Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You need to have your son evaluated.

My son was like this in 4th grade, got marked down until he was failing and it was a horrible year for his self-esteem.
At the same time he won the Young Author's Contest for his school.
That summer he was diagnosed with severe inattentive ADHD, and the IQ test included in the assessment showed he has abysmal processing speed, which explained why he could not finish anything on time. Not everyone with ADHD has slow processing speed, but it is common for the inattentive daydreamer-kind of ADHD.

The school gave him accommodations (extra time etc) with an IEP. Now he is doing much better in 5th. The IQ test also showed he was gifted and under medication, his grades have shot up.

Where did you have your son tested? We have talked to the school about testing because my DS is a poor speller, but they have said that it isn't necessary and he just needs to learn to use his resources to compensate (which we are working on). They have never suggested that he may have ADHD. His grades are A/B, except for a C+ in writing because he still isn't good at using the resources and he gets behind because he avoids it. I think that he may be immature and bored, but I am not sure about the ADHD. Is this something to raise with the pediatrician or demand that the school test him? A lot of this I think is a basic problem with the educational philosophy and teaching by worksheet. I think he's just sick to death of worksheets.

Not sure if you're the OP or not. I'm PP you quoted.

First: no teacher is allowed to tell you that your child has ADHD, even when it's completely obvious. They will use words like "attentional issues", "distractible", "needs redirection", etc.

Second: 20 minutes of boring homework is the norm nowadays. You can boycott it if you want and if he doesn't get marked down, so that you can focus on the classwork he needs to finish which does get graded. Our son was not allowed to take his classwork home, so he received failing grades in a snap, since he couldn't finish anything at all during class. This year my son doesn't do spelling homework, for ex, because he's in the advanced spelling group and already knows all the words.

Third: not finishing classwork during the school day is a huge red flag. The teacher has already been flexible enough to let him take his work home, and has said he needs redirection. She cannot do or say more. You need to take it from here. We used Stixrud for a full neuropsychological

Fourth: please read up on ADHD, specifically the inattentive kind. By definition, it is an attention regulation issue where there are not enough neurotransmitters in the frontal cortex of the brain to signal effectively. As a result, the frontal lobes in a person with ADHD take longer to mature, sometimes several more years. The frontal cortex is the seat of judgement, reasoning and higher functioning. Kids with ADHD have incredible difficulty concentrating on tasks they dislike, and incredible capacity to focus on tasks they do like.

Fifth: ADHD is correctly diagnosed by a developmental pediatrician or a psychologist - both need to be experienced with ADHD diagnoses. A general ped can give you a reference, but should not do the evaluation themselves. A test just for ADHD may take a couple of hours and cost $700, a more full-picture kind of evaluation such a neuropsychological eval. will take 8 hours and cost a few thousand. We went to Stixrud, which has a great professional reputation, and only does neuropsychological evals. Paid $3.2K out of pocket.

Good luck.

PS: my best friend also has a child with inattentive ADHD. It's obvious to everyone, but for the longest time my friend and her husband were convinced that the school system was at fault, the teachers were bad, the work was boring, etc. The child is in 5th grade and not doing well, and the parents are slowly coming to the realization that there may be ADHD going on. It's difficult to observe a child's suffering as a third party, especially when you have an understanding of what's going on and can't help beyond giving gentle suggestions.

Thank you very much for all this information. I had not considered that my son may have an ADHD diagnosis, but I don't want to stick my head in the sand either. I will bring it up with his pediatrician and go from there. The $3k out of pocket is pretty daunting, though. That would be a challenge.

Some pediatricians will do the assessment for ADHD based on forms filled out by the teacher and parents. If you can do that, it would be a lot cheaper than 3k.

Anonymous wrote:

NP here. OP, pediatricians cannot really diagnose ADHD properly. Do the evaluation properly for your child's sake.

OP, there will always be a handful of people on this site that say this. ADHD is not that complex. It's relatively common. The "proper evaluation" that people talk about costs a minimum of $3k, but more likely closer to $5k, which is money many people don't have. Also there is a wait to get the evaluation during which time your child continues to have problems that may have been treatable. The right thing for your child may be a neuropsych eval. OTOH, it may be working through your pediatrician.

I am the PP to whom you are responding. Here's what the pediatricians will do: hand parents a questionnaire for them to fill out and for teacher to fill out. The questionnaires tell you very, very little. My son's questionnaires showed anxiety/depression but zero adhd-related issues because a) he is very bright b) interested in school-intellectual things c) not particularly hyperactive d) very rules oriented and hates getting in trouble. When we did the neuropsych with its many different components we were really able to parse his strengths and weaknesses. He was diagnosed with Anxiety and severe ADHD combined type. The teachers were shocked but the older he got, the more obvious it was that they got the diagnosis completely right. In contrast, one of my good friends consulted her pediatrician about her son who was struggling in school and left the office with a ritalin prescription. Turns out (two years later) they found out he has no attention issues but is dyslexic. These things are, in fact, extremely complicated and, if you want to get them right, the pediatrician is good for a referral. Period.

