Counseling Out

[Anonymous]

If I'm not mistaken what you were saying is that dismissive parents force schools to have to counsel kids out. You at least to some degree are blaming the parents. I'm here to point out to you that when parents go through a rigorous interview process, shell out $27 K they are not going to take complaints from the school lightly . They will not want to jeopardize their child's opportunity at the school and be dismissive. Perhaps this occurs in public schools, but not in privates where parents put their kids through quite a bit of testing, evals, interviews in order to get their kids accepted to the school in the first place. Most parents who are asked to get an eval or therapy never refuse the school. At least I do not know of anyone who refused to get therapy or an eval for their child when the school asked them to look into it further.

And any school psychologist who declares a child is several years behind developmentally and then is challenged by renowned child psychiatrists, Children's Hospital's developmental pediatrician, and a neuropsychologist can be nothing short of...well, incompetent. It is easy to cast aside some parents as being either dismissive or wrongfully blaming the school. But there is another possibility you're missing here - the school might actually be blameworthy.

Whether the relationship can be salvaged or moving on is the best option is a different issue. We were talking about whether most private sch parents are dismissive or wrongfully blaming the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Independent School teacher here-- this sounds crazy to me. A child-centered school or program should support and nurture and develop children, unless they are in a special- needs category that the program is simply not designed to serve (ie the child truly would be better off elsewhere). I can't imagine counseling out a child with a reason for the behavior (ADD etc.) but rather working with the family and child to develop strategies and meet the needs. As for pure 'bad' behavior that affects other children, is it as common as this thread implies? I have seen it quite rarely in my career. I agree with counseling out the child whose family refuses to acknowledge a challenge that needs to be investigated or work with the school, since in that case, they are not thinking of the school OR their child (in the long-term sense). How do you move forward productively in that case?

It seems strange to me to counsel out such young children too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I'm not mistaken what you were saying is that dismissive parents force schools to have to counsel kids out. You at least to some degree are blaming the parents. I'm here to point out to you that when parents go through a rigorous interview process, shell out $27 K they are not going to take complaints from the school lightly . They will not want to jeopardize their child's opportunity at the school and be dismissive. Perhaps this occurs in public schools, but not in privates where parents put their kids through quite a bit of testing, evals, interviews in order to get their kids accepted to the school in the first place. Most parents who are asked to get an eval or therapy never refuse the school. At least I do not know of anyone who refused to get therapy or an eval for their child when the school asked them to look into it further.

And any school psychologist who declares a child is several years behind developmentally and then is challenged by renowned child psychiatrists, Children's Hospital's developmental pediatrician, and a neuropsychologist can be nothing short of...well, incompetent. It is easy to cast aside some parents as being either dismissive or wrongfully blaming the school. But there is another possibility you're missing here - the school might actually be blameworthy.

Whether the relationship can be salvaged or moving on is the best option is a different issue. We were talking about whether most private sch parents are dismissive or wrongfully blaming the school.

NP here. Honestly, you (not your DC) are someone who should leave. Assuming that you are right about the school's incompetence (and, yeah, I can certainly believe that), why on earth are you angry they counseled your DC out? Who wants to send their kid to a school that doesn't understand him or know how to work with him? And what you've offered them is proof that they are incompetent -- not strategies for improving your DC's functioning in their program. Under the circumstances, I'd rather discover that the school sucks in PreK or K ang get the hell out of there than hang around for longer beating my head (or my DC's head) against the wall.

I guess blameworthy isn't a useful or relevant category for me here. "Not a match" is. And the school seems to have recognized that early on. That their account of why and yours differ doesn't matter so much when the clear bottom line is "part ways ASAP" because no one is benefiting from this experience, least of all your DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I'm not mistaken what you were saying is that dismissive parents force schools to have to counsel kids out. You at least to some degree are blaming the parents. I'm here to point out to you that when parents go through a rigorous interview process, shell out $27 K they are not going to take complaints from the school lightly . They will not want to jeopardize their child's opportunity at the school and be dismissive. Perhaps this occurs in public schools, but not in privates where parents put their kids through quite a bit of testing, evals, interviews in order to get their kids accepted to the school in the first place. Most parents who are asked to get an eval or therapy never refuse the school. At least I do not know of anyone who refused to get therapy or an eval for their child when the school asked them to look into it further.

