I have to capture today's conversations before I forget!
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On the way home from The Child Psych that dx The Elder he says...
"Now we go to a house.....it starts with a J........he's my friend......and there's a Thomas, Percy, James..."
"OK, I'll call Joshua's mom right now to set a time."
"You're right!! You guessed Joshua's house!"
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"OK I left a message for Joshua's mom to call me back."
"We can go to his house and wait for him."
"No, that's called stalking."
"I want to do that....I want to stalking."
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"Let's figure out what we will eat."
"I want to go to Buddy's"
"We have Buddy's at home."
"But I want to GO to Buddy's"
"If we GO anywhere if won't be Buddy's because we have that at home."
"I want pizza."
"Well, I don't know how to make daddy's pizza, but we can stop at Go Nutrition and get a frozen pizza." (Sad, I know)
"Sure!" (more like "shore")
"Um, this is the part to our house."
"The part?"
"Yes"
"Do you mean path?"
"Yes"
"As in the road to our house?"
"Yes"
"You're right it is, but it is also the road to Go Nutrition."
As we pull into the parking lot of the store...
"Ooohhhhhh, I think you guessed right."
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Now we are on the way home from the store pulling into the subdivision...
"We are almost home."
"Yes, which way do we go." I've never asked him to navigate before...
"I fink we go right."
"OK now we are going right, now what?"
"Next is left
.....you go straight for the wrong way...Eliza lives there. (classmate)
.....Another straight and right
.....Good, mommy, you found the right road
.....now there a little tiny curve...you pass this house...and our car goes there...and you push the button (for garage door)
.....You did it!!"
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Mind you that ALL happened in the 20 minute ride home (not including the pit stop at the store).
On a completely different note, yet related because this is where we were driving home from...we met with The Child Psych for a re-evalution. Well, "improvement" is an appropriate word for the outcome. In 8 months he went from a nonverbal IQ of 130 (or 7 years 4 months equivalent when he was 3 years, 10 months) which is the 98th percentile, to a nonverbal IQ of 146 (or 11 years 9 months equivalent now he is 4 years and 7 months) which is in the 99.9th percentile. We were totally blown away. I mean we knew he was gifted but gee whiz.
He also improved in the picture naming verbal test - he went up to 73rd. But his Listening Comprehension skills were still low (31st percentile) and dragged his Overall Verbal score from 68th last June to 50th percentile today. He said not to worry about that. I guess it is average. And for comprehension, it doesn't cause a buzz in the school unless it is less than 25%. His main concern was with prepositions.
Other tests he took were
Reading - 1.9 grade level
Reading Comprehension - 1.4 grade level
Math - K.8 grade level
For the Math tests he was 5 years and 10 months equivalent on one and 6 years on the other. He said that those are probably low compared to his actual ability because the test involves a lot of Listening Comprehension skills.
He stressed for us to have a Social curriculum, encouraging pretend play, game play (balls, chase, and imitation) and with the trains to have a double approach:
1) Limit his talk about trains. E.g. 15 minutes of talking about animals
2) Broaden his love of trains. E.g. to maps to geography OR to gears to electronics to Audio/Visual components. Something pre-vocational.
He said one kid started at trains and has broadened his love to studio production and has visited the Veggie Tales Studio in Nashville. I didn't even know there was one! We are so going there!
As far as the Kindergarten concern, he really advocates him going to Kindergarten next year. His ideal situation would be for The Elder to go to the transition class if it is approved and go to 1st grade from there (instead of K). He said academically he is already a 1st grader so he really just needs a year to develop his social skills. He predicts in a year he will be reading at a 4th grade level and to put him in Kindergarten is just asking for boredom and behavior problems not even linked to ASD. (That is with a transition year and then K). So it is still up in the air as of what to do.
Has anyone been in this situation and glad of your decision or wish you had made a different one? I really need opinions on this!
Quotables and Doc results
Posted by Jen P
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7 Responses to "Quotables and Doc results"
Wow, Jen, that sounds incredible! This doc sounds really supportive and in-tune, too. I have no words of wisdom to offer since I'm so not in that situation right now. However, you've got yourself one smart cookie of a kid and he's lucky to have such a caring, supportive doc...and family, of course!
WOW Eric is one smart cookie. Glad to hear things are coming along for him. I appreciate the updates!
LOL at the "I want to do that ... I want to stalking" comment.
It sounds like your doc's suggestion about going from Transition KG to first grade might make sense given the Eldest's test scores. SB scored average to above average but not nearly as "gifted" as Eldest so our decision to delay kindergarten for a year to further his social development was a little more cut and dried.
This is great! I told Joshua Eric called him and he said, "Great, I want to see him."
Last night we tried to post a comment to Eric from Joshua, on your blog, but I didn't do it right and now I cannot remember exactly how he worded it, which was the best part. But the idea was the same, he wants to play with Eric now. But he wants to go to Eric's house and play dinosaurs. Funny, how they both want to go to the other's house and play their own favorite thing.
I am going to have to share the stalking comment on my blog, my family will get a kick out of it!
I will call you tomorrow to plan a time to get together, these boys miss each other!
Catching up here, Jen. Classic kid quotes, cute photo on the McD's slide, and a sweet sweet tribute to your husband. So glad you liked the award; you truly deserve it. Love, K.
Our son is now 5 and in a mainstream kindergarten with "push-in" support from ESE for math, writing, and reading. His current DX is PDD-NOS and though we have not had him tested yet with the full IQ/Psych battery, with his ST he does test above average in certain verbal areas (though he was very speech delayed as a toddler but you would never know it now.)
Anyway, we did something similar to what your doc described and it worked out well, but again, our son is not "gifted." At age 3 for pre-K he was in language enriched-LEAP autism class that had a small student teacher ratio. 3 adults, 4 HFA kids, 4 NT role model children He did great! So for a second year of pre-k, he was placed in a mainstream pre-k co-taught by an ESE teacher. There were about 18 kids, 4 on IEP's. In essence, it was like his "transition" year. He could already do the academics (they were the same as his LEAP class the year before) but it gave him a year to get used to being in a regular classroom setting with noise, expectations etc.
Mainstream kinder has not been perfect, but without both the year of nurturing ESE and the "transtion" year in a typical setting, he would never have been able to even attempt the mainstream class this year.
I don't know if this helps you in your decision, but I think it sounds like a good idea to me.
Katherine
Katherine, this does help a lot. I really want to have the transition class if it passes to exist. I have a meeting with The Teacher next week and hopefully I'll get more details.
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