Transitioning to middle school with an ADHD inattentive child

[Anonymous]

Can anyone tell me about their experiences transitioning their as-yet-unmedicated ADHD inattentive child to middle school? I am mostly wondering about the middle school end of things – our IEP team is already helping us gear up for this – and if the middle schools work protectively with parents to help their kids. Or is it just sort of a baptism by fire?

[Anonymous]

I'm sure you'll hear this from a lot of us: middle school was when my child's grades dropped so precipitously that I finally decided to medicate. You can out every accommodation in place but it won't do jack if your kid can't focus.

[Anonymous]

What do you mean by "protectively' ?

[Anonymous]

OP here. Oh man, I meant proactively, not protectively. I hate auto-correct!

[Anonymous]

In MoCo, there is a transition meeting between your ES and MS early in the calendar year. I didn't know about this for my first child and didn't feel as though they did a good job in putting a plan together. So, I requested an EMT for purposes of identifying everything that could have been put in place. Then, I set about working with the MS to get things in place and was successful before the start of school. With my second child, I requested that the transition meeting be held in conjunction with the IEP so that we had the entire team together.

Another thing we did was that during the last year of ES, the IEP contained goals that were designed to get my sons independent in MS. For example, one of the goals was independent back pack management - in MS, no one is going to help your child pack his/her homework up to get it home.

Last thing I will say is that as a parent, the transitions were a lot of work at our house. I worked with my kids to be independent and develop their own systems for success. One of my kids developed a checklist that we laminated and he used each day in class to be sure he took care of everything. He made a sign for our door that said "Turn In Homework" that covered the entire back door because he felt like he needed to see it right before he left for school. After about six months, he no longer needed the checklist or the sign. We also had to work on his binder - which is something that had also been an IEP goal in ES.

Neither of my kids had a grade drop or significant problems with the transition. But, I worked very hard with them to make sure that didn't happen and the MS was really on board to help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm sure you'll hear this from a lot of us: middle school was when my child's grades dropped so precipitously that I finally decided to medicate. You can out every accommodation in place but it won't do jack if your kid can't focus.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm sure you'll hear this from a lot of us: middle school was when my child's grades dropped so precipitously that I finally decided to medicate. You can out every accommodation in place but it won't do jack if your kid can't focus.

This.

A resounding "this" from an ASD/ADHD adult who fell apart in middle school despite testing off the charts in every area.

[Anonymous]

I've been told in MCPS that ADHD kids don't qualify for IEPs unless they are failing the curriculum. This is from the principal, AP, counselor, and special ed resource teacher at Hoover Middle School. Good luck OP. Middle school is a very rocky road but the public school's motivation is that they only have to provide a minimum education. If your child pulls down C's or higher, be prepared for the school team to want to get rid of the IEP despite the increase demands.

[Anonymous]

Be prepared to be judged and asked at the IEP meeting why your child isn't already taking medication, like it is up to the team to decide to medicate your child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Be prepared to be judged and asked at the IEP meeting why your child isn't already taking medication, like it is up to the team to decide to medicate your child.

When a school is faced with a kid who absolutely cannot learn because they absolutely cannot focus and the parents refuse to medicate - what magic wand would you like the school to wave to make it al better??

[Anonymous]

We started medication this year in 5th grade because my child basically failed 4th grade (N grades), even though he has some gifted-level subcores in his IQ.

Now the transition to middle school is looking a little more reassuring, but I am still going to be vigilant at that late May, early June transition meeting to make sure most of his accommodation are carrying over, and he has access to the resource room. I already spoke to the Special Education coordinator at his home middle school, who went over the registration with me to make sure he would skip world languages this year and have a resource room block of time instead. Since he is already bilingual in a language they offer in his cluster, I'm assuming he'll be able to take up his world language whenever he feels ready for it.

Talk to people, OP. Make sure your child is on their radar.

[Anonymous]

PP above. My son has always had an IEP, BTW, so we have annual IEP meetings to go over his progress.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Be prepared to be judged and asked at the IEP meeting why your child isn't already taking medication, like it is up to the team to decide to medicate your child.

When a school is faced with a kid who absolutely cannot learn because they absolutely cannot focus and the parents refuse to medicate - what magic wand would you like the school to wave to make it al better??

Unless you have a Medical Degree (which no one in my IEP meetings have), it is not your place to judge whether or not I should medicate my child. The meds come with serious side effects some of which the IEP team is not privy to because frankly it bears no weight on the IEP decision at hand. BTW - My child's doctor prefers that the school tries behavioral interventions before going the medication route. He is flabbergasted when school personnel send parents to his office for medications BEFORE implementing an IEP and giving accommodations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Be prepared to be judged and asked at the IEP meeting why your child isn't already taking medication, like it is up to the team to decide to medicate your child.

When a school is faced with a kid who absolutely cannot learn because they absolutely cannot focus and the parents refuse to medicate - what magic wand would you like the school to wave to make it al better??

Unless you have a Medical Degree (which no one in my IEP meetings have), it is not your place to judge whether or not I should medicate my child. The meds come with serious side effects some of which the IEP team is not privy to because frankly it bears no weight on the IEP decision at hand. BTW - My child's doctor prefers that the school tries behavioral interventions before going the medication route. He is flabbergasted when school personnel send parents to his office for medications BEFORE implementing an IEP and giving accommodations.

Actually I do have a medical degree but it's still not my place to judge, you are free to do whatever you would like, the FACT is that adhd is a medical condition and no amount of extra time for tests is going to help a child focus. But since I understand all to well about side effects and all of the issues surrounding these medications, I, too, was hesitant to medicate. Any responsible parent would be.

But the bottom line is that all of us who medicate were opposed to the very notion of giving our child medication at first. We just came to see that it is necessary not to make our children academic superstars but to preserve some semblance of their self esteem while they continually witness their peers leapfrogging past them academically and socially.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Be prepared to be judged and asked at the IEP meeting why your child isn't already taking medication, like it is up to the team to decide to medicate your child.

When a school is faced with a kid who absolutely cannot learn because they absolutely cannot focus and the parents refuse to medicate - what magic wand would you like the school to wave to make it al better??

Unless you have a Medical Degree (which no one in my IEP meetings have), it is not your place to judge whether or not I should medicate my child. The meds come with serious side effects some of which the IEP team is not privy to because frankly it bears no weight on the IEP decision at hand. BTW - My child's doctor prefers that the school tries behavioral interventions before going the medication route. He is flabbergasted when school personnel send parents to his office for medications BEFORE implementing an IEP and giving accommodations.

Actually I do have a medical degree but it's still not my place to judge, you are free to do whatever you would like, the FACT is that adhd is a medical condition and no amount of extra time for tests is going to help a child focus. But since I understand all to well about side effects and all of the issues surrounding these medications, I, too, was hesitant to medicate. Any responsible parent would be.

But the bottom line is that all of us who medicate were opposed to the very notion of giving our child medication at first. We just came to see that it is necessary not to make our children academic superstars but to preserve some semblance of their self esteem while they continually witness their peers leapfrogging past them academically and socially.

12:22 coming back to second this heartily! I'm a biologist doing research, my husband is a doctor, and we were SO AGAINST meds. We are still not happy with the lack of research on very long-term effects of ADHD medication on the brain, but you must realize that for many children, it's either meds or abject failure at school, and self-esteem in the toilet. No amount of therapies and social skills groups, etc, are going to have the same effect as delivering a molecule that targets their frontal lobe directly. I'm not happy to be changing my child's brain chemistry on a daily basis, believe me! But there was no alternative for us. We had tried everything else.