Reply to First IEP meeting coming up for my ED/anxiety, possible LD/OHI not reading 7 yo

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "First IEP meeting coming up for my ED/anxiety, possible LD/OHI not reading 7 yo - suggestions?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]So, we had our eligibility meeting last week for my 7.5 year old in Arlington County.  DS is 7.5, and barely reads - cat in the hat level basically, but no one seems able to tell us why.  DS's percentiles for reading and writing are all low to low average, his math is average to high average.  He was given the Kaufman something (KABC-II) to test for cognitive functioning and scored very high - all 92-99 percentiles except on long term memory, which they termed a "relative weakness" although he did score average at 42nd percentile.  He did fine on visual motor development (where we expected to see problems) and absolutely tanked on oral reading development, getting a "poor" categorization and a 5th percentile.

They qualified him as an "emotional disability" based on the fact that he has some significant anxiety issues, can panic when tested, and sometimes acts depressed.  I'm not entirely sure ED is a better classification than LD, as I don't think it's the anxiety that's leading him to not read, I think it's the not reading that's leading to the anxiety.  However, the school team insisted that he'd done "too well" on the other tests to make them think learning disability, and they knew anxiety was an issue, so it was take it or leave it.

We want him to get services, so we took it.  Now my aunt (a former principal of a SpEd school) is telling my mom that we're idiots because he's not an ED kid and we don't want to be classified as one (why not?  Will he grow horns?  I mean come on, anyone who can see the label has to read the file, they'll find out that he's not torturing animals or setting fires, he's stressed out) and that we should've argued for an OHI classification based on his borderline ADHD behavior (note - ADHD has never been diagnosed by our pediatrician or any medical professional, and the school notes are based on DS's first grade teacher, who also told our therapist she "didn't feel he was very bright" and now we've got cognitive scores to prove her wrong, so what does she know... also my husband and I feel that the anxiety issues are way more pronounced than any ADHD type issues.)

To wrap up my long winded intro and get to my questions:

(1)  Does the label really matter?  Is it worth us appealing?  Will the label mean we get different services because of the label, or does the school just have to give whatever services are necessary regardless of label?

and

2)  I have no idea what the universe of service options are.  Is there something that I should be thinking about or pushing for when we do go to have our IEP meeting?

FWIW, we've also scheduled a meeting with our pediatrician to discuss all of this, but I thought I'd check in here as well for some real life suggestions...

TIA[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics