How to turn regression around-very worried-need some input

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My daughter is 7. In Kinder she was in a wonderful small school and did fairly well. It did lack structure so I thought Public School with modifications and supports would be better. The entire year last year my daughter regressed horribly due to the school's refusal to provide adequate supports. They tried to do minimal half-***ed things but my daughter spent the entire school year in tremendous fear and anxiety. She went in to public school reading K level books and writing fairly well (with private OT supports) and over the course of last year she began to refuse to read and her writing became horrendous (really, really bad). The public school told me I was blowing things out of proportion, that she would come around, etc, etc, etc and proceeded to drag me along while my daughter was in panic on a daily basis. It was so bad mid year that her Dev Pedi put her on anti anxiety meds. By the end of last year she was talking about dying a lot, was aggressive and violent with me and others, and was having daily drawn out meltdowns.

This year I finally got wise and pulled her from public school and put her back in private. Socially and anxiety-wise she is doing much better. She is still hesitant to go to school in the morning but comes home in a pretty good mood with minimal complaints. BUT the school work IS SO HARD for her. She still is not reading. Her writing is perhaps beginning of K level. They had a writing assignment this week and today I saw all of them in the teachers basket and picked up the stack to peruse them. The drastic differences in theirs and hers was startling. The content, the writing, the quality-all of it was very poor.

I talked to the administrator and she stated they are focusing on getting her anxiety levels down before they tackle the academics. While I agree with this stance I am very worried for my daughter. Will she catch up? Will we be able to make up for the regression? They are sending her teacher to a workshop for teaching AS children, hopefully she will get some tips there. I am just so worried. Her IQ tests showed she is capable of better work. It took her 45 minutes, with much erasing, difficult thought gathering to try to complete a five sentence paper. I am very worried and would like to know if anyone else has faced this or what would you do?

Thank you.

My NT daughter was similar, it turns out she has dyspraxia, maybe your daughter also has one of the dys-things?

To me, it sounds like anxienty in a too-busy place is the right thing to focus on first.

Has your daughter thought about her seating? Can you arrange a private time when you and your daughter can enter the empty classroom, and she can wander around and decide where her favourite seat would be? Having control! Having a few precious things she can control may be the key. (suggest near a door or window or the teacher's desk)

Try getting her to carry a personal object of some sort. A squishyball, a keychain, a shoelace (or zipper) clip, or some other visual or tactile item. I carry a pocketwatch with a thick engraving on the lid wherever I go. That it's a watch is of minimal value - its main advantage is that it fits snugly into the palm of my hand and it has a button on it. This gives her senses a focal distraction. It is also an item who's presence and location she can control. A jazzy pencil might do the trick. Go to a novelty shop and browse. They always have the best "itemery" for this kind of project.
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Note: There was another parent here who experienced the "much erasing" issue, but I can't recall who. I suggested vision issues or arm pain to him/her but the situation was presented differently - anxiety wasn't the central issue.

Maybe the next time she does a writing assignment tell her to do the assignment without erasing, and that she can do another copy after the first one is finished to make it perfect. Even if this means she crosses out sentences, you'll be able to see what she doesn't like about her 'discarded' sentences and have more of a chance to revue and peruse and identify what it might be that's making her want to discard what she has written....

I agree with tackling the anxiety first. Once she gets to a place where she is feeling comfortable and safe at school, she will probably surprise you with how quickly she catches up academically (this is what we are experiencing with our sons right now).

This is my son to a tee. His papers are so beat up by the time he is finished with them that it looks like a dog has used them for a chew toy in the backyard! For him it is most definitely anxiety and an OCD-like perfectionism. There are a few things we have done to help:
-put a time limit on homework. After 20-30 minutes homework time is done, even if things aren't all finished. This way she doesn't feel like she's stuck working FOREVER, and homework time is up before the real frustration and anxiety has a chance to set in.
-don't worry about neatness at all. Focus on concepts and content. Make sure she understands the point of the exercise, but don't get mired down in printing/writing technique. Soon enough she'll be working primarily on a keyboard anyway.
-limit "busywork", and have alternatives for when lots of printing is involved. For instance at home if you scribe for her, maybe she will be able to come up with ideas and organize them more effectively. At school maybe she could tell her ideas verbally,, or a teacher or classmate could scribe for her.
-practice accepting "good enough" if perfectionism is an issue
-make sure she gets to spend plenty of time doing the things that she is good at to foster her feeling of competency, which can then "spill over" into how she sees herself as a student
-praise her for where she is at. It doesn't really matter what those IQ tests showed. You can be a genius level and do poorly academically if your anxiety/sensory issues etc. are out of control, or if you have lows in executive functioning etc. along with the highs. She has to work twice as hard as those other kids at every single thing she does all day long just to get through! I know it is hard, but I would completely put aside the goal of her keeping abreast of her peers academically for now and just work on her being the healthiest, happiest best her she can be right now. When she feels relaxed and safe the rest of it will come a million times easier.

