A good day!!!

His favorite part of 3rd grade was the last day. What a creative answer! Maybe all this hard work will allow him to show the world just exactly what has been brewing underneath all along.

They say lders are often late bloomers.
I am very happy for you and your son!

Thank you for sharing your story, it is nice to read positive, happy stories!!

Good Luck and congratulations, it certainly sounds like it was a good day!

K.

Beth that is way cool! Congratulations to you and your son, it is nice to see all the hard work paid off. It is kind of strange when you go in with your guard up to get such statements made isnt it? When I went to my oldest sons open house his resource teacher told me that my son was a model student who came to class prepared and ready to work. Not to sound cold but I have heard negative so long about him that I wondered if she had the right child. Congratulations again hope the rest of the school year goes as well.

Sounds like he is starting to believe in himself, most likely as a results of the interventions you’ve been pursuing. Remarkable things can happen when they stop thinking I can’t, and start thinking I can!

Beth,

I seem to remember you were contemplating meds. Did your son start them? It is a backburner issue for us so was just wondering if this contributed to his success in any way.

We haven’t. I distributed an ADD check list to his teachers because we are planning to and I didn’t want them to know when. So I asked them to fill out the survey each Friday. I think I may back up his doctor’s appt. a bit (it is in two weeks) to get a better sense of all this. I don’t want to attribute changes falsely to medication.

Beth

Beth, I’m so glad things are off to a good start! Thank goodness for summer and fresh starts! I think, time, maturity, and the interventions you’ve done all work together to help him. I’ll be interested to hear how the year progresses. Fourth grade is usually a difficult transition for most kids, so it is very good to have a positive beginning!

Janis

Great to hear especially about the writing!!!!!!!!
It would be interesting to hear his thoughts on the essay. Does he feel that writing that essay was way easier thne last year. How was it easier? And why did he think it was easier? Big questions but kids can surprise you with their insight.

Helen

God knew how much you needed one.. A hug to your honest kid:-)

This is what we are all working for! Congratulations - you should be proud of him and yourself!!

Linda,
What type of meds are you thinking about? I ask b/c you, me, Beth seem to be traveling similar waters. And we are planning a zoloft trial in late september. Hoping to reduce anxiety and stop the obsessive talking.
Karen

I was thinking of an evaluation for ADD by a neurologist. IM is considered a nonmed treatment for ADD. I will see if his attention is improved with the IM. I want to go to a neurologist who knows something about capd and sensory integration. I think some are just ADD specialists. I don’t want that.

My son has some of the symptoms of ADD but he really doesn’t fit the full picture for me. He can cross the street and pay attention. I can work with him at home for a long period of time on homework and he doesn’t get stressed. Yet, he can be impulsive at times. Sometimes I can even see him not able to control himself. Other times he is totaly in control. (I think sometimes this is related to a lack of sleep) He can also zone out on the baseball field but I have seen an improvement in this with football since IM. He also fidgets with some teachers but doesn’t with others. I sometimes think he is good at pretending to pay attention. He looks like he is attending and then you realize the light is on but no one is home.
I don’t see him as stressed. Actually, just the opposite sometimes he needs to be a little more stressed. He just flits through life without a care.

Puzzle kid, right.

Karen,

We don’t have the anxiety either. My son was diagnosed as ADD-inattentive this summer by a neurologist. We were scheduled to start a trial of medication this month but I am going to push it back. I want to get a better sense of what he is capable of now for a baseline before pursuing medication.

Beth

Helen,

I will ask him. My guess is an output issue that IM had a big affect on. It was almost like he had been taught to write an essay when you read what he wrote but I know that none of this came out last year.

Beth

Thanks to all of you for your support. Only people who have been through the wringer with our kids, like we have, can know what such a day really means. I am still high over it.

Beth

Beth - sounds like you’re off to a good start in 4th grade. You mentioned the writing - you ought to see if he’s interested in using one of the auditory spell checkers that you can get for at home use if he wants to write and also you might still consider draft builder for the auditory spellchecking.

I think part of it (NOT ALL) is just plain maturity. I think you’re smart to wait on the meds - I agree you don’t want to give “credit” to anything where credit isn’t due. Keep us posted.

Beth,

This is so great! It sounds like he will do well in 4th grade!

I have heard there is rehabilitaion counselor in our area who is setting up 8-10 IM station. His plan is charge $1000 for as many sessions as a child needs. He would train the parents and the parents would be the person putting the child through the program. His hope is to have 8-10 kids doing it at the same time and he would moniter the whole lot at once.

