My family

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Amy has Aspergers!

This is the moment I've been anxiously waiting for all summer long.  I sit along side the psychologist waiting for those words I've been waiting to hear to pass through her mouth.  "Amy's ADOS score is consistent for a diagnosis of Aspergers" she says looking across at Curtis then at me and continues.  I feel a twinge in my chest and struggle to blink back the tears that have welled in my eyes.  "Don't cry" I say to myself, "you knew this was coming".  So I sit and listen to what tests she did and how Amy responded to them.  "Her social interactions are very low and this will be the hardest for her to overcome as she goes into adolescents."  I think back and remember how cruel kids in school were to me and think, how can I save my child from that ridicule?  She goes on, "plus even though we weren't specifically testing for ADHD", because she was diagnosed with it in Grade two, "I will agree that she does have many ADHD characteristics."  That's just great, a double diagnosis I think to myself.

After the results from the ADOS test are reviewed we move onto her learning assessment.  We also had her checked for learning disabilities because I know she has them, she can hardly add 10+1.  The psychologist tells me what we've known for a year, her math is at a 1.5 grade level.  Last summer I had her tested for math privately at Sylvan Learning Center in Charlottetown.  They had discovered the same and when I had those results in hand I took them to the school the first week of Grade 3.  They themselves had her tested with their own tests, guess my word wasn't good enough, and confirmed the same thing.  What did they do for her?  Six weeks of Math help and a few adaptations.  That was all fine for the six weeks, she did well in the small setting with extra help, but then for the remaining of the year she still struggled, even with a weekly math tutor.

Luckily, Amy has her diagnosis the school will have to give her extra help, I hope.  The testing also uncovered that she has a superior level of reading and comprehension, reading at a Grade 8 level when she's only going into grade four.  This kind of puzzled me because at the end of Grade three the teacher did up some adaptations for her for language arts because she was starting to struggle with it.  Now we know that Amy understands what she's reading but it seems to get lost between her head and her hand when writing it out.  Amy struggles to write and uses no grammar.  She has limited ability with her hands, she's very weak in my opinion.  So now verbal testing might have to be allowed for her, plus she might benefit with the use of a computer, which is highly motivating for her.  These are all great things to know.  We always knew she was a bright, imaginative girl but in standardized school she fails, this is a girl who needs to be taught in a different way then the standard.  I know that if the school continues to fail her, I will do what I need to do to get her the help she needs even if it means homeschooling.

So now my life just got busier and more complicated.  I now have two children in my house with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, I guess I always did really.  I just pray I have the strength to keep up with these kids and do whats right for them while also keeping my sanity.  Pray with me.

No comments:

Post a Comment