Homeschooling a low-ish IQ child?

[Mrs Tiggywinkle]

Got the school evaluation for DS5.  It came back mild cognitively impaired and a speech-language disability.  His composite IQ was borderline with some areas average and some far below average.  I’m homeschooling him and am now adjusting from “he’s just delayed due to prematurity and will catch up” to “okay, I need to adjust more here long term.”  We’ve been to neurology when he was 3 and not talking; they did a CT and didn’t really find anything structurally. Genetics raised the possibility of mosaic Down Syndrome and then Covid shut that down. Regardless—I am homeschooling and need to adjust.  His math skills are average and age appropriate, but he cannot remember letter sounds from day to day. His working memory is low average, his fine motor skills are below average, but no one in the CSE meeting wanted to give me much direction. He’s going to get speech therapy x2 a week and OT x2 a week, which is consistent with what he’s been getting since around 18 months old.  I broached a consultant teacher, but they need more data before supplying that. In all honesty, I’m a thesis away from my M.Ed in sped and I have Ortin-Gillingham certification and they said they’d suggest OG but don’t have a certified OG teacher. 
My degree and experience is with autism without cognitive impairment.  I’m behavior focused in my degree.  
Anyone here homeschooled a child with mild cognitive impairment that might be willing to answer some questions?

[Drama Llama]

I have never homeschooled either a 5 year old or a child with low IQ, but I have taught plenty of kids in that category, and I've homeschooled a kid with different disabilities who needed a lot of problem solving.  If you think advice from that perspective would be helpful, I'm happy to share. 

I'll also say that I consider IQ testing on 5 year olds to be helpful in telling you what the child can do right now, but very unhelpful for predicting the future.  I see the file of lots of high schoolers, with all their testing over time, and IQ tests done before about 7 are pretty poor predictors of iQ tests done later.  

[Rosie_0801]

Not low IQ, but significantly asynchronous, with verbal IQ scores 3 years below average and non-verbal 3 years above. (It was very interesting.)

I never knew how far the kiddo could go academically, so I worked on the premise that the more thoroughly we address their current capacity, the firmer the foundation they'd have for the next stage, whatever that turned out to be. 

[SpecialClassical]

 

I’m happy to answer questions.

Edited November 5, 2020 by SpecialClassical
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[Mrs Tiggywinkle]

31 minutes ago, BaseballandHockey said:

I have never homeschooled either a 5 year old or a child with low IQ, but I have taught plenty of kids in that category, and I've homeschooled a kid with different disabilities who needed a lot of problem solving.  If you think advice from that perspective would be helpful, I'm happy to share. 

I'll also say that I consider IQ testing on 5 year olds to be helpful in telling you what the child can do right now, but very unhelpful for predicting the future.  I see the file of lots of high schoolers, with all their testing over time, and IQ tests done before about 7 are pretty poor predictors of iQ tests done later.  

I’ll probably PM you tomorrow if that’s okay.  Covid is really kicking my butt tonight. 
I am not as concerned about the number, but trying to find the best way to teach him.  I do think it’s likely we are dealing with some kind of cognitive impairment, maybe due to prematurity or before birth issues(placental insufficiency and such), or genetics.  Whatever it is, I just want to teach him the best I can.

[Melissa in Australia]

Homeschooling 9 year old twin boys with interlectual Disabilities, FASD and an alphabet of diagnosis to do with trauma 

All curriculum moves too fast. We do a lot of moving sideways instead of forward so they feel achievement and a sense of progress. 

 

[Drama Llama]

26 minutes ago, Mrs Tiggywinkle said:

I’ll probably PM you tomorrow if that’s okay.  Covid is really kicking my butt tonight. 
I am not as concerned about the number, but trying to find the best way to teach him.  I do think it’s likely we are dealing with some kind of cognitive impairment, maybe due to prematurity or before birth issues(placental insufficiency and such), or genetics.  Whatever it is, I just want to teach him the best I can.

Absolutely, I'm happy to give you my thoughts.

I hope you feel better soon.

[Anne Elliot]

My 12 year old DD was recently tested to have an IQ of 68, with a wide spread of results. She's actually doing fine? I mean, we go slow, I hand hold more than I guess is standard but she's a 6th grader who is doing MUS Epsilon without too much drama. We used All About Reading and are continuing with All About Spelling. But I'm pretty sure she learned her letter sounds from the Leapfrog DVD. We just keep things as concrete as possible for as long as possible. DD went to a Waldorf preschool so she did a lot of painting, modeling and eventually knitting. She cooks and bakes a ton so that helps with a lot of fine motor, executive function and problem solving. 

Our biggest issue is comprehension of abstract concepts. History is...difficult. So we go over and over those things. A little more sticks every year.

[Ottakee]

Feel free to PM me as well.  I have 3 that I homeschooled with IQs between 48-68 along with other challenges.  I am also a certified special education teacher and I currently work with young adult students with the same levels of disabilities.

One big thing for me was that for reading, I used www.3rsplus.com or www.iseesam.com  This program is phonics based but teaching in tiny little steps.  They start out teaching the word I and the ee (long e sound) right away along with the s, m and short a sound and then get kids reading stories.  LOTS of repetition and then they slowly build from there, keeping b,d,p and q all far apart.  The stories are cute and require the kids to read the words, not the pictures.

 

[kbutton]

22 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

All curriculum moves too fast. We do a lot of moving sideways instead of forward so they feel achievement and a sense of progress. 

So, my observations are from extensive conversations with friends and working with their kids in a very small co-op setting.

This is one of the things she said also. She went sideways and slower a lot. 

She found that incremental curricula tended to stick better and allow for more conceptual understanding. 

21 hours ago, darshana said:

Our biggest issue is comprehension of abstract concepts. History is...difficult. So we go over and over those things. A little more sticks every year.

Also this.

I wanted to note that if you are wanting to take advantage of DD programs in your area for any of your needs, it would behoove you to get him qualified now. It's a mix of IQ, diagnosis, lifeskills, etc. in our state. Some kids who are borderline will test too high functioning for DD programs later on, especially if parents are able to find really effective intervention, and/or the child develops good life skills. The formula here has to do with deficits across a certain number of categories, so if you hit lifeskills really well, then the help evaporates even if your child would really benefit. If you want or need that assistance/safety net, it's good to start it now. If it's outgrown (they usually review qualifications for DD programs at least once as a teen and/or adult), fine, but you might be sorry if you assume his trajectory will go one way or another and wait and see. It can be really nice to have job program availability and that sort of thing. I know people whose kids would've qualified at your son's age but don't later. 

My friend's kids have extremely spiky skill presentations. One is spiky on paper, but kind of even in performance academically and lifeskill-wise. The other is even on paper for abilities, but lifeskills are unusually high for what the scores say while academics are more spiky. At the same time, that young person can easily be out in the weeds with deeper thinking.