TangleBones

Today was? Jared’s? parent/teacher conference, and also the day I got his report card (the substitute teacher on Friday forgot to send it home). He did well, of course, but it’s terribly odd having a kid whose report card contains:

• a grade report that shows he’s reading above grade level,
• a letter describing his progress on his IEP goals from his special ed. teacher,?
• a similar letter from his speech teacher, and
• a letter from the gifted and talented coordinator talking about the advanced math work she does with him.

But I guess I’d better get used to it.

Also included were the results of the IQ test the school gave him and the rest of the second grade a few months ago. They used a test that focuses on reasoning with symbols instead of reading or math – the kind of test that autistics are supposed to excel at – and he scored in the 87th percentile. That’s the range where you’ll find most of your lawyers and doctors (and supposedly JFK, though on a different test). Pretty awesome for a kid with a communication disorder.?

Jared never has any problem with his math homework. Often they want him to use some goofy method of adding and subtracting – drawing stacks of blocks or something – and Jared will instead just fill in all the answers then go back and try to figure out what they wanted him to do. I’ve been asking Jared questions to see how well he can stretch his computation skills. “What if instead of adding eleven to eleven we were adding four elevens? How much is that?” As long as I can keep his attention, he can handle a lot of simple multiplication, a skill that I never really mastered until the fifth grade.?

In the same way, Jared reads with a ton of fluency. I’ve heard his classmates read in their monotone staccato drones, “the – cat – sat – on – bat,” but Jared reads with excitement. He changes his pace to match the mood of the scene and emphasizes all the right parts of the sentence: “But I wanted to go outside.” And beyond that, the kid is a whiz at phonics. He sounds out just about anything he sees, and when he makes a mistake on a new word, he usually corrects himself before I can get around to doing it. Last week I read him the first word on his spelling test and got distracted. While I was doing the dishes he went ahead and wrote down the rest of the list from memory. Show-off.

Given his excellent math and vocabulary skills, I wonder how he’d do at a more traditional test. I’m not saying he’d do better – there’s a reason he has a diagnosis – but I’d be curious to see how his skills measure up across a broader range of tasks. Maybe he’d tank some parts of the test, but I’d like to see where he excelled too.

Of course, I should remind you that he still requires a ton of prompting to stay on task, doesn’t interact with the other kids much, and has a real tough time following multi-step directions. The kid isn’t perfect. Every time I go to a meeting like this, one of the teachers will ask, in the most casual of ways, “So, has there been any change in his medication,” before mentioning what a difficult time Jared has paying attention. Hint, hint. But until they come up with a different kind of ADD/ADHD medicine, he won’t be on Ritalin or anything like it. Last time we put him on it he tried pulling his eyes out.?

All in all, it’s been a good semester for the boy.