If you want him to function well for the rest of grade school and college, you just need to get through this. Right or wrong, we're judged on the completion of homework. Eventually, his ability to complete assignments will impact his GPA and likely impact his ability to get an interview. Society has set a standard, so get used to it.

I only have a 1st grader, but he loves reading and math, not much into writing, so we have to nudge him a lot and sit with him through the writing assignments. He goes to extended day daily from 3:30-6 after school so that's plenty of playtime for him from my perspective. He should learn to do an assigned activity as that's what will be expected of him when he grows up and beyond.

Break up the hw time. do some on the weekends. create an incentive/reward for completing on time etc. Giving up isn't really a good model to follow at this young of age.

Anonymous wrote:

NP here. OP, pediatricians cannot really diagnose ADHD properly. Do the evaluation properly for your child's sake.

OP, there will always be a handful of people on this site that say this. ADHD is not that complex. It's relatively common. The "proper evaluation" that people talk about costs a minimum of $3k, but more likely closer to $5k, which is money many people don't have. Also there is a wait to get the evaluation during which time your child continues to have problems that may have been treatable. The right thing for your child may be a neuropsych eval. OTOH, it may be working through your pediatrician.

I'm 09:28 and could not disagree with you more. Every child with ADHD can present it differently, so just because many have become aware of this disorder, it doesn't mean that it's simple to diagnose. On the contrary, the controversies surrounding over-diagnosis, pill-pushing and being cured of one's ADHD (in reality if you have it it never goes away), suggest it is not.

As for the price, you are also wrong. We paid full price for a Stixrud neuropsychological evaluation (insurance would not cover any of it) and it was $3,200 for a telephone intake, a parent interview pre-test, 8 hours of testing over 2 days, and a parent interview post-test, plus a very comprehensive and well-written report.
They not only gave the medical diagnoses (DS was also found to have learning disorders), but also listed them in "MCPS-speak", for the public school system my son is in, because they have a lot of experience with facilitating the creation of IEPs, services and accommodations. Schools generally have their own rules about which disorders to accommodate or not, and their terms sometimes do not dovetail with the medical ones. Stixrud put in both so that MCPS could not push back and refuse services for my son.

This sounds exactly like my son who has inattentive ADHD. You should look into that.

In the meantime, do you have a sense for whether your son is learning the skills he should this year? Ignore the grades and look at his test scores. If he is testing well, I would either have him do 20 minutes of homework and 20 minutes of reading every night - or boycott the homework and do the reading only for the rest of the year. Is SOL preparation additional homework? Don't do that at all.

You can tell his teacher that the strain on the parent-child relationship homework is causing isn't worth it. Grades in 4th grade aren't either.

I volunteer in my second grader's classroom regularly and saw that she was getting very little work done. She's very distractable. She's wearing noise-cancelling headphones during independent work time and it helps quite a bit. She also brings unfinished math worksheets home. (This school has a no homework policy so I had to request this.) We work on those together until I know that she understands the concepts.

Anonymous wrote:

NP here. OP, pediatricians cannot really diagnose ADHD properly. Do the evaluation properly for your child's sake.

OP, there will always be a handful of people on this site that say this. ADHD is not that complex. It's relatively common. The "proper evaluation" that people talk about costs a minimum of $3k, but more likely closer to $5k, which is money many people don't have. Also there is a wait to get the evaluation during which time your child continues to have problems that may have been treatable. The right thing for your child may be a neuropsych eval. OTOH, it may be working through your pediatrician.

No it is overly diagnosed. Send your kids out to play from day one. Stop giving in to electronics and too many toys and your kids will be able to handle doing something for 40 minutes just fine.

The only people that would actually complain about 40 minutes of HW are parents that either work too much and have no desire to sit down and help - or ones that run all their kids around in 100 activities and don't have time to sit down and help. The rest of us can handle 40 minutes of HW in a span of 6 hours.

NP here. OP, pediatricians cannot really diagnose ADHD properly. Do the evaluation properly for your child's sake.

OP, there will always be a handful of people on this site that say this. ADHD is not that complex. It's relatively common. The "proper evaluation" that people talk about costs a minimum of $3k, but more likely closer to $5k, which is money many people don't have. Also there is a wait to get the evaluation during which time your child continues to have problems that may have been treatable. The right thing for your child may be a neuropsych eval. OTOH, it may be working through your pediatrician.

