Worried about my Son's Language Arts

[Lillyfee]

I was looking for schools at the place we are moving to and found a cute Montessori school that has 6th grade. I was wondering how much it would be and it would be like 12.000 $ a year.

Is that normal in the US?

Our private Montessori school in Germany is 150 EUR a month and really nice. So that price was kind of shocking. 

[Clarita]

4 hours ago, Lillyfee said:

Is that normal in the US?

For where we live in the US $12,000/year is a good price for a private school.  The expensive schools near me are charging ~$25,000 in elementary to $40,000+ in high school.

[Lillyfee]

That's insane.

I just looked what the tuition costs for Munich International school.  The most expensive school close to my parents.  It's the school where the very rich people send their kids to including US generals, politicians all over the world etc

The first year there costs 8,000 EUR and every other year about 3,500 EUR. 

So even the most expensive private schools in the are I grew up are cheaper than a normal private school here 

 

Ok, I looked that up wrong. That is the entrance fee. 

For going to school there you do need to pay between 12,000 and 22,000 EUR a year.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Lillyfee

[Jean in Newcastle]

Chiming in late with a couple of observations. 
 

Bilingual kids (and I was one) are often a bit delayed in language arts but then catch up and do well. 
 

If he does have a language disability (and I agree with the recommendation that he be evaluated) most private schools aren’t really good at addressing those. Unless it’s a school that specifically addresses it. 
 

Even if you do evals and he has deficits, I would go with a phonics heavy approach. It could be as simple as not having been taught it. But even if it’s more than that, the best remediation starts there. (Though there can be other things blocking his learning like memory issues or pattern recognition. I am speaking quite broadly here.). 

[Lillyfee]

Thank  you.

Yes, I heard that too.

I just looked a little online what schools they have around there and then I saw this Montessori school. We never really thought about sending any of our kids to a private school but I was curious. 

Yes, that phonics approach helped him with reading so much. 

[Lillyfee]

What I forgot to say which was really weird at school.

When my boy was in public school he kept chewing his shirts really bad. He made holes on his arms and on the neckline and of course I was upset as I did not want to send him to school with holes all over his sweater but could also not buy a new shirt for every single day. No matter what I said he would come home with his shirts full of holes.

He also kept twitching his nose like he has a tic or something.

Those two things completely disappeared as soon as we started homeschooling and never came back. He did not chew one single hole in his sweater and he never kept weirdly twitching his nose. 

I wonder if he was more stressed out than we realized and that all that disciplining at school by sitting alone in the corner and running laps at recess instead of playing for not being able to sit still and concentrate was worse for him that he told us.

By the way, they moved our appointment to Wednesday. I still did not talk to the doctor.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Lillyfee

[PeterPan]

2 hours ago, Lillyfee said:

I wonder if he was more stressed out than we realized and that all that disciplining at school by sitting alone in the corner and running laps at recess instead of playing for not being able to sit still and concentrate was worse for him that he told us.

Of course. What kind of school disciplines for a disability?? If someone is chewing their clothes and having trouble sitting or concentrating, they clearly need evals. In the US he would have been given evals and had consultative OT (with the OT coming into the classroom to advise the teacher on how to help him be more comfortable). 

I'm sorry your ds had such a barbaric experience. He definitely deserves evals and the right words for what is going on. And given that he was chewing, he needs an OT referral as well. So you're asking for a neuropsych eval to screen for ADHD, anxiety, ASD, and SLDs, an OT eval for sensory issues and retained reflexes, and SLP eval to look for language issues. 

Don't blow off the SLP eval thing. They look not only at articulation and syntax but also things like metalinguistics, pragmatics, and narrative language, all things a bright kid with sensory/anxiety/ADHD could be struggling with.

[Lillyfee]

He went to school in the US. His 3rd grade teacher really did not like him. She was one year before retiring and having a kid like him in class was probably exhausting. She was also very arrogant towards me when I wanted to talk  and told me that my son has no manners as he can't follow directions (she mainly meant staying seated) but was the complete opposite when my husband talked with her. She told him how wonderful and charming our boy is.

I will tell that to the doctor tomorrow about the chewing but the chewing on clothes completely disappeared as soon as we pulled him out off school and it never appeared again. 

