An Interesting Case

That's what the Educational Psychologists called Mstr A today. I'm quite pleased really, as the whole class was assesed in November, Mstr A was assessed by the senior EP in Dec, then she asked if a trainee could assess him again earlier this week. Naturally I said yes. I'm all for trainees getting the "hands on" training they need, they usually have more time per case, they are always fully committed to doing absolutely everything possible & they have a built in double check & sounding board in their trainer. I got doubly lucky this time as the trainee is only a couple of months off being fully qualified.

Anyway, it meant that the senior EP saw him for about 90 mins last term, and trainee EP saw him for 3 hours on Weds - 90 mins in class & 90 mins one-to-one. They wanted to meet with me before writing thier report "to get a feel of how he behaves at home", or in other words to decide if my parenting was the problem;-) So we met up this morning.

I think we established fairly quickly that Mstr A is the same at home, school or elsewhere. They also immediately agreed that there was no sign of ADD/Hyperactivity type things, even though his behaviour sometimes looks similar. In fact his concentration levels were slightly above what is expected at 5 years old. Trainee suggested that some of the problem was that he was so far advanced academically - something I've refused to contemplate as how arrogant can a parent be? Hearing a parent say, "oh, he's not naughty, it's just that he's a genius" makes me want to slap them usually.

I pointed out that it was only when I told the teacher he was ahead academically that she even set him any work, as he refused to do any of the tests, so she assumed he couldn't. Trainee suggested that in her one-to-one he would only perform tests if he could understand the purpose of them, so he'd probably refused to do the starting school ones because they were boring & pointless to him. She is going to re-test him in all subjects using a more flexible approach, to get a proper level for him.

They also said that although he was very behind socially in some ways (playing with other children, recognising when to start/stop doing things, understanding the difference between doing an activity with a baby/child/adult etc), he was emotionally advanced in other ways - they cited his sence of humour which was what they would expect from a 7/8 yer old! Wierd huh?

So...... We don't have a "diagnosis", but they have agreed there is definitely some good work they can do with him. They are talking to his teachers tomorrow, then will write up the proper report which should be with me (& the school) in a week or so. Good progress all in all I think.