Labels

There is a lot of resistance to labels (aka diagnosis) dislike of labels is often claimed as an excuse to not take action.

Teachers warn against labels if it suits their agenda to.  Parents claim to not like labels in an effort to cover up their denial that there is a learning difference.

I do understand this thinking.  But the slight weight a label carries is not heavier than the weight of not dealing with a potential diagnosis. 

A wise parent will want to know and understand as much about the way their child's brain works as possible.

I remember in the 1970's the classes in elementary school labeled classes L. D. (for learning disabled).  As with many things about education at that time it was ridiculous in retrospect to single out children, putting them in a separate room with all different behavioral issues and a teacher who may or may not have been qualified to work with them (I'm not talking about official credentials, I'm talking about personality traits that make one able to succeed at working with learning differences).  A lot has changed (thankfully). 

Mainstreaming,  putting children with learning differences in a regular classroom for the most part, is not always in everyone's best interest but I do agree that children need to be exposed to all different types of people, this is part of the goal of education.

Still, I see the way my daughter is being taught and I know that 1 hour a day of the Orton Gillingham method with a tutor who may or may not even be using a proven method would not have ever really been enough.  he would not have been reading at grade level by the end of the year with only that to help her.

One of the statisics I have heard about dyslexia is that the dyslexic child is working 4 times harder in the regular classroom than everyone else.  So if you are taking them through this, getting the 1 hour or so a day and then putting tutoring on top of that, by the fifth grade they are burnt out.

I believe this.

Dont be afraid of the diagnosis.  It is more than a street sign, it is a map to take your child to a place where they can succeed.

Cost Section

Although I have sometimes alluded to it I have never set down and written out what all of this costs. 

Again, with the hope of being helpful to someone somewhere I would like to share the costs of what we have done since discovering our child was struggling in school last fall (the beginning of first grade).

Private tutor evaluation                                                                                                              $60.00

Private evaluation with pediatric neuro-psychologist                                                            $1,500.00

Lexia Learning computer program                                                                             (roughly) $200.00

Official Annual cost of dyslexia school (they have income-based discounts though)               $20,000

School testing fee                                                                                                                         $250.00

Child Advocate                                                                                   $400 retainer and $80.00 per hour

Summer camp for language run by our school which she will attend                                      $1,800.00

Tutor we hired who specializes in dysgraphia                                                                $75.00 per hour


The school provided all new school supplies so we didn't have to run out and buy those again. 

Also they gave me free uniforms so we didn't have to pay for those.

I'm not including the gasoline price we now have to pay to drive 20 extra miles per day (when we were walking to school before) but I guess that comes with the territory.

This is not a complaint, simply a list of how our family has chosen to use our resources in order to help our child with her dyslexia in a world that seems to lack understanding of how to teach a dyslexic child.

A Climate of Distrust

I did not personally create the climate of distrust with our current school and the public school professionals. 

I do, however, respond to what has happened thus far and I'm not certain how to move past any of this or if I even should. 

Some background: 

Knowing what we all know about the Catholic Priest Child Molestation Scandal (I'm calling it that I don't know any other way to put it).  The Catholic Church and School Systems have gone above and beyond being proactive in terms of protecting the children of the present and future. 

My husband and I went through a class when our daughter first became a part of the Catholic School that was called "Protecting God's Children".  It was highly informative and I was glad to be educated this way.  We were also fingerprinted and I will say too that we were closely watched until people got to know us.  This was all fine by me.

So when we left the Catholic School System in order to go to the "best school in our area for dyslexia" we left the safety measures that have been instituted by the Catholic Church.

At our first parent/teacher conference at our new school I was already actively pursuing the IEP for our daughter to qualify for the scholarship that was attached to it.  I had already had an initial meeting which I had thought went okay. During that conference I asked about the IEP process (how little I knew). 

At that point no one from the office had called me back so I was hoping to talk to someone face to face. The teachers directed me to the School Psychologist.

My husband and I walked over, introduced ourselves and I asked my questions. 

As soon as he heard them he rudely wouldn't let me talk and proceeded to put it bluntly, verbally rip me up one side and down the other about how busy they all were. 

He went on about how (since we were new)  we were last on the long list and so on. 

I was astonished that someone could be so mean the first time they met a us.  It was all very unpleasant.
Later, I mentioned this incident to the school counciler who was also supposed to be working on helping us get our IEP.  She was unhelpful to me.  But at least she wasn't mean and nasty like Mr. School Psychologist.

When I heard three more times from three other school professionals that my daughter did not qualify for an IEP (yes, even after a pediatric neuro-psychologist had clearly defined her with dyslexia).  Our family had to hire a Child Advocate (PTL: I have resources).

 Hence, a climate of distrust.

