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Today is the big day!!! The kids move in later this afternoon! I've been doing a lot of research this morning for our new son to be. He is diagnosed with cognitive delay and struggles with learning (also dx'd with PTSD &ADHD). After spending last wknd with him I'm convinced that he is fine, just hasn't had the appropriate time spent with him and his past of neglect, malnutrition and severe abuse probably all complicate things. So I've spent an hour googling and can't find any solid research or info with similar cases. Anyone out there that can help? What I want to know is whether there are other cases out there that the kids were able to catch up with their classes and lead relatively normal lives. He is 8 and in 2nd grade. He goes to the special ed classroom for half the day currently. My 'goal' is to have him mainstreamed by start of next school year. I've already got a plan of working with him every night for a while (prob start with 15 min and then increase to an hour if he will tolerate) I want to do my own assessment of where he's at, how he learns best, and start working him up to grade level. I have tons of hope for him and I'm feeling really positive that I can get him on the right track. I'd love to hear any ideas to help/programs others have used/success stories, etc. Thanks so much in advance!!!
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Hi,I don't have the success story that you are looking for ... yet! But my experience with my son who was tested ten months after moving in may help. His IQ "rose" 19 points, his reading level went up five grades and so on. He has been with me for eighteen months and, at seventeen, has made amazing leaps academically, cognitively and with his attention span. Socially, we're still working on it. Good luck and keep us posted!
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I would network with people homeschooling special needs kids since they know of resources that may be helpful and very often have success stories. I know one lady who was told not to even bother trying to teach her son to read since he was so low functioning the expert stopped the test without assigning an IQ, and that boy now devours old school German philosophy for fun. It happens, but you can't expect to happen in every case. I'd check out timberdoodle.com, hslda.org, the hs-plus group on yahoogroups, and theoldschoolhousestore.com to get started with some ideas for catching up. You can also look into mathusee.com, which only takes about 15 minutes a day and works on the mastery part of math that special ed often leaves out, since they focus on memorizing and not necessarily understanding the concepts. You can buy Handwriting Without Tears products on ebay pretty cheaply, which works great for OT, and Timberdoodle also has some great products for that. Also, be sure to get him checked for things even if they seem unlikely. I was told my son couldn't have vision issues his glasses didn't deal with and it turns out he had severe vision problems requiring vision therapy, and now that he's getting therapy his reading level is soaring. Just focus on the symptoms, not the diagnosis, and figure out how to address them. When I think of my kids' diagnosis I freak out but looking at one symptom at a time and coming up with a game plan makes it all seem manageable and not so overwhelming.
You may be interested in this article:
[url]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC17595/pdf/pq008790.pdf[/url]
They studied a bunch of kids adopted at 4-6 years old who had pre-adoption IQs in the 60-85 range. When retested at 11-18 years old, most of this kids had risen around 14 points in IQ - which for many of the kids meant the difference between being diagnosable with a mild cognitive disability and just being low average.
They also found that the adoptive family's socioeconomic status predicted how large a gain the children made, probably because it's easier for richer families to give kids lots of intellectual stimulation.
Unfortunately, they didn't go into what exactly the adoptive families did, but at least it's evidence that this sort of thing can be done!