Principal called police because our 9 year old rode his bike alone

[Pickles516]

You are ignoring this part, aren't you?

"Here's another update

Neuro-psychologist: The psychologist did three rounds of investigation. First he met with our son and performed a ton of tests on him. That took about six hours. Then he met with us and asked us 1001 questions about our son's behavior, likes/dislikes, development, etc. Then he did another 3 hours of testing with our son. Our son does not have ASD or any other neurological thing. The psychologist doesn't know what the big deal is. He says our son is just an intellectual introvert. He also said that our son is extremely stubborn and gets bored with the testing and was intentionally giving incorrect answers and the psychologist said normally the test instructions tell you to stop but he pushed through and kept questioning my son to get to what he really knows. He said many less-skilled professionals would only go by the book and not actually dig in to see what's going on inside my son's head."

Also, Mary Camarata was a university researcher at Vanderbilt for many years. Your comment is laughable that the experience level is the same. I haven't met a SLP yet -- and I have met MANY -- who had anywhere close to her level of expertise.

I wasn’t ignoring anything, and I was speaking directly to the rigor of the degree. OP expressed that someone without a mathematics background couldn’t possibly comprehend his son, and then praises a SLP for being the only one to get him. It’s absurd. I only hold degrees in soft sciences like developmental psychology and education though so y’all are probably just too informed for me.

I get it. People invest a lot of money to get an answer they want. In order for them to feel good about their investment, they need to believe that their experts are smarter than everyone else in the field.

 

[jodifla]

I wasn’t ignoring anything, and I was speaking directly to the rigor of the degree. OP expressed that someone without a mathematics background couldn’t possibly comprehend his son, and then praises a SLP for being the only one to get him. It’s absurd. I only hold degrees in soft sciences like developmental psychology and education though so y’all are probably just too informed for me.

I get it. People invest a lot of money to get an answer they want. In order for them to feel good about their investment, they need to believe that their experts are smarter than everyone else in the field.

You don't "get it" at all.

I'm informed because I've met her several times and watched her evaluate my son. Her years of clinical testing experience were lightyears above anyone else I've ever encountered. SLPs and their "master's" degrees weren't worth anything compared to her years of experience as a clinical researcher at major university.

With each visit we walked away with solid ways to help our son move forward.

And to top it off, the evaluations were a fraction of the price I paid around here. She and her husband, who is a PhD on how children acquire language, were the only people who ever encouraged us about our son, and the only ones who thought my child would become conversational. We also had our son evaluated by a local PhD who specializes in educational testing, a couple times as he got older. He said he'd only once before in a career of 40 years have a child progress so much in language in late middle school/early high school.

The Camaratas were right, everyone else was wrong.

 

[Pickles516]

You don't "get it" at all.

I'm informed because I've met her several times and watched her evaluate my son. Her years of clinical testing experience were lightyears above anyone else I've ever encountered. SLPs and their "master's" degrees weren't worth anything compared to her years of experience as a clinical researcher at major university.

With each visit we walked away with solid ways to help our son move forward.

And to top it off, the evaluations were a fraction of the price I paid around here. She and her husband, who is a PhD on how children acquire language, were the only people who ever encouraged us about our son, and the only ones who thought my child would become conversational. We also had our son evaluated by a local PhD who specializes in educational testing, a couple times as he got older. He said he'd only once before in a career of 40 years have a child progress so much in language in late middle school/early high school.

The Camaratas were right, everyone else was wrong.

Ok.

 

[robinb]

She and her husband, who is a PhD on how children acquire language, were the only people who ever encouraged us about our son, and the only ones who thought my child would become conversational. We also had our son evaluated by a local PhD who specializes in educational testing, a couple times as he got older. He said he'd only once before in a career of 40 years have a child progress so much in language in late middle school/early high school.

The Camaratas were right, everyone else was wrong.

They worked together at as researchers Vanderbilt in what I believe was his lab. It appears that they still work together as a team. I'm glad that she was able to help your son. However, that does not negate the fact that she has a "soft science" masters the same as the school psychologists that the OP distains. FWIW, my DD has a BS in Rehabilitation Psychology and is thinking of studying Dance and Movement Therapy in graduate school. It would be a shame if a parent looked down his nose at her and discounted her own knowledge and experience because she studied "DANCE!".

I wasn’t ignoring anything, and I was speaking directly to the rigor of the degree. OP expressed that someone without a mathematics background couldn’t possibly comprehend his son, and then praises a SLP for being the only one to get him. It’s absurd. I only hold degrees in soft sciences like developmental psychology and education though so y’all are probably just too informed for me.

My degree is in Computer Sciences and my guess that's not "techy" enough either.

 

[DVCcurious]

Ding ding ding.