And any school psychologist who declares a child is several years behind developmentally and then is challenged by renowned child psychiatrists, Children's Hospital's developmental pediatrician, and a neuropsychologist can be nothing short of...well, incompetent. It is easy to cast aside some parents as being either dismissive or wrongfully blaming the school. But there is another possibility you're missing here - the school might actually be blameworthy.

Whether the relationship can be salvaged or moving on is the best option is a different issue. We were talking about whether most private sch parents are dismissive or wrongfully blaming the school.

NP here. Honestly, you (not your DC) are someone who should leave. Assuming that you are right about the school's incompetence (and, yeah, I can certainly believe that), why on earth are you angry they counseled your DC out? Who wants to send their kid to a school that doesn't understand him or know how to work with him? And what you've offered them is proof that they are incompetent -- not strategies for improving your DC's functioning in their program. Under the circumstances, I'd rather discover that the school sucks in PreK or K ang get the hell out of there than hang around for longer beating my head (or my DC's head) against the wall.

I guess blameworthy isn't a useful or relevant category for me here. "Not a match" is. And the school seems to have recognized that early on. That their account of why and yours differ doesn't matter so much when the clear bottom line is "part ways ASAP" because no one is benefiting from this experience, least of all your DC.

Whoever said I still wanted to send my child to that school after the school psychologists' incompetence? That we are angry over the school psychologists incompetence and that the administration believed their psychologist should be understandable; any parent would be. And of course we offered them numerous strategies for improving DC's functioning in the pgm. We brought in professionals who offered them numerous strategies, and all of them worked. But we were still counseled out because the school had already given away DC's place to someone else. They informed us of DC's problem after the application process concluded for most good schools. I agree with you that its better to find out how bad a school is at the kg level than much later. After all if they could be so off the mark on DC, I am left to wonder what else would be they be off the mark on?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid was counseled out and he was a kindergartener. He has ADHD and the school did not do enough to help with this problem. We had to ask that certain accommodations be made. When they were he did better. But he still needed redirection and the school was unwilling to provide that redirection. I can assure you that we turned the earth upside down to do our part. We put him on a special diet, we made sure he got good sleep each night, we did neurotherapy, put him in occupational therapy, brought a psychiatrist in to evaluate our child and make suggestions to the school. Evenso if you were to talk to the teacher I bet she would say we were PITA parents. No matter what parents do they will inevitably be labeled PITA if they get too involved with the school. So parents of ADHD kids are damned if they do and they're damned if they don't. We just can't win. And I can assure you that I am, most certainly, angry with my child's school for giving up on him so easily and so quickly even though his case. So do I go around trashing the school to everybody? No. But if I'm asked about the school. I'm honest about our experience, which was not good.

Thanks for writing this. I would have written nearly the same exact paragraph. Unfortunately, our public school is now treating us just as poorly. Heartbreaking for DS, really.

[Anonymous]

We're not being counseled out, but we fear it's coming in the next year or two based on DC's track record. DC is struggling to keep up with the academics at school, and DC is a poor test taker. DC is also not intrinsically motivated. DC needs an environment that has few distractions, has small class sizes and is middle of the road in terms of academic rigor. Any suggestions.

[Anonymous]

McLean. They do a fabulous job with kids like that.

[Anonymous]

The Field School

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't describe Field as having minimal distractions or as providing the structure that a kid who is not internally motivated needs. McLean is a better bet on those dimensions.

[Anonymous]

I am going to look at McLean for my DC next year. I have a friend who sent her son there when he was struggling and falling through the cracks at our small school with big classes. He has had a complete turnaround and is now much more confident and comfortable with school.