My 6 year old son has significant delays, particularly in speech/communication. We had him in a private pre-school where the teachers pointed out that he had some issues that they interpreted to be autistic. We proceeded to have him evaluated by a developmental pediatrician who had an ADOS study completed and he was deemed to be ”much too social and imaginative to be autistic but he was on the autistic spectrum relative to communication”. He also has trouble with his recall and auditory processing and is a visual learner. Since private school was not an option given that he receives a myriad of services including PT, OT, and speech, we placed him in our local elementary school for kindergarten. For the first semester, he was in a standard kindergarten class but this semester he is in a special education classroom ½ day and a standard kindergarten class for ½ day. It breaks my heart to see him struggle as he is very social and just wants to be like everyone else but recognizes he has learning disabilities. With his classmates just beginning to read, we can tell it troubles him as he asks us “what happens if I don’t learn to read?”. The school completed a IQ test which was conducted by an educational psychologist and his score was a 76. The psychologist also told us that she does not think he has a learning disability and that the slow development is a result of the low IQ. This was very upsetting as both my wife and I did well in school and of course want our son to his best. He also has a special needs sister who is profoundly disabled and we are doing all we can to provide all the support we can including a tutor on weekend for one hour as well as private speech therapist twice a week. With this said, we do not pressure our son and provide much love and support and are trying to focus/develop his strengths.
1. What are the anticipated outcomes?
2. Could the IQ score be wrong given his auditory processing issues?
Thanks in advance for your responses.
Dad