Re: Digest Number 3024 ... Angel

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 5/16/2006 1:39:49 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,

angelgasior@... writes:

My next concern is with her pre-reading and reading skills. I am excited

that she knows many of her letters, but I still see many areas she needs to

work on in her language skills. The truth of the matter is - I want so badly

to

not worry that I am starting to believe the " educational professionals " and

am losing my edge for explaining her needs.

You know your child better than any of those professionals. You're the one

who will see or sense her needs before anyone else. So, you just keep your eyes

open. I'll bet you haven't lost your edge, your just haven't needed to use

the skills as much lately.

And you're probably right, they don't really " get it. " I can easily say that

the only person Ian sees at school each day who actually gets it is his TOD.

The rest of the educational professionals are very supportive, but they

don't really get it.

One thing you can do is to make sure that there is appropriate diagnostic

testing done to assess her strengths and weaknesses and determine her needs.

Perhaps she will do so well you won't have to ask for anything extra. Or maybe

that testing will bring up something that is needed. At our son's age there

is some testing done each year, and every 3 years the school does a big

triennial testing where they re-do a whole collection of tests that aren't done

yearly.

As for guessing what she'll need, that isn't as hard as you might think.

Once the kids start school there is an established curriculum ahead of them and

that will dictate what skills are going to be developed and taught at what

age/grade -- each state has an established curriculum to follow for all schools

in the state. So it's not really as unknown as it feels.

So, you watch those skills and you think about how her hearing loss is going

to get in the way. What skills are they going to be stressing in the year to

come and how can you add in accommodations to make that accessible for her?

Just because she is doing well academically doesn't mean she doesn't need or

deserve appropriate supports to allow her access to he education.

For instance, our son is older, he's now in high school and an honors

student. Ian needs to lip-read to " hear " what the teacher is saying. One of my

concerns was/is -- how is this kid going to be able to take notes if he needs

to

look up at his teachers' faces while looking down to write his notes? The

answer for our Ian was a combination of things. An FM system where the teacher

wears the microphone and his/her voice is set right into Ian's aids via little

clip on boots. Later when those were not enough, we added a laptop so he can

type without looking at his fingers. The answer for other kids might be to

provide a note taker, or an interpreter. There are a variety of solutions for

any issue.

You just keep your mom-eyes open and go with your gut. If something feels

wrong, then it is. Ask questions and there's probably a solution, even if you

don't have the answer right away. I didn't know what an FM was, our

audiologist taught us about that. I didn't know about CART -- a form of

real-time

captioning and note taking, but a TOD taught me. There's all kinds of support

available for our kids and people to teach us about what solutions are

available.

This place is a great resource!

Best -- Jill

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