Anonymous wrote:My DS is in the 4th grade and has a good and kind teacher, but one who gives an incredible amount of class and homework. DS is constantly behind on the classwork and has 40+ mins of homework every night, plus trying to catch up the classwork. Now they've added studying and prepping for the SOLs. This has been an ongoing battle all year and we have met and emailed with the teacher multiple times. Each time, she listens and says that she doesn't want him to spend more than 20 mins doing homework and she has all sorts of strategies she and we can try. Things will improve for a few weeks and then it's back to multiple worksheets and hours after school. The situation is causing a lot of stress for my kid and my family. DH and I got in a huge fight last night over it...mainly because DS was crying about the amount of work and wanting to just relax finally, I'm asking DS to work a little on catching up his writing assignment, and DH blowing up at both of us (he later apologized). DH emailed the teacher again last night and she wrote back with the same "he's only supposed to have 40 mins and has plenty of time to finish the work in class" line. My DS is an average student and a good kid. He will do the work if he can, but how much should be expected of a 9 y/o. I'm at the point of telling her we're done with it for the rest of the year.

Forty minutes isn't a lot. What other activities does he have going on? Does DS think life will get any easier?

This is what we do to deal with excessive homework generally. If the teacher is telling you that the homework should take 20 minutes (not including the 20 minutes of reading), then have your son do homework for 20 minutes. Write a note on the work explaining that this is how much he accomplished in 20 minutes. If every parent in the class did this, the teacher would know how long the homework s/he's assigning actually takes. As it is, I suspect a lot of parents make their kids do everything, no matter how long it takes, so the teacher has no idea. Also, I suspect that a lot of parent's are "helping" their kids a lot, so, again, the homework is not reflecting what the kids actually know.

That he is not getting the classwork done in class and the other kids are, however, suggests a different problem. It may be ADHD or some other issue, so I would get him properly evaluated so that you can implement appropriate strategies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You need to have your son evaluated.

My son was like this in 4th grade, got marked down until he was failing and it was a horrible year for his self-esteem.
At the same time he won the Young Author's Contest for his school.
That summer he was diagnosed with severe inattentive ADHD, and the IQ test included in the assessment showed he has abysmal processing speed, which explained why he could not finish anything on time. Not everyone with ADHD has slow processing speed, but it is common for the inattentive daydreamer-kind of ADHD.

The school gave him accommodations (extra time etc) with an IEP. Now he is doing much better in 5th. The IQ test also showed he was gifted and under medication, his grades have shot up.

Where did you have your son tested? We have talked to the school about testing because my DS is a poor speller, but they have said that it isn't necessary and he just needs to learn to use his resources to compensate (which we are working on). They have never suggested that he may have ADHD. His grades are A/B, except for a C+ in writing because he still isn't good at using the resources and he gets behind because he avoids it. I think that he may be immature and bored, but I am not sure about the ADHD. Is this something to raise with the pediatrician or demand that the school test him? A lot of this I think is a basic problem with the educational philosophy and teaching by worksheet. I think he's just sick to death of worksheets.

Not sure if you're the OP or not. I'm PP you quoted.

First: no teacher is allowed to tell you that your child has ADHD, even when it's completely obvious. They will use words like "attentional issues", "distractible", "needs redirection", etc.

Second: 20 minutes of boring homework is the norm nowadays. You can boycott it if you want and if he doesn't get marked down, so that you can focus on the classwork he needs to finish which does get graded. Our son was not allowed to take his classwork home, so he received failing grades in a snap, since he couldn't finish anything at all during class. This year my son doesn't do spelling homework, for ex, because he's in the advanced spelling group and already knows all the words.

Third: not finishing classwork during the school day is a huge red flag. The teacher has already been flexible enough to let him take his work home, and has said he needs redirection. She cannot do or say more. You need to take it from here. We used Stixrud for a full neuropsychological

Fourth: please read up on ADHD, specifically the inattentive kind. By definition, it is an attention regulation issue where there are not enough neurotransmitters in the frontal cortex of the brain to signal effectively. As a result, the frontal lobes in a person with ADHD take longer to mature, sometimes several more years. The frontal cortex is the seat of judgement, reasoning and higher functioning. Kids with ADHD have incredible difficulty concentrating on tasks they dislike, and incredible capacity to focus on tasks they do like.

Fifth: ADHD is correctly diagnosed by a developmental pediatrician or a psychologist - both need to be experienced with ADHD diagnoses. A general ped can give you a reference, but should not do the evaluation themselves. A test just for ADHD may take a couple of hours and cost $700, a more full-picture kind of evaluation such a neuropsychological eval. will take 8 hours and cost a few thousand. We went to Stixrud, which has a great professional reputation, and only does neuropsychological evals. Paid $3.2K out of pocket.

Good luck.