Because of all that had transpired at that point I did not want my daughter in the same room alone with the Mr. School Psychologist so at our (second) initial IEP meeting we discussed that the school would call our family if there was any reason for our young daughter to be alone in a room with any male professional. 

Everyone was understanding and the female speech teacher even volunteered to be present with my daughter if there was ever such a need.  Also, I offered to come to the school and be present or sit outside the door if there was a need for a male professional to be alone in a room with my daughter.


Since I see the potential for a witch hunt type situation here (and I am not an unfair person) I will say that Mr. School Psychologist was not in that (second) initial IEP meeting.  So potentially he did not know about this agreement. 

Our request for a chaparone It was also never put into an email format by myself.

(Side note: I didn't have a working email address for Mr. School Psychologist until I had to ask for one specifically and was given what seemed to be a private email address.  Also, let me remind the reader that he works a dual position for both the Public School System and our Private School, which seems unclear to me).

The other day a parent friend told me a story that happened at a meeting where Mr. School Psychologist was overtly rude to a wonderful teacher that we all know well.  I had not even mentioned him or my incident to her.  My friend brought it up but I knew immediately exactly what she was talking about based on my own experience with him.

As we walked in to our combined ETR/IEP meeting the other day he greeted us.  I quickly pulled the Child Advocate to the side and told her to expect Mr School Psychologist to try to take a bite out of one of us during the meeting.

He was all sweetness and niceness during the ETR meeting where he blabbered on with some unhelpful charts attempting to show where our daughter stood in terms of her learning difference and norms.  Personally, I thought he was wasting our time and kept waiting for him to take his bite.

At the very end he wanted us to sign off on something that our Child Advocate pointed out was not correct.  I said I would not sign it.   He did go above and beyond (she said later) when he reprinted that page for us to sign.

Thankfully, he did not need to be part of the IEP meeting portion so we went on. 

Incidentally, the IEP still need to be corrected so it isn't signed as of now but I think it's okay enough.  Our advocate (who sees IEPs all the time in school districts all over our state) wasn't especially impressed but for our present purposes it was good enough with a few changes.  More about this later.

I stayed at the school to pick up my daughter who told me as soon as she had gotten into the car that Mr. School Psychologist had pulled her out of her Math class to talk to her.  Alone.  In a room with the door shut.

Apparently, he asked her some routine questions. 

The next day the school counciler spectulated that he maybe hadn't ever assessed her (so why was he even conducting our ETR meeting?)

I had gone into the office and told the secretaries (with my daughter present) that my daughter was to go to the office if any adult male tried to be in a room alone with her. They seemed to be understanding and hadn't known any of this beforehand.  

Also, I sent an email reminding everyone (including Mr. School Psychologist) about our previous meeting and what had been discussed.

But..........

There is a deep distrust here now--- due to all of these incidents.

In the climate of our society (after the Catholic Church scandal and the Penn State Football camp scandal) school professionals MUST BE TRANSPARENT. 

Mind games, temper fits and acting in any way untrustworthy sets off my personal warning flags.

At this point our child is in the hands of STRANGERS and anything that causes me to question them is going to be an issue.   

For the record I'm not accusing anyone here of anything other than perhaps forgetting our family's request. 

Still, I hope my daughter catches on to all the Orton Gillingham quickly so that we can move out of this school which in some respects seems a bit too loose for me and back into a Catholic School situation (where yes the children are miserable and bored but at least I feel like they are for the most part safe).

Future Planning Statement

In our state there is a section in the IEP that the parents must fill out called THE FUTURE PLANNING STATEMENT.  (I'm yelling that in jest because it seems like such an overly big deal). 

Really it's a good idea to have such a thing.  Here is the area where you talk about the plans for your child, what you would like to see.

While I think it's a little bit presumptous to assume we know where our children will be at the end of high school graduation (at least when they are as young as my child is) I dont think it's a bad idea to be thinking ahead. 

What path are we going to want our child to walk?  Can we start to encourage that now?  After all isnt that what it means to raise a child, we instill ideas about their future into their sweet little heads, we teach them which way to go and we hold on to the back of their proverbial bicycle seat until they are ready to pedal for themselves.

I want to share our FUTURE PLANNING STATEMENT with you, keep in mind that our daughter is 7.  The point here is to simply to give a glimpse of what we have written. Here it is:

Mary Miller will attend college, most likely at The Ohio State University where she will be encouraged to use her strenghts in a Math/Science related major. She will also be strongly encouraged to pursue an advanced degree perhaps in a medically related field.

In the short term, daily action will be taken in order to manage her learning differences and pursue educational achievement in spite of her dyslexia and dysgraphia. With the goal of reading and writing at age/grade appropriate levels, her family will be utilizing the various local educational professionals, opportunities and forms of educational technology available in order to achieve these goals.