Now looking back I think he was very stressed to just sit down for so long.

He also did not have that problem in second grade. The teacher there liked him and every day he went to ELL in a small group and the ELL teacher liked him too. 

 

 

[Lillyfee]

Oh, and I also  was too hard on him with spelling. 

I  let him do some placement tests and he spells on about a 4th grade level which is ok. He is getting into 6th grade but I expected worse.

I also let him write now without correcting spelling mistakes and he wrote today a whole 4 paragraphs on the laptop about "How to build a bow". If I overlook the spelling mistakes he did a good job. I needed to tell him several times just to write and not worry about spelling and it was like a big relief for him that he could just go. 

Thank you for that input. We try to sperate these subject better now.

[ElizabethB]

Good luck at your appointment tomorrow! I would bring in a paper list with questions and concerns and a summary so you can make sure you don't forget anything or get sidetracked when they ask questions. Paper so you can hand it to them if you run out of time.

Before you go, I would read through this article I wrote about how balanced literacy causes guessing problems and how to fix them:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/building-good-reading-habits-liz-brown/

Spelling remediation and guessing problems lag phonics remediation. 

You definitely are going to want to over-learn the phonics and do nonsense words to help with the guessing. My program does a bit of spelling and also works on phonics of 2 to 7 syllable words. I would start with it. I'll post more about that and what you should do for spelling later.

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by ElizabethB

[Lillyfee]

Thank you.

I wholeheartedly agree with your teaching methods. 

It is extremely hard to get rid of these guessing habits.  

The curriculum of my two younger kids also has sight words lists in addition to phonics practise  but my girls can sound them all out and so I do not care if they know these word right away by looking at them. If they can read them I much prefer that.

Is sight word practise a thing for only the English language? I never ever heard that from my German friends and when I asked them they were really confused and said "No, they learn to read and now whole words." 

I thought it might be because of the more difficult spelling of English words.

[PeterPan]

3 hours ago, Lillyfee said:

I needed to tell him several times just to write and not worry about spelling and it was like a big relief for him that he could just go. 

This sounds great! There are different ways to handle it (correct later, use dictation, use autocorrect as you go, etc.), but you're exactly right to save spelling work for spelling time. That's a BIG DEAL that he enjoys writing, has thoughts to get out, can hold and organize his thoughts, and is getting them out!! 

Does he like to play games? It would be a pretty normal thing to do some spelling practice with online games over the summer. Also you can play board games with him to work on visual memory and working memory.

[Lillyfee]

Thank you.

Yes, even seemed to have fun today without me looking over his shoulder telling him what he spelled wrong.

Yes, I am planning on doing that. He actually likes board games as long as they don't take too long.

That is another thing. Even things he loves should not take too long. He loves airplanes and wants to be a pilot and my husband takes him once a month to some young eagles project and he truly enjoys that. But they rarely stay the full three hours as towards the end our boy does not pay attention anymore and wanders around touching everything. My husband was kind of disappointed first as he is also some airplane nerd and could not understand how he could not pay attention all the time but he understood now that he just does not have a long attention span. However, it gets better as older he gets.

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Lillyfee

[Lillyfee]

I am also kind of leaning now towards homeschooling another year. Especially because the new area we are moving to (Williamsburg VA area) is known as some kind of homeschool Mekka as I found out 

[ElizabethB]

32 minutes ago, Lillyfee said:

Thank you.

I wholeheartedly agree with your teaching methods. 

It is extremely hard to get rid of these guessing habits.  

The curriculum of my two younger kids also has sight words lists in addition to phonics practise  but my girls can sound them all out and so I do not care if they know these word right away by looking at them. If they can read them I much prefer that.

Is sight word practise a thing for only the English language? I never ever heard that from my German friends and when I asked them they were really confused and said "No, they learn to read and now whole words." 

I thought it might be because of the more difficult spelling of English words.