PS: my best friend also has a child with inattentive ADHD. It's obvious to everyone, but for the longest time my friend and her husband were convinced that the school system was at fault, the teachers were bad, the work was boring, etc. The child is in 5th grade and not doing well, and the parents are slowly coming to the realization that there may be ADHD going on. It's difficult to observe a child's suffering as a third party, especially when you have an understanding of what's going on and can't help beyond giving gentle suggestions.

Thank you very much for all this information. I had not considered that my son may have an ADHD diagnosis, but I don't want to stick my head in the sand either. I will bring it up with his pediatrician and go from there. The $3k out of pocket is pretty daunting, though. That would be a challenge.

NP here. OP, pediatricians cannot really diagnose ADHD properly. Do the evaluation properly for your child's sake. FWIW, there are definitely a lot of red flags in your post and I agree with this poster that your teacher is saying as much as she is allowed to say.

Re: homework... I have a background in education and have thought a lot about the homework question. Generally studies come out against homework in elementary school as a practical way to learn and retain information. However, over the years (I have three kids), I have come to appreciate two aspects of homework that I hadn't read about in articles. The first is that it is a practical skill that requires discipline and practice and independence--and there is value to "learning how to do homework" and developing good habits when the content is fairly easy. The second is that it serves as a screen for kids with potential learning issues.

OP, why did SACC change its structure so there is no longer someone who oversees homework and helps the kids stay on task? Why the change to the melee in the gym, which clearly is not something most kids this age can block out enough to do homework there on their own? I would have talked with the SACC program coordinator to find out why the change took place and whether there is ANY option for at least some kids to be in another place with an adult (doesn't have to be a teacher) who will ensure the environment is calm and kids use the homework time for homework. Did your SACC lose a staff member or otherwise have a change that meant kids are now just herded and not made to spend certain time on homework?

I would be sure that next year in SACC, you talk very early on about how your son needs the homework time to BE homework time and you find out if SACC is just going to be babysitting or if it's going to provide any kind of environment that will help your son get things done.

SACC alone can't be the whole issue, though. Completion of classwork IN class is an important skill to learn before middle school arrives. Does the teacher say that most or all other kids are completing work in classroom time? If you know the parents of your son's classmates, do they also see the homework as too much, or do they say that their kids don't bring home classwork but only have homework and are fine doing it in the allotted time the teacher suggests? While each kid is different, it can help to get a read on our own kids' work habits and homework if we talk with other parents whom we trust to give an objective assessment of how their kids are handling things. If my kid were in a class and having your son's issues, and my friends with children in that class said their children were doing OK with completing things without as much stress, I'd be looking first to find out why my child wasn't working at the same pace as the rest of the class, rather than focusing on the number of worksheets, etc. Have you been able to talk with other families and see how they view this?

I understand your anger at the teacher and the worksheets, but this late in the school year, the amount of homework she sends is probably not going to change, and a boycott may not do anything other than dent your son's grades and -- to be really blunt -- put your son and you on the radar for next year's teachers, and not in a good way. It also sends a message to him that he can drop things that frustrate him or that seem unfair or onerous. There will be times coming up in middle and high school when he will encounter teachers who assign tons of homework with no regard for what other teachers might assign, or who seriously drop grades if classwork AND homework don't get done, and boycotting will not be an option. Maybe it sounds fine in fourth grade when some parents say "Homework doesn't matter," but the practice of doing it in elementary does matter, and teaching kids it's optional if it's a problem for them is not a great precedent to set.

Our 4th grader's homework applies to his total grade in a subject.

My 4th grader is grade obsessed. I don't like this so young, but it's the way he is. I started the school year objecting to some of the homework, but since my kid is such a stress case about grades he does the bare minimum to get the homework credit.

I don't boycott homework, but I also don't force my kid to do work beyond his limit. He should be able to finish much of what is needed in school.

This sounds a lot like my dd, and we had this situation especially in 1st and 2nd grades. In addition to homework, teachers sent classwork that was not completed. Also in 2nd grade, the teacher met with us within 2 weeks of school starting to discuss dd's inability to stay on task. We worked with the school over the 2nd grade year and did get a 504 with accommodations to help dd - like sit near the teacher, small group instruction, meet with counselor before school and after to discuss if we started on time, stayed on task and ended on time.

And every night, homework was a struggle, I alternated between bribing, positive reinforcement to taking away ipad time or sometime we would all end up crying or yelling.

We did get an ADHD diagnosis - combined. Then I spent all the next year in 3rd grade and finally got an IEP. Accommodations, redirection, homework that was a huge struggle to complete, she would practically get in tears seeing worksheets to complete.

Finally in 4th grade, things are so much better. We finally decided to medicate, and now she is focused, organized, has better self esteem. She completes most of her homework in SACC under her own direction, and she needs minimal assistance in the evening (usually) to complete her remaining homework.