I hope dad gets the help he needs to deal with the internalized stigmatization of his own autism, so that he can help his son avoid the same feelings as he grows up.
This whole post was, “My son can’t be autistic, and to prove it, I will go into great detail about how I’m autistic as well”.

If being gifted at math is the definition of autistic then I guess I'm autistic.

 

[DVCcurious]

But you agree with them, so it's a completely different thing. My son didn't start having success until we fought against what they were doing.

Once we implement Mary Camarata's plan, it worked the first day. The school had been adding gasoline to the fire and we made no progress until we forced them to try it a different way.

We paid (oh, there's that word "paid". I guess we were shopping for a diagnosis we liked!) Mary to join our first CSE meeting (via phone) in December 2017. The special education team blew her off. When she finished reporting and they hung up the phone they basically ignored everything she said. I was like "Mrs. Camarata thinks our son would do best in a regular classroom with support" and they were like "WE know what's best for your son. Your expert doesn't understand how things work in our school. You need to trust us." It was all downhill from there. I tried to work with them but it was either their way or the highway.

 

[DVCcurious]

It’s also weird, because the woman he’s holding up as the proof of his child not being autistic has an MS in speech pathology, which is an equivalent degree *at best* in terms of educational rigor when compared to an MS or MA in special education. Super strange stuff going on.

You are clearly ignorant of who Mary Camarata is and what she and her husband have accomplished in the field of early childhood speech development challenges. I trust the Camarata's because they are experts. I don't trust the school because they are not experts. It's as simple as that.

If I had a heart problem I would not trust my family physician. I'd go to a heart specialist. Both have medical degrees, but one is an expert and one is a generalist. This is the exact same thing. There are literally thousands of special education teachers in this country. If a person were an expert in that field they'd be working in research and publishing papers and writing books. Not working at an elementary school.

Bill Belichick coaches football. Your local high school's football coach also coaches football. One of them is an expert in that field.

 

[DVCcurious]

With a added dollop of contempt for women who choose non-technical fields.

Mary Camarata is a woman.

Guess your sexism card isn't going to work as well as you thought.

 

[Pickles516]

You are clearly ignorant of who Mary Camarata is and what she and her husband have accomplished in the field of early childhood speech development challenges. I trust the Camarata's because they are experts. I don't trust the school because they are not experts. It's as simple as that.

If I had a heart problem I would not trust my family physician. I'd go to a heart specialist. Both have medical degrees, but one is an expert and one is a generalist. This is the exact same thing. There are literally thousands of special education teachers in this country. If a person were an expert in that field they'd be working in research and publishing papers and writing books. Not working at an elementary school.

Bill Belichick coaches football. Your local high school's football coach also coaches football. One of them is an expert in that field.

I truly hope you work out your issues so that your son may be supported in working out his.

 

[robinb]

Mary Camarata is a woman.

Guess your sexism card isn't going to work as well as you thought.

I was speaking to your post earlier today.

 

[WebmasterKathy]

Keep the discourse respectful, please.

 

[Lilsia]

This post is not necessarily directed at the person I'm quoting. But I'm quoting this because you will hear this argument a lot, and it's a false argument. This post is for any parent who has a "different" child. I know the pressure you are under if you have a "different" child and I want to provide a new perspective for you to consider. I was going to respond originally with this point but I didn't and even though it's like 4 months later I decided I'm going to.

Suppose there was a society that invented the toothbrush. Yet instead of using it to brush their teeth they used it to clean the toilet. It's small and maneuverable and the bristles would work well cleaning something. Now, suppose I took you to this society and you didn't know about their toothbrush use. I told you I was taking you to three psychology "experts" and they were going to assess your sanity. The first psychology expert took you to a bathroom and gave you a toothbrush and asked you to demonstrate how to use it. So you start brushing your teeth. What would the first expert think of you? Now suppose the second and a third did the same test. Would you say those three "experts" are wrong when they assess you as crazy for using a toothbrush to brush your teeth? Or do you admit these "experts" are wrong?

THIS is the problem with the argument "that 3 schools who have independently seen your son...". It's not "3 schools" it's one train of thought. All of the public school personnel went to college for the same things, hung out with the same crowd, took the same classes, and have the same work partners. OF COURSE they all think the same thing about my son. The school psychologist who abused my son majored in dance in college. DANCE! And she thinks she can assess mathematically gifted kids? No, she can only asses whether a kid likes to have a conversation.

My niece was going to be a "neuroscientist". That was her life's dream. She went to college, couldn't hack biology and changed her major to psychology and now she's going to graduate school and will probably end up working as a school psychologist. Yet SHE is going to assess young kids (primarily boys, look up the stats) who are scientifically/mathematically gifted? She can't relate to them. of course she'll think there's something wrong with them.