Sight words and whole word methods actually first started with the Germans and the French in the 1800's, then spread to English, the Germans retained their sanity and went back to phonics. I'm not sure what the French are currently doing. They came out of whole language practices, they are based on high frequency words. Only a few are actually irregular, that was the excuse for teaching them as wholes. My sight word page explains, but the link with more about the history is broken:

http://thephonicspage.org/On Reading/sightwords.html

Everyone use to use syllabic phonics before the 1800's, with Latin first and then the language you spoke. German and Spanish are well suited for syllabic phonics, here is a bit more about syllabic phonics with some links to past and present syllabic phonics books in English, German, and Spanish. Russian is also suited to syllabic phonics, and it's useful in English and French as well but best suited to languages like German and Spanish, also likely Italian.

https://infogalactic.com/info/Syllabic_phonics

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by ElizabethB

[PeterPan]

46 minutes ago, Lillyfee said:

I am also kind of leaning now towards homeschooling another year. Especially because the new area we are moving to (Williamsburg VA area) is known as some kind of homeschool Mekka as I found out 

Yeah probably. 😄 

Not saying what you should do or what is best, but it will probably take a full calendar year for you to get evals done and sort through things anyway. Usually what happens is you do evals and then have more questions. You might do psych evals and then realize you want meds or need to see the OT or SLP. I'm still *highly* recommending you pursue additional evals. You can even do them through the ps, though private will typically be more thorough. 

Many kids with ADHD have retained reflexes, so if you find an OT to test for them you may learn a lot.

Waiting a year will give you time to do evals, get an IEP or 504 in place, start meds (if warranted), and put him in a better position to have a good year. Of course enrolling can also jump start that by getting more eyes on him. You'd just need to be very pro-active about requesting evals. That's why part of what you need is the timeline for how long it's going to take you to get evals. When you know that, you'll probably know what you want to do.

49 minutes ago, Lillyfee said:

But they rarely stay the full three hours as towards the end our boy does not pay attention anymore and wanders around touching everything. My husband was kind of disappointed first as he is also some airplane nerd and could not understand how he could not pay attention all the time but he understood now that he just does not have a long attention span. However, it gets better as older he gets.

I'm glad to see it's improving. This could also reflect language comprehension issues. It's why you do evals. Does he say how he feels? (hey I'm bored, can we leave now...) 

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by PeterPan

[Lillyfee]

He basically just starts talking to everybody around him and walks around. When my husband asks him if he is ready to go he says "Yes, I want to play with my friends now."

His friends are extremely important to him. He is used to finding new friends as they often move but he would not be happy without having a group of good friends.

He is very drawn towards wilder kids. Not mean or bullies but typical wild immature boys doing boy stuff .

Like having sleepovers and waking up the next day with pen drawn all over his face,  sword fighting, wrestling and falling in a creek kind of things.

He is just so different than my three girls.

 

 

[kiwik]

On 4/15/2022 at 9:47 AM, Lillyfee said:

Thank you.

Yes, he is good in discussing things and when I read something to him it is easy for him to tell me exactly what was going on.

What I also forgot to say. His handwriting was unreadable for the longest time. We do handwriting now with The Good and the Beautiful in cursive and it got a lot better. At least I can read it now and he stays on the lines.

Even when I think there might be something going on with him, I also feel like the school missed a lot. When he could not read his AR books he could listen to them on the school laptop and his teacher told me that some kids are just bad in handwriting. 

When he could not read they recommended that he looks at the pictures and guesses the word and they also told me that spelling will come with time and he should just write however the words sounds and I should not correct it.

I did not learn like that but I thought that might be a new and better approach and while it worked well with my oldest it did not work at all for my son to rely that all this will come to him with time. I am a angry with myself that I did not intervene earlier.

For a significant proportion of the slower to learn to read those things may have worked.  But if there is actually something more than a child who needs a bit more time they won't.  I would have thought by second grade some alarm bells would have been ringing though.

[kiwik]

20 hours ago, Lillyfee said:

What I forgot to say which was really weird at school.

When my boy was in public school he kept chewing his shirts really bad. He made holes on his arms and on the neckline and of course I was upset as I did not want to send him to school with holes all over his sweater but could also not buy a new shirt for every single day. No matter what I said he would come home with his shirts full of holes.

He also kept twitching his nose like he has a tic or something.

Those two things completely disappeared as soon as we started homeschooling and never came back. He did not chew one single hole in his sweater and he never kept weirdly twitching his nose. 

