So Your Kid is Crashing and Burning in Kindergarten?

So.  Your kid has sensory stuff and they're crashing and burning in Kindergarten?

1. Deal with the school. If it won't traumatize your child, it might be OK. Work with them. Remember, that schools will pay for evaluations and treatment. If you have an autistic child, for example, you can get state-paid treatment starting at pre-school ages.  If the school won't help and if the situation is traumatizing your kid, do what you need to, including yanking your kid and homeschooling.  There are wonderful resources out there.  Use your judgment.

2. Learn your insurance. They will want to scr*w you over on this one. Work actively with your doctors and your insurance to find a diagnosis that they will use. If not sensory integration, then perhaps pragmatic language. I would strongly urge you to not use the term sensory integration anywhere near an insurance company. Find diagnoses that will work. I am currently on month 8 of trying to get any part of 20-something thousand dollars worth of treatment and evaluations that I spent on my son last year. Not a dime so far. The latest response I got from them is that none of the things that we were treating were "medical problems." And unfortunately a snorted response of "assholes" is considered inappropriate (and worse, is ineffective.)

3. Try to find a mother's group around you. I would suggest looking for special-needs kids in your school district. In our area, some of the school districts have special-needs kids PTA's. If nothing else, these moms can tell you which doctors are good. And believe me, those doctors are few and far between for the conditions that you're talking about. My friend Shannon, whose blog slogan is "We're here, we're quirky, get used to it" is an autism mom who helped found Septar, the Special Education PTA for Redwood City. Here's her blog, Squidalicious.

She also helped create the Can I Sit With You blog that talks about social issues in school:

And here's the special needs kid list that I belong to (among several) in my area. You can join it and ask for advice if you'd like.

4. Start looking for some doctors that you trust. It will take more than one doctor. Neurologists don't know about movement. Movement people don't do vision. Vision therapists don't do hearing, and so forth. You will have to build your own organizational structure and you should go in and try to find diagnoses of these things. This is a broad-system issue. It's rarely just one thing. Note that no doctor helped us until I visited Dr. Susan Johnson, with offices outside of Sacramento and up in Colma, by Grass Valley.

Dr. Johnson gave my son a movement exam and when he couldn't do things like stand on one foot at 7.5 (!) (but who looks for THAT?) told me that balance is located in the same place as hearing in the brain, and that it's a law of nature that if balance is compromised, hearing goes out the window. Therefore, until we got his balance under control, he wouldn’t be listening very well.  Interesting and really gave us insight into some of my son's behavior. She's very smart, very good, and nonstandard. Plus, she worked with her own child, who was PDD-NOS, and he is now happy and doing well in high school. 

Dr. Johnson gave us context.  She made observations about my son and related them to brain development, giving me a baseline and context for how the brain develops, and then she talked about a path that would help my son develop. She told me why.  Think about it.  How many of your doctors tell you why?  Pathetically few.

Comments

[deb from p.s. bohemain]

good tips all of 'em.

i would add one more: consider (STRONGLY!) homeschooling/unschooling and let your wonderful and amazing child be themselves with no pressure to conform to someone else's idea of 'normal'.