Thanks for the advice.

I have several problems going on simultaneously and they are all affecting what is going on:

#1-the school problems last year created a general "refusal" mindset in her that we can't overcome. When she sees a page in a book with more than 5 words or so she completely shuts down. Yet on the computer or on TV, she regularly reads very difficult words so I know she "can" do it.

#2-the assignments at school can be tough-especially when they target those Executive Functioning deficits. This particular paper was on "Friends" (because there was some cliques beginning in the class so they did this special paper). My daughter suffered and struggled for an hour about how she doesn't know what "friend" means. I gave her several examples-neighbors, people she's known since she was born, people she played with this week, and friends on tv shows-however, she couldn't apply that to what the lesson was "What is a Friend to you?". She finally struggled with 5 sentences that were not really on point but she can't "make up" stuff-she is very picky about content of her writing and suffers on formulating ideas.

#3-the school is counting off for misformed letters in writing. So she can make a 100 on the content but get counted off 10-20 points for misformed letters-such as n's that look like w's, etc, etc.

#4-she does still have some social anxiety. The teacher was able to visit with my daughter outside of school with me present and she later told me that on that day she finally saw the "true Grace" that she hasn't seen before at school. That breaks my heart! I think she is still (and might perhaps always be) defensive and shut down at school.

#5-when I work with her after school it is difficult. she doesn't respond well to my instructions, is tired after a long day of holding it together at school, and gets cranky and irritable if I redirect her to wortk on penmanship or help her with a concept that she is struggling with.

#6-the perfectionism you mention. She has this and that plays into the erasing, erasing, erasing. She spends so much time erasing and rewriting that she loses the train of thought. It's a ficious cycle. I don't think she would be able to do a lesson without erasing.

I have tried to give her a personal object but she spent too much time fidgeting with it and it drew her attention away from the lesson. She will occassionally take something. Her seating placement is prime-and there are only 6 kids in her class. She seems ok with about half of them and the teacher is great at helping her with the anxiety.

I do hope this will get better, I am at a loss on how to help. She is not currently in OT, I was wondering if we should get her back into weekly OT although it is very expensive.

thanks

I like this idea a lot. I guess I just needed to be told that it's ok to not worry about these things and focus on how well she is doing on the things she is good at. She is very good at math!

Thanks!

If I don't make my letters right I'm going to lose points! I HAVE to erase!

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Tell the teacher to lay off the "perfect letters" lost points crap for your daughter. You might not want to single your daughter out in this way - by having people make exceptions for her only - but if you want to cut back on at least SOME of the erasing, and get at least SOME of the credit she's due for her written content, and reduce at least SOME of her homework anxiety (and classroom presentation / in class efforts anxiety) then THAT is the main step to take....

No?

And then...

Make some special time with YOU as the teacher, at home, separate from homework efforts (and I think limiting homework time as another poster suggested makes excellent sense - you now have more time for MY project idea ) in which YOU teach her to form her letters properly. Pick one letter a week (like my teachers did) and focus on writing 3 pages of that letter over and over in one of those kid-sized hilroy books with the fat lines and half-line dotted markings. "It's letter practice time!" - you get three cookies for ever half decent page of letter q's.

- When my teachers did this with me, they wrote the letter as it was suppossed to look at the start of each line and took away my erasers.

- My appologies if the last post sounded "scolding" or "commanding" - My intention was to exaggerate a bit to make the idea come through.. Someone pmed me to say I sounded like a [big bad word] in it...

A reading trick we employed with excellent results: we leave the close captioning on whenever the TV is on. DS couldn't help but read it (after complaining a bit about it blocking the pictures, but we got past that) and it improved his reading skills in books, though he still has difficulty with books that have no illustrations (not unusual for a 4th grader, let alone one with AS.)

It didn't seem overly harsh to me.

We already do the practice you recommend and when she is doing nothing but focusing on the letters she does well. But when she is focusing so much on thought formation and conveying those thoughts in words the attention to detail falls by the wayside.

I have never thought about taking away the erasers-I think she would write over the letters over and over and it would become illegible, that's what she does when she writes with pen.

I give her lots of positive reinforcement for good output. I don't give her cookies but I do have a closet full of little treats and she greatly enjoys being rewarded with something from that stock.

Today she had the highest score on a difficult math test so she is rewarded for that. She has some very strong talents with math but the fact that she won't read or write properly in second grade worries me. My brother (who has AS) didn't read until 3rd grade so perhaps it will come to her in time.

thank you for your suggestions!

Mama_to_Grace

It sounds like you have her in a much better place and it may take some time but chances are she will get "unstuck" about the school refusal as she begins to experience more success. I think success really breeds success with our kiddos just as failures can lead to more failures if they are given too much weight.

I wondered when you said that the OT was very expensive, I know everyone's insurance is different but ours is covering most of the cost of private OT because the pediatrician prescribed it. Perhaps there is a way for it to be more affordable for you?

On the erasing, I made it a rule with my NT son to just draw one single line through a word if it was wrong and write it over, don't scribble it out or erase just draw one neat little line through it and move on. Maybe she would take to that?

Good luck and hang in there. I hope that you will soon be posting about how wonderfully she is doing because I think you are really on the right track!

She does have a co-morbid diagnosis of Dev Coord Disorder, which I've been told is the same as Dev Dyspraxia. It has never been paid much attention to (the dx) as everyone focuses on the Asperger's diagnosis. I am wondering if the dyspraxia is the main concern at play in her writing issues-if so, what do they do for this? Do they eventually write on a keyboard? Does the dyspraxia affect reading?

Don't think it would affect reading, but it may be an issue with the writing.
Does your daughter get headaches or eye strain or etc when reading.
Does blocking off the rest of the page help?
(make a cardboard cutout that only shows one line at a time)
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I think the closed caption tv idea is brilliant. Do it with movies she knows well first (less transition)
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Visual Stress / Meares Irlen was brought up a few months ago in the general forums, and it seemed quite a few people here had it.... http://www.visual-stress.com/what.htm
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Edit: Hmm....
Co-ordination disorder seems to have much in common with Dyspraxia &
"Dev. Dyspraxia may affec tthe handling of tools or lead to pain while writing"
"Dev. Dyspraxia may affect the memory leading to trouble in reading comprehension"
Maybe it would affect reading, afterall.

He reading was real slow to develop, her maths very poor. Her writing is poor due to her poor fine and gross motor control and low muscle tone which is something dyspraxic kids seem to have. She, like your child would delay and slow down doing things or rush through them doing terrible work..her attitude was if I never even try I can't really fail. What worked for her was occupational therapy then from that loads of work on the physical development side, we make her swim, do ballet, athletics - and achieve at these things, we get her on the trampoline, monkey bars, we spent a lot of time on that and continue to challenge and encourage and praise her - which is a key as she tires easily.
Last year her reading went from the lower 25% by age, where she was in remedial reading to the top 5% nationally. She read the young readers version of 'Mao's last dancer' which is a really big book aimed at teens when she was 8 last year. She did it because she wanted to. Basically without putting too fine a point on it, it has been incredible, and she now has a diag of twice exceptional, which is a child with a learning disability who is also gifted.
She is a smart kid, just has Dyspraxia which affects learning, she seems to learn differently and think differently and the body is somehow tied up in all that in ways I don't understand.
So from the little I know I would say the comorbid Dyspraxia could be the issue not the ASD with your little one, anyway worth investigating and getting her assessed by an OT I would say.

Oh and something CockneyRebel posted elsewhere jogged my memory, what got my daughter kickstarted in her interest in reading was finding my old stash of Tin-tin comics over an idle Xmas break. She would look at all the pictures and she really wanted to follow the story, so she learnt a lot quite fast because she finally had a strong reason to. I think comics are great.

nostromo is right - and special interests help, too - another thing we did with DS was get him a "Star Wars Illustrated Encyclopedia" and tell him that if he wanted to know what was in it, he'd have to read it himself. He spent several agonizing days sounding out all the really big words, got over the hump and read it.

Now if I could just find one written in binary to help his math skills....