I wonder if he was more stressed out than we realized and that all that disciplining at school by sitting alone in the corner and running laps at recess instead of playing for not being able to sit still and concentrate was worse for him that he told us.

By the way, they moved our appointment to Wednesday. I still did not talk to the doctor.

My ASD kid chews holes in his shirt when he is stressed.  It is possible to profess to love something even though it is harmful to you.  Alcohol and bad relationships come to mind.

[Lillyfee]

You would have thought that alarm bells would ring. Well, I am not a teacher and after the teacher's discussion with my husband ensuring him that he is doing wonderful we believed the teacher even though it went against our feeling and was simply not what we saw.

The hole chewing. I was chewing my hair, my friend was biting on her finger nails until they were bloody sometimes, etc. I believe that all these things show that something is going on but I also thought that these things are not that uncommon and will go away. I feel in general that it is unnatural for most human beings, especially  kids, to sit in school for 8 hours a day but that is how out society works.

We have two dogs and one of them is my son's absolute best friend. They clicked on the first day. A very active, extremely intelligent working dog that would belong on a farm working with livestock. His physical health keeps him from being able to live this life and now we need to manage his working drive and try to keep him from falling into behaviors like chasing light all day long or other selfdestructing behaviors and we need to keep his mind busy but not overstimulated. We always say that this dog and our son have the same personality and that God sent this dog because their connection is so strong and deep. This dog also teached me so much about how a genius can look like a fool .

i think a lot of kids feel like a lion in a cage sitting 8 hours a day in school.

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, Lillyfee said:

I believe that all these things show that something is going on but I also thought that these things are not that uncommon and will go away.

This is  a common error parents make, thinking that because *they* were able to deal with *their* disability that the kid will be fine too. Your dc has his own unique mix, and frankly our supports are so much better now!

3 hours ago, kiwik said:

My ASD kid chews holes in his shirt when he is stressed. 

Exactly. That is something I see people saying often on ASD parent support lists, so to me it's a red flag.

12 hours ago, Lillyfee said:

He basically just starts talking to everybody around him and walks around. When my husband asks him if he is ready to go he says "Yes, I want to play with my friends now."

That's a lot like behavior my ds had, and I can tell you that to me it looks like a couple things.

-interoception=self awareness leading to self-advocacy  https://www.kelly-mahler.com/what-is-interoception/  

-social thinking-His behavior is typical of someone having trouble with this. What you're describing is that he's leaving the group and having unexpected behaviors. They will do group social skills classes for this using Social Thinking materials. There are clinics that specialize in it and you don't have to have a diagnosis to participate in the groups. With what you're describing, these groups would be a good thing for him.

-language--He didn't answer the question. I keep suggesting to you that you're giving red flags for subtle language issues, and I'm wondering if maybe you *doubt* yourself and your ability to say this because English is not your native language. Someone NOT ANSWERING THE QUESTION is demonstrating language challenges. You pair this with the other language red flags you've raised and it means he ought to have a thorough SLP eval by an SLP who specializes in expressive language or literacy or autism. There are detailed tests that are not done in shorter SLP evals, because in short evals they use screener tools. 

Maybe this book would be helpful to you? https://www.amazon.com/Uniquely-Human-Different-Seeing-Autism/dp/1476776245/ref=sr_1_1?crid=6TB7OQLOJ4HB&keywords=uniquely+human&qid=1650458163&sprefix=uniquely+human%2Caps%2C113&sr=8-1  I'm NOT saying your dc has autism, but you might find his way of thinking through it helpful. He points out that ALL AUTISM BEHAVIORS are HUMAN BEHAVIORS. So yes lots of of people have repetitive behaviors or do sensory seeking or like to line things up or whatever. Each person has to be considered individually, because it's their unique mix that pushes it from one diagnosis to another. There are many related diagnoses, so it's pretty common to have a situation where the parent has one (anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia, whatever) and the dc ticks a few more boxes and moves over to ASD. People have to be considered as individuals.

The goal is to see him exactly where he is and meet him exactly where he is. It's not enough to say it worked for the parent, because he's a unique individual with his own mix of needs. We have EXCELLENT tools for intervention now so there's no need to take a "tough it out" approach to things like anxiety, sensory issues, or whatever. We want our kids to have MORE tools than what we had to live successfully in their bodies.

