Kindegarten question

[shaynap123]

So, I'm just trying gather other thoughts on my dilemma with the public school Ds attends. He is in Kindegarten, and started school going all day. The beginning of school was also the beginning of trailing meds for his ADHD. (Not my idea, I would have preferred to start them in the summer so I could really see the effects for myself) We started with Intuniv - Awful failure, and now he is on Focalin XR and Clonidine.

After two horrendous months of calls from the principal's office every other day, ds constantly cursing and melting down, and even being suspended from school for a day just before Fall Break, we made the decision to cut his schedule in half, and leave to go to daycare after lunch everyday.
Since we've adjusted his meds, and working well with his OT, it feels like he is a different child. So much so, that I am strongly considering trying him back at school for the full day. Would that be really dumb to mess with a good thing? I'm just so torn, and he's made such good steps forward that I don't want to undo the progress made. He is a young 5, so it's not as if repeating Kindegarten hasn't been on our minds.

What would you do?

[hopecounts]

Is easing him in an option?
Try a full day on say a Monday then maybe add in weds
Then Friday
And so on and see how he does.

[shaynap123]

I like the idea about easing him in. Maybe, trying a few days a week and see how it goes.

[akafred]

What is the difference where you are in half day vs full day kindie? In some places full day still does a rest time and has specials and lunch and recess and that accounts for the extra time; in other words there is no extra instructional time. Other places there is a material difference in instruction time etc. If he's learning what he needs to learn in K, which is basics of math and reading and social skills, and has a good daycare program for play/social time/etc, I probably wouldn't mess with the good thing.

[mrsbuttinski]

Some random thoughts.

1. In your siggie you list your son's dxs thusly ADHD/SPD/ASD. It caught my eye; is that how you "see" your DS's issues?

When an individual has an ASD dx, that would be his primary presenting dx unless her develops a significant mental illness like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia which would then be primary. Under the DSM-5, SPD might not be given to a child with ASD since the ASD dx subsumes the same sensory differences. ADHD can be comorbid with ASD, but since the is tremendous overlap in terms of symptoms/behaviors it can be difficult to shake these two free of each other.

It can be devilishly difficult to parse out it what you're seeing is ASD, ADHD or something else entirely. At 21 I still sometimes struggle to decide if something DS did or didn't do was a function of his ASD or his ADHD. It was harder when he was younger. When DS was in the primary grades he seemed off the hook impulsive and oblivious to the unwritten rules of classroom etiquette. We assumed ASD exacerbated by ADHD, but when we sent him to a special reading school which repaired his dyslexia, we found the feral out-of-seat stuff just faded as he became a stronger reader. Turns out little kids with Specific LD also overlap ASD/ADHD in terms of behavior.

2. Why #1 matters.

If you are looking at DS's behavior in the context of ADHD, you may be convinced finding the right meds "fixed" the problem. But if his difficulties in school are more ASD driven- less physical stamina related to hypotonia, fine motor delays or dysgraphia; less emotional stamina related to delayed social and emotional maturity (kids with ASD are delayed about 1/2 their chronological age compared to NT peers); ot just fatigue from working harder than anyone else in the room to pay attention and not do something wrong- then the improvement you see may be as much a function of lowering his load to something with which he can cope.

3. Retention has repercussions for bright kids on spectrum. If I had a dollar for every psot I've read from an angry adult with HFA or Aspergers who is still angry with their mother and humiliated at being "held back" after starting school I could take a nice vacation. Sometimes it is necessary, but it's not an easy answer. If the reason your child is struggling is the immaturity associated with ASD, flunking one year isn't going to even begin to level the playing field. At 21, DS seems to have the social and emotional bandwidth somewhere between 15 and 18 and yet he's held to standards by society of a true adult.

4. It could be he's not ready for full day. It could be he'd be ready if he were in a setting with more effective supports and accommodations. I know a lot of successful students with HFA and Aspergers who started school in self contained classrooms because they needed the supports, structure and highly qualified ASD specilaists found there. They all eventually bridged to mainstream once they were capable of being successful there. In places where kindie is half day, sometimes a hybrid set up is best- mornings in a special ASD class and afternoons in mainstream to practice their social skills.

5. Or it could be he could do full day now that his meds have been tweaked. That might be the case if the calls from school were mostly after lunch. A lot of families choose to start half days and add lunch and then afternoons as the child becomes more used to the longer day. I'd look at the schedule of the class- many schools with full day kindie do academics early in the day, then lunch, recess, specials and less structured "free choice" activities. It could be that he's fine during the teacher led and structured parts of the day but struggles with less structure or even sensory issues related to specials- DS really, really struggled in elementary with music (he has perfect pitch and has issues with off-key singing even now- being photographer on the Christmas trains while folks sang carols was not his idea of bliss), gym which was noisy, physically challenging and near the malodorous cafeteria. Recess could be complicated if there are kids who bully or tease.