Learning Disabilities and School

LD programs. In our school system, the LD (learning disabled) programs really don’t start doing your child any good until he/she is in 8th grade. Up till that point all the LD teachers do is go over homework for a half hour every day. At least that has been our experience. My eldest son has learning disabilities in the areas of math and writing. But if you were to take those two items out of his IQ test, he’d be a genius! Unfortunately school is all about writing and math… So, we had him tested in second grade while he was in a private school. They expected that he was ADD (I disagreed, he was an eight year old on 7 different medications for asthma and allergies and drugged into a stupor, no need for Ritalin!) So they tested him, he couldn’t write (form sentences, spell, capitalize, or even form his letters correctly),and he had trouble in math (understanding processes and juxtaposing numbers), and he had organizational problems (he didn’t start at the top left hand corner of a page and work his way to the right and then down one line and to the right and so on, he would bounce all over a page of information and get lost). So by the time he was in fourth grade (due to financial troubles I home schooled him third grade), they set him up with the most incredible LD teacher I had ever met and she was able in one year to bring up three grade levels (from 1st grade stuff all the way back up to fourth grade stuff), then our finances collapsed and we had to send him to public school, (we couldn’t even home school), where he was given an IEP (individual education plan) and ignored until I rose a stink in 7th grade. In early September of 7th grade I requested an Occupational Evaluation with special emphasis on Language arts and Math, then I got an independent OE done in the local children’s hospital. We were told he needed to relearn how to write, learn to type, and begin again with remedial math including number formation. They recommended a reduced load of writing assignments, calculator with math and a few other things. Around January of 7th grade, after I called and called and called, after he spent every evening crying over six hours of homework, they finally got around to the OE, but they didn’t test Language arts, only math… They admitted that they saw he had a problem with hand writing but they couldn’t really address that. I rose a stink. SIX HOURS OF HOMEWORK EVERY NIGHT IS NUTS!!!! So, in May they finally pulled him out of the regular classes, put him in LD classes and suddenly school was possible. He was given reduced handwriting assignments, no longer graded on spelling (except in spelling courses), put in special ed math, given a highlighter to highlight notes on the teachers lectures instead of trying to take notes himself. And even allowed by some of his teachers to give them a lecture on a topic instead of a report. Then school was over. 8th grade, they forgot everything and put him back like he was at the beginning of 7th grade. I rose a stink. And in a week we had him back to the types of classes he had in may of 7th grade. The LD teachers are ok, wonderful ladies really, but what they are allowed to do with the students is VERY limited. They don’t have the latitude that his first LD teacher had, and so they do what they can and teach them to enjoy learning and sometimes how to work around their disabilities. He is in the high school now and getting more opportunities to plan what he wants to be when he grows up and how to get there. That’s hard… He wants to be a missionary pilot, but how do you get a kid with a 1.75 grade point average into a missionary flight program? So I am doing everything I can to get his pilots license, instrument ratings, and flight hours while he is in school (If I can get a job this year, he will get to start pilot lessons). And hopefully then I can get him into a commercial flight school, and when he isn’t flying for Southwest airlines, he can transport terminally ill children to specialists around the world or something…. He has gotten to the place where he can dream about what he wants to be… thanks to some LD teachers who have done everything they can to make learning possible.