 

[PeterPan]

2 hours ago, Lillyfee said:

i think a lot of kids feel like a lion in a cage sitting 8 hours a day in school.

In 6th grade?? A 6th grader is in a middle school, moving between classes, getting PE, etc. 

I was very slow to get evals for my dd. I kind of went, like you're saying, with the we can make this work, this is her normal, blah blah. Then we started getting evals and realized life had been unnecessarily hard because we didn't have the information to work with her better. When my ds came around (they're 9 ½ years apart) I became very aggressive about evals. I'm getting ready to do more for language in fact. Evals are how you have the information to work with them better. Better information, better interventions, better outcomes. 

[Lillyfee]

Hm, we do have anxiety in our family. On my mom's side of the family almost all women go a little crazy as they get older. Not that they need to be hospitalized but just kind of anxious like not driving and stuff like that.

It is really hard for me to see any autism in him but I am also no expert in these things. I know autistic kids and they are all like the exact opposite of him but as you say everybody is different and shows different signs. 

[Ausmumof3]

On 4/19/2022 at 10:12 PM, Lillyfee said:

What I forgot to say which was really weird at school.

When my boy was in public school he kept chewing his shirts really bad. He made holes on his arms and on the neckline and of course I was upset as I did not want to send him to school with holes all over his sweater but could also not buy a new shirt for every single day. No matter what I said he would come home with his shirts full of holes.

He also kept twitching his nose like he has a tic or something.

Those two things completely disappeared as soon as we started homeschooling and never came back. He did not chew one single hole in his sweater and he never kept weirdly twitching his nose. 

I wonder if he was more stressed out than we realized and that all that disciplining at school by sitting alone in the corner and running laps at recess instead of playing for not being able to sit still and concentrate was worse for him that he told us.

By the way, they moved our appointment to Wednesday. I still did not talk to the doctor.

My sisters kids did the same and yes I believe it was a stress response 

[Lillyfee]

My friend also told me that her child did the same thing around the same age. 

My doctor's phone call today was extremely disappointing by the way. I do not believe that we get any testing done before we move. They will call me for an appointment but she said I should not expect that to be anytime soon as they are booked out for months and they want to have testing done before any other referral. 

It's not that big of a deal as we are completely fine at home but I expected more somehow.

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, Lillyfee said:

My friend also told me that her child did the same thing around the same age. 

My doctor's phone call today was extremely disappointing by the way. I do not believe that we get any testing done before we move. They will call me for an appointment but she said I should not expect that to be anytime soon as they are booked out for months and they want to have testing done before any other referral. 

It's not that big of a deal as we are completely fine at home but I expected more somehow.

That's pretty normal here to have a 6-9 month wait. GET ON THE LIST. You can always cancel, but if you wait and want the evals you'll wish you had been on the list. That is a normal wait and it doesn't sound like she was blowing you off.

Did you ask about referrals for SLP and OT evals? Those would be a lot faster to get into and possibly give you actionable information. 

[PeterPan]

1 hour ago, Lillyfee said:

I expected more somehow.

More what? She offered you evals and having a long wait is normal. What if you go privately and have them reimburse? Might open up some options. But I still would expect a long wait. People got backed up because of covid.

[Lillyfee]

I don't know I guess I expected to get an appointment sooner.

She said I could also look for counselors or social worker that could diagnose ADHD for school on my own and I would not need a referral for that. Maybe that will be a better option.

[PeterPan]

7 hours ago, Lillyfee said:

I don't know I guess I expected to get an appointment sooner.

She said I could also look for counselors or social worker that could diagnose ADHD for school on my own and I would not need a referral for that. Maybe that will be a better option.

Doesn't give you information to teach him (IQ, processing speed issues, recommendations on accommodations, possible SLDs, screenings), etc. Technically a social worker *can* diagnose even ASD, but I can tell you the school isn't going to give as much weight to that as to a phd psych report. (btdt because our behaviorist for ds was a licensed social worker) So you could accept behavioral help if you need it now, but you really need full psychological evals to sort this out.