I think the kids would distract each other. It sounds like it might be painful to put your own child through the therapy from what others here have reported. Also the children who are going to need lots of session are in my opinion going to be the more difficult children who have a hard time stating on task.

What do you think?

Helen

I can’t imagine how that would work. While the exercises appear standard and easily taught, our provider has had to modify the program ( we are in the middle of IM right now…) to help my son get some of the movements. She’s in touch with the IM developers about how to approach him. And I sit in the room and have had to intervene with him on occasion to keep him focused. Kids with motor planning issues or attentional issues are the ones that need this therapy, and would be least likely to succeed in the environment you described.

Plus its my understanding that only certain people (OT’s , SLP’s etc ) can get certified in IM, and that there is tight quality control on the therapy. Which is one of the reasons we did it - we figured we were getting what we paid for.

My son’s trainer is not a pt or and ot. She is a former computer programmer. She works closely with an OT who does the intial evaluation for kids with ld and then helps her understand what needs to be done. I think this trainer is very good. She is the parent of a child with multiple problems and seems to therefore have a special level of understanding of many of the issues. She has helped me in many ways and is very experienced in IM. She is at the level of training other trainers.

I don’t know how parents would do it unless they did it themselves first. All the trainers have to do the program and get to a certain level before they can do IM.

Sounds hard, but if the choice was this or nothing because of financial limitations, I would have to say it is better than not doing it at all.

I have had my child do things things more painful than IM (Fast Forward comes to mine). I think I could have done it with my son but then because of having done other therapy first (Neuronet therapy) my son did really well with the program within the expected time frame. Lots of other kids would be more difficult to work with. However, I can’t imagine a bunch of kids doing it at the same time. My son, at first, required one on one attention.

Beth

Leah,

Tell me about the auditory spell checkers. My son seems to be willing to do just his best at school with spelling but home is a real problem. He had to write a three paragraph letter to his teacher about 1. his family 2. his hobbies 3. other interests. He wanted to type it. He started typing fine but as soon as he hit brother he was bugging me about the spelling. He insisted I spell every word. I couldn’t deal with how long this was going to take!!! So I had him dictate to me which allowed me to help him develop his ideas too (what else could you say about your rock collection, for exampel).

I am not sure what the solution is but open to ideas!!

Beth

Could the parent provide the one-on-one? If the parent had a deficit in this area wouldn’t that make it hard for them to work with their child?

It will be interesting to see what happens once the program gets going.

Helen

The IM folks insist that trainers get their scores in the superior range before they train others. I am not sure this is because motor planning problems themselves get in the way as much as it is hard to observe a child and know how to help them be more successful unless you have a sense of how to do the movements. It wasn’t completely obvious to me what my son should be doing differently (and I don’t think I have motor planning problems!), although I am sure I would have figured it out had I been doing the exercises myself. It is very different to do something and to observe.

I would think that training could help parents to be successful at being the coaches but that they would not approach the expertise of someone who has been doing this for awhile. Our therapist intitially did IM for very little money as she learned to do it well.

We paid, I think, about $1100 or $1200 for 15 sessions of IM. It would not have been worth it to have saved that little money to do it ourselves. And I would say that the kids who require more sessions really need an expert to help them. Whether this is a good idea for parents would depend on how much higher the going rates for IM are where you live.

Beth

Unless the parents went through the therapy themselves first I think it would be hard for them to coach their own child. I think I have some timing issues myself. I have a hard time judging when pulling out into trafic and changing lanes. Here it is 1500 for the 15 sessions. I think my son would be the kind that could get through in 15 sessions becuase he once he practices something a few times he gets it 100%. He scored 99.9% on the learning subtest of the WRAML.

Helen

Beth,

I think co-writer would help here. It has been awhile since I looked at it but if he had typed in “br” a window would pop up with a selection of words and hopefully brother would have been in there to select. For my kid the period of usefullness of co-writer was short so it would be better to get a copy without paying for it. I borrowed one. Another program is Text-Help and you might be able to download a version from their site.

Helen

Our IM experience is going to be several thousand dollars due to the extra sessions, plus everything is more expensive here. But I still wouldn’t want to waste $1000 if the training is n’t done right which would be my concern. I’d rather spend the big bucks now to get it done correctly. I’m still looking at all these expenses for my son as an investment in his future!

Helen,

He has cowriter at school. I will see if I can get it for home from the school.

Thanks.

Beth