There will not be any statistics in this diary; nor will I link to studies that illustrate my point. This is a non-scientific post written from a mother's perspective. I have two daughters, both have dyslexia, dysgraphia and are ADHD(though the form of ADHD differs in each child). Both of my daughters are considered twice gifted. This is a nice way to say they are bright, well above average IQ wise, but learning disabled. Each daughter went to elementary school in different cities in Texas and this is why I have become such a big proponent of early intervention when working with learning disabled children. My girls stories follow the fold.
When my now teen-age daughter was in elementary school we lived in West Texas, in a small city of about 80,000 people. We had neighborhood schools and my daughter went to an elementary school built by the WPA. It was a nice school, with mostly kids from middle class homes but with a smattering of low income students as well. When we began there I liked the school just fine. The classes were not too big and the student body was diverse, something we did look for when we moved there since a number of the schools were either 95 percent white or 95 percent minority and we did not want our daughter in either of those environments, we really were striving for a balanced school. By the middle of second grade, we were very concerned about how our daughter struggled with reading. She had an huge vocabulary, but was reading well below grade level, her spelling was dismal as well. She was excelling in math though.
We requested the school test her for dyslexia. They did so and the results indicated that she might have mild dyslexia and that she was extremely bright. The tester even said to me that at the beginning of the testing my daughter answered the questions exactly as they were written down in her guide and she was wondering how that was possible. My daughter has an excellent memory and even then was very good at compensating for her disablity. They suggested we wait a year and see how she did, as she was, and still is, a very late August baby, and this might be what was causing her to struggle with reading. I was promised that her reading and spelling issues would be revisted in the next year. We also discused her ADHD and my husband's and my desire not to medicate her.
It would be almost 3 years before they tested my daughter again and then only because the teachers and a lawyer were on my husband's and my side of the argument. At the mid point of her 5th grade year my daughter was retested, and surprise she is dyslexic and dysgraphic and had been compensating for years. During this time my daughter learned to hate school, hate homework and writing papers was torture for the entire family. It did not matter how much we helped her every night was a battle that ended in crying, screaming and angst all around. With the school finally recognizing my daughter's disablity she began to recieve dyslexia services in the 6th grade. By the beginning of 7th grade she was reading above grade level and comprehending well above grade level. She still could not spell. They retested her IQ and somehow overnight her IQ dropped 30 points and she was no longer qualified for services because she was performing well above her ability now. My husband and I had her tested privatly, umm insurance rarely pays for this and it was expensive, the Doctor who tested her stated in no uncertian terms her IQ had not changed and unless she fell down and had a seizure, and she does not have a seizure disorder, during the schools testing there was clearly an error on the part of the test giver. We continued to fight with the school district and struggle to get my daughter the services she needed to excell in school.
During this time my younger daughter had started going to elementary school in the same city where my elder daughter had gone. She did reasonablly well in reading, or so it seemed at the time, but she could not spell either. She was also much more hyperactive than her sister, which cause her kindergarden teacher to attempt to give her a world of hurt though she did well with her 1st grade teacher.
We moved to Fort Worth the summer before she began 2nd grade and my older daughter started high school. We bought our house in a neighborhood districted for a great high school, that is experiencing a reawakening. The elementary school my younger daughter is districted for scared the living daylights out of me. It is a 95 percent minority, title 1 school. I was afraid my daughter would not make friends, that she would make friends with children who would move frequently ect. Some of this has happened and she has had to grow up a bit quicker than my older daughter. But she was almost immediatly indentified as dyslexic and dysgraphic and recieved dyslexia services for the last year. She now reads at a mid 6th grade level and is excelling. She still has a great deal of trouble with writing and spelling though. Next year she is being placed in the gifted program, with a writing specialist coming in to work with her an hour a day. She was placed in the gifted progam despite her difficulties because she really belongs there. The difference in my children's experiences is amazing. The difference in their feelings toward school and themselves could not be further apart.
We still struggle with our older daughter, who is in the AP program at her school, to do her homework and writing is still a painstaking process that requires family participation. She still has negative feelings about school, though it is improving. She does not believe she is as smart as she is, or as her friends are, okay a few of her friends are brillant. She will be okay, when she works at school she excells and we are strict but supportive. My younger daughter is blossoming. She loves school, she does her homework and she feels good about herself. I am proud of them both for very different reasons. They are my real life example of why early intervention with children who have learning disablities is of the utmost importance.
So many of these children are incredibly bright and learn coping skills to get through the early years of schooling if they do not recieve intervention, so many of them grow up hating school and seeing themselves as less than because they struggle. If they do not have a family that has the ablity to have them privately tested, or the emotional wherewithall to struggle with them; they can be lost and that is the biggest danger of ignoring ld children.