Successful travels

We are home from our whirlwind trip to NC. Thanks for all the prayers, we had a safe trip and even spent a day in Greensboro taking care of several business issues and visiting with friends. We also got some confirmation on some of the concerns we have had regarding Ryan's learning differences. I will take a few moments here to recap our trip.

We traveled to Chapel Hill to meet with a couple of learning specialists at the Center for Student Success. The Center is a part of the organization All Kind of Minds. Dr. Mel Levine, a pediatrician, began looking at how and why children process information. When the labels ADD and ADHD became very fashionable, Dr. Levine was much more concerned as to why some children have the difficulties and some do not. He developed a system whereby a student can be evaluated and have a neurodevelopment profile defining the student's strengths and weaknesses. Once this is done, strategies are developed to help the student use his/her strengths and work around his/her weaknesses. The evaluation is done by educational specialists and pediatric neurodevelopmentalists.

The whole process was very respectful and positive. Ryan spent about 4 hours with the clinicians while Edgar and I sat in a room observing the whole process via a computer monitor and headsets. At the end of the morning, we went to a long lunch while the clinicians conferred. After lunch, we met together and they told Ryan what a terrific brain he has and explained some of what they had learned about how he thinks. It was important that through out the entire process Ryan was included and we all did our best to explain to him why we were there and what we were doing. We will get a detailed report in 2-3 weeks but this is a brief summary:

Assets:
1. Receptive language: understands what he hears and reads
2. Expressive language: communicates his ideas
3. Memory: remembering, storing, retrieving what he has learned
4. Higher order cognition: being a good thinker
5. Sequential ordering: recognizing and putting things in proper order
6. Gross Motor Functions: large motor coordination

Areas to Work on and Around
1. Attention Controls:
A. Processing controls--having trouble processing input deeply, staying focused,
getting distracted, and taking 'mind trips'--especially with visual input
B. Mental effort--running out of fuel to process
2. Graphomotor function: handwriting

One very interesting thought was that he needs to see and ENT and possibly have his adenoids removed. Although he gets enough sleep, it is not necessarily restful sleep and therefore when new info is presented, he responses by being very tired and listless.

At any rate, there is much more to come but we think he will repeat first grade and go to the local public school. Our prayers now are that he will not have to wait 3 months to get an IEP (individualized educational plan). Once he has the IEP he can begin to get special services. I have expressed three main concerns with the assistant principal: Ryan needs a nurturing teacher who is OK with hugging him some, he cannot do a lot of homework--he struggles so with writing, and a 6 hour school day is huge for him. We also want to protect his self image and help him be a confident learner.

We rest in the fact that we know he is 'fearfully and wonderfully made', and we are so grateful that God entrusted him to our care. He brings such joy to our home and we know that with God's grace he will have a wonderful year next year.

Thank you again for your prayers and concerns. I will try to let you know as we learn more and discover practical strategies to best help him.