantrums that lasted for hours on end...if I had experienced a child who didn't start doing that at 14 months of age, with it escalating for years, I probably would've insisted on testing dd much sooner. As it was, dh, who worked a lot and missed most of it, kept insisting I was overreacting and I didn't have a real basis for comparison, so even when I did finally get testing, it was for something different. Luckily, it was all found out at that time, but still. (I'm not trying to blame my husband, though. From his POV of not witnessing most of it, I was just having trouble dealing with normal toddler/kid behavior. He never knew anything was unusual until he was off work finishing his master's for 2 years and got a first hand experience, rather than just an hour here and an hour there.)

 

If I knew then, what I know now. I would have sought evaluations much earlier. I spoke to our pediatricians, but they never grasped the issues and suggested that I could get evaluations or therapies existed that might help. Needless to say, I was so busy when they were little that I didn't spend much time online and a lot of the research hadn't been done yet.

 

Yes, you can go right ahead and say it. It's amazing how easy it is for some and how difficult it is for others.

 

So sad, but true. And, I've come to see how it can affect relationships outside of the academics, especially when you don't know what you're dealing with.

 

I spoke with someone recently, who told me how her family reacted to her daughter when she was little, telling her how stubborn she was and would never do what whe was asked to do. She felt there was something going on but couldn't put her finger on it. (She was also a young mom living abroad with her first child and without resources, like I had been.) Finally, her dd was diagnosed with a hearing problem. It wasn't until college that she could really get the accomodations she needed--and now she's in medical school!!! So much for a kid who wouldn't listen.:glare:

[PeterPan]

Yup, my ds2 is having an easier ride, getting a more enriching environment, and getting more evaluations, etc. because of my experience with dd. While you wish you could have done it better with the first one, there's nothing to do about it. And really 7 isn't that bad. At least you didn't wait till 10-12 like me.

[EKS]

Same here. My kids are 6 years apart and the older one was 8 when I finally realized there was something very wrong based on what the younger one was doing as a toddler.

[Crimson Wife]

OTOH, one of the reasons I delayed having a speech & language eval for DS was because his big sister was very advanced verbally. I thought, "oh, he's a boy and I just don't know what's 'normal' because DD was such an early talker."

 

With #3, I knew that I couldn't just take a "wait and see" approach like our pediatrician recommended. I wish I had known when #2 was a young toddler what I know now.

[prairiewindmomma]

:iagree: