Friday, January 24, 2014

Our journey with Lamb 2 Part 3

I need to back up in the story a little. We did take summer break from homeschool and also the Lambs only went to piano lessons once a month this summer instead of every week. After our summer break when we went back to homeschool, Lamb 2 melted down and had tantrums about every other day of school. I had been looking forward to having all 3 Lambs at home for homeschool and the beginning of our time together was a disaster. I had planned to get into a routine of more academics after less academics the last few years due to moving and Lamb 3 being in preschool. It looked like this was not going to work with Lamb 2 disrupting "class" so often.
Also the first time Lamb 2 had piano lessons after summer break, the piano teacher came out to the car to talk to me. She said Lamb 2 had no memory of any of the notes-not treble or bass clef. She honestly didn't know what to do at that point as he was so eager to learn to play piano but seemed farther behind then than he was after a few weeks of lessons.
Because of what happened after summer break I started to see the wisdom of our family doctor in having Lamb 2 see a child psychologist. Our family doctor referred us to one psychologist but he had a very long wait so the scheduler decided to refer us to a different one. When he saw our paperwork he decided to refer us to a counselor that did play therapy. We got a babysitter for Lamb 1 and 3 and took Lamb 2 to this counselor. We were expecting her to evaluate him and she expected to meet him and begin therapy for anger management with him due to his tantrums. Her office had a candle burning that really bothered my allergies. She spoke to us as parents and barely spoke to Lamb 2. When she found out that we both had different expectations of what was to be done with Lamb 2 (us-evaluation/her-therapy) she decided to send us back to the psychologist that we were referred to do some academic testing. She warned us that it takes several months to get into this psychologist. But because she was referring us, we might be able to get in a little faster. We felt so bad that Lamb 2 had to go through that meeting with her when it wasn't really necessary for him to be there. But the good that came out of that was we did get into the child psychologist less than a month later, not a 3 month wait. We also had a very good discussion with her that affirmed all my mommy gut feelings-homeschooling was the best thing for Lamb 2, I could handle teaching Lamb 2 even if he had a learning disability, etc. It was so helpful for a professional to tell me this.
The child psychologist evaluated Lamb 2 and gave a very long academic test. We got a babysitter for all 3 Lambs and Ram and I went to hear the results of his evaluation. He told us Lamb 2 had a learning disability and it would not be impossible for him to learn to read but very very difficult. He told us Lamb 2 was academically behind in almost every subject except for math. He told us Lamb 2 had vision difficulties. He told us Lamb 2 has an incredible memory-he had never evaluated a child with such a high score on this part. He read a story to Lamb 2 and then asked Lamb 2 to retell the story. Lamb 2 repeated the story almost word for word to him. Then he had Lamb 2 do another task. After about 20 minutes he asked Lamb 2 to retell the story. Lamb 2 repeated the story almost word for word again. The child psychologist evaluation was very helpful to rule out autism spectrum and see Lamb 2's strengths and weaknesses.

I'll review God's answer to prayers again here and continue tomorrow.
1. Due to the mixup of who should see him, Lamb 2 got into the child psychologist much faster than is normal.
2. The child psychologist was very helpful and showed Ram and Ewe that vision difficulties are Lamb 2's biggest problem, but it is possible that there is more involved than just vision difficulties.
3. My friend Joelle was so kind to babysit our wild Lambs several times so we could go to all these consultations without the Lambs. It is very difficult to find a babysitter during the school day and we are so thankful for her help.

1 comment:

Joelle said...

your boys were very well behaved for me - I didn't think they were wild! I just wanted to make sure you knew that :)