My ds and his possible diagnosis

[newlifemom]

I am new to the forum however have been a wtm "user" for 4 years with my dd (4th). I am gearing up to begin 1st grade with my next two in the fall, but my ds has issues. Unfortunately, we really don't know truly what they are. They could be anything from ASD (Aspergers or PDDNOS), ADHD, SPD, Vision? or who knows just a march to the beat of his own drummer type.

 

The problem I am facing as I am sure many of you have is How to best obtain answers and Who's going to pay for that?

 

Plus, am I insane because I want to follow wtm for him?

 

Any advice would be greatly apprectiated.

 

Pam

[Claire]

Is your son 6yo?

 

With as many possible diagnoses as you have mentioned, it sounds as if your best course of action might be to start with a complete neuro-psychological evaluation. We have an HMO and what I did was simply call the HMO and tell them my dd needed a complete neuro-psych eval. They told me I could self-refer and gave me the number of their in-network clinic, plus several out-network clinics. I called the in-network clinic and made an initial appointment with their educational psychologist. We discussed the problems and what testing to do. He was pretty sure that the type of testing we needed would not be covered by our medical insurance company, so we agreed to limit it to IQ and achievement testing to start and call in the neuro-psych for more in-depth testing of problem areas. We ended up with a medical diagnosis of dysgraphia and our insurance company paid for everything. My conclusion from that experience was that, had we not ended up with a medical diagnosis, we would have had to pay out-of-pocket.

 

My advice is to try first for a complete neuro-psych eval. If you run into problems getting that, you can work instead start getting your own evals for OT, speech/language, vision, etc. Post here first to get some pointers on how to get referrals written up properly for these evals, so that your medical insurance covers them. The first evals you would want to get would be occupational therapy and speech/language.

 

I was unable to follow WTM with my dyslexic/dysgraphic dd. We had to spend the bulk of our time in the early years on basic skills (especially reading) and therapies to reduce her underlying deficits. She did not learn well with traditional approaches.

[chiguirre]

You can do the WTM with a spectrum child, but probably not on schedule. Ds likes to be read to, does a decent narration for a first grader and is enjoying learning. But, he can't handle copywork yet because his handwriting is still too shaky. We are still working on reading and I don't think he'll be reading on his own for pleasure for at least another year (he's a first grader now). But he's not the only 1st grade boy who's still working his way through phonics, KWIM.

 

Of course, most posters don't actually follow all the curriculum recommendations in the WTM. Lots of people start history cycles later than 1st grade. It's not just SN kids that do better with a bit more maturity. Take the WTM and make it your own, adapt it to your situation.

 

Good luck!