Reply to Preschool options for Hard-of-Hearing 3 year old?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP again.

Just to clarify, her loss is moderate (45-65 db in both ears) so she does well with hearing aids (no CIs). It sounds like her loss is enough to possibly qualify her for services simply due to the disability.  That would be such a relief.

It's an issue I've brought up here in Idaho that is frustrating - while she is doing well overall she still has specific problems that I think the schools should address.  She is 90th percentile (for hearing kids!) in receptive language, 60-something for expressive, but then has a few serious articulation issues.  I think those articulation issues are critical to her communication and need to be addressed, despite the fact that the mean of her language scores suggests she is doing fine.  Has anyone addressed this type of thing with IEPs-- overall your kid is doing well but there are a couple issues that should be addressed?  [/quote]

You will not have any issues getting an IEP just show the school the audiologist's report documenting the hearing loss.  Once you do that, it's pretty much a done deal even though you will still go through the steps for getting an IEP.

My child attends a language immersion charter school and there are several kids with hearing loss there.  (All doing great!). Our school provides a FM tuner system for these kids.  The FM system is definitely something you should ask for in the IEP no matter where your child ends up.  The school should provide it at no cost to you.  GL!

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Not the OP, but with all due respect have you had to go through the process with a child with hearing loss? My child has a documented moderate-to-severe loss in one ear and the school district we are in is fighting us on an IEP.  Simply providing an audiologist's report isn't enough.  [/quote]

To get an IEP in any state, you must show 1) disorder 2) adverse impact on education and 3) need for specialized instruction.  It is not enough just to show "disorder," i.e that the child has a hearing loss.   In many school systems, IEP teams will equate "good grades" with "no adverse impact" -- but this is not "legal" in that the law says that the IEP determination can't rest on just one measure (grades) and that even kids with good grades are eligible to get an IEP.

OP in Idaho, it sounds like you are having issues like I did with my GT/LD son who has a high IQ and does very well in some areas and very poorly in others, but sort of seems "average" overall.  The IEP team must consider "a pattern of strengths and weaknesses" in it's "adverse impact" evaluation.  IQ is one part of evaluating this.  A child with an IQ at the 60th percentile who also has 60th percentile expressive language scores is "doing OK".  A child with an IQ at the 99th percentile and expressive language scores at the 60th percentile scores is by definition experiencing a "significant discrepancy" that indicates a problem.  (Anytime achievement scores are 15 standard score points or more away from IQ that is "1 standard deviation" and indicates a "significant discrepancy".)  The psychologist on the IEP team is often the one that you need to focus questions along this line.  Our speech pathologist quite literally didn't understand the significance of the numbers of the scores.  If DC was "average" in the composite score, then there was no problem, in her opinion.  Only when I went through each score that had a 1+ standard deviation and asked the psychologist, "now that's a significant discrepancy, isn't it?" during an IEP team meeting, did the psychologist overrule the speech/language pathologist and say that in her professional problem my child had an adverse impact.  Once I tipped the psychologist, the entire team had to follow.  Look both at the difference within IQ subscores, difference between IQ and composites on speech/language scores, and the difference between IQ and achievement/SPL subscores and the difference between subscores.  A 90/60 split between expressive and receptive is pretty close to 1 standard deviation, but that might not be quite enough (usually you need 1 1/2 standard deviations at least).  If the school didn't provide the IQ testing, you can refile for an IEP and specifically ask for IQ testing, saying that you think that your child is GT/2E (meaning that in addition to being GT, you think that she has a second "exceptionality").  Worst case scenario -- you can do the IQ testing privately.  It is usually less than $500 (a lot, but far less than a full speech 
or neuropsych exam.)

I will tell you, based on my experience with my child, that it is often difficult to document "achievement/IQ discrepancy" before 1st grade, because there is such a wide age range tolerated.  For example, with some kinds of articulation disorders, they are considered "developmental" and should disappear before age 7.  If your child has one of these (like a frontal lisp), the school will not do anything until the window closes for the time during which it might be expected that a child can develop it on their own.  It doesn't make sense from the individual perspective -- earlier intervention means an easier fix with fewer problems as a result.  But, from a public health/education system perspective it does make sense -- why devote limited resources to something that might not need assistance to fix?  Also, many of the "academic skills" that are related to good hearing aren't taught or expected to be mastered until 3rd grade, like reading, writing, spelling, grammar, etc.  Similar ideas apply as with articulation disorders -- if your child is only mildly behind in reading in K or 1st, it will not be considered as big a problem as if they were mildly behind in 3rd (until which age, the school will tell you "don't worry,  they all learn to read by 3rd".)  As my son aged from 4 to 8, what had been "mild" differences or discrepancies" widened substantially.  He finally qualified for an IEP in 2nd grade.

OP, I would encourage you to think carefully about documenting adverse impact and what kind of specialized instruction is necessary.  Are you documenting examples of when your child is trying to express a need and can't and then isn't participating in preschool or has a tantrum, etc.?  That's documenting the adverse impact of the articulation disorder.  On "specialized instruction" for example, your child might have strong receptive language skills, but how is she doing with phonics?  Is she able to associate symbols and sounds?  Segment sound?  Blend sound?  These are key early reading skills, and I can easily imagine how a HoH child might have more problems with this due to inaccurate hearing of the incoming sound and might thus need more specialized instruction, perhaps in the way of clear delivery of words.  Yet, age 3 may be too early to test for or expect these skills to be testable.   Does your child need specialized instruction on how to manage her hearing aids, how to best position herself in the classroom, etc.?  [/quote]

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