I was born in 1976. In 1993 I had friends in high school who built computers. They took a bunch of hardware, put it together, wrote the OS, and built the freaking thing. They were "weird". Do you know anyone who built a computer at 16 years old? Do you think anybody at my son's school knows someone like them? Of course not. We tend to hang around people like us. So people who work at an elementary school hung around non-technical people. They don't understand technical people.

My son is exactly like me. I am highly analytical and I "get" math the way Michael Jordan "gets" basketball. This morning at breakfast I asked if we were going to take down his birthday (Feb 9) signs on February 1st (I meant to say March 1st). He said "dad, February first is 344 days away. I think we're going to take them down on March 1st". Now, a "normal" person would have pointed out that my February 1st comment was wrong and I meant March 1st. But my son doesn't think like that. Instead he calculated how long until the upcoming February 1st and told me it was 344 days away. How many 10 year olds do that? My son taught himself multiplication at 8 years old. How many 8 year olds do that?

If you give my son a date within the next 3 years he will tell you the day of the week. So if you say "John what day of the week is August 3 2023" he'll tell you it's Thursday in about 20 seconds. I can do this. But until my son started doing this a couple months ago I'd never met anyone else who can. My previous boss thought I was a carnival sideshow and would start all of our team meetings asking me the day of a week for a certain date in the future. She thought it was amazing I could figure it out in my head. My son can do this too at 10 years old. How? It's all math. I do the same thing. It's knowing that the day of the week changes by one each year, then knowing that each month has 28 days which is 4 weeks so those cancel and then you add up the remaining days and get the answer. So here's how you figure out August 3, 2023. March 3 2022 is 9 days away which is a Thursday (the 7 days cancel so you have 2 days + today is Tuesday = Thursday). Then you know March has 3 extra days, April 2, May 3, June 2, July 3 so that is 13 extra days. 14 days cancel so you subtract one day from Thursday and you get Wednesday for August 3 2022. Then you are asked for 2023 so you add a day (365 is 52 weeks + 1 day) and you know that August 3, 2023 is a Thursday. But no one taught me how to do this. I just know how. No one taught my son either, but he just knows.

Mark Zuckerberg had to testify in front of Congress years ago. Facebook hired someone to teach Zuck how to be "normal". Things like how to dress, that he needed to look people in the eye when speaking to them, to wait for the other speaker to finish before he began to answer (look this up if you don't believe me). If Zuckerberg were born in 2010 he would have been placed in an autism special education classroom because he doesn't maintain eye contact while speaking (the school told me that's a red flag you're autistic)

Yet this comment at the top of this post is the "normal" way of thinking: "I think you need to consider if you truly, truly, truly feel that 3 schools, who have independently seen your son..."

Yes, I truly feel that even a million people who majored in English, who are afraid of math, who have never built a computer, or even taken one apart to see what it looks like inside, lack the ability to assess my son. I truly feel that people who quit math at Intermediate Algebra and can't tell you anything about basic stuff like what an integral measures and what it's used for lack the mental skill set to assess my son. I TRULY believe that. I don't say that to be insulting. Rather my point is that we are all different. And you can't assess someone who is radically different from you. You just don't understand them. You don't know how they process information and how they think. I can't assess someone with a language-based brain just like a language-based person can't asses my math-based brain.

To finish up, This post is for people who have a "different" child. You need to entertain the possibility that the people who are assessing your child just don't understand him (or her, but it's 90% boys, again look it up). You need to realize your child has gifts that others can't see or refuse to see or dismiss out of hand.

I have just seen your post and have read through it all at once. It sounds as if you son is gifted and different. The evading of questions at that age is a sign of intelligence. I agree with you, I don't think that schools know how to handle kids like yours and so they are trying to put him into a box that fits what they know. I am shocked at how some posters treated you as if they know better then you and the experts that you had evaluate your child. Insisting that your child has Autism, even after you told them that all of the experts said that he didn't. As if anyone can diagnose that by your post. Not all kids have ASD but that seems to be the catch all diagnoses. It's easy and convenient. And schools can, and do frequently misdiagnose and make mistakes, especially when it comes to a child that is different, like your son. My daughter hated school. She has anxiety and she just did not want to do the work. They wanted to put her in special needs and I told them that she just didn't want to do the work, basically being lazy, not that she was incapable of it. They sent her to the counselor after I said that and asked her if I abused her! They insisted that they test her and we said, go ahead. So we had a meeting after the tests came back and they still wanted her to go into special needs without telling us the results. I said that I won't make any decisions until you show us the results of her IQ test. She was above average IQ. Like I said, she just didn't want to do the work.
I would look into trying to find a school for gifted children. Someplace that does more one on one learning. That way, they can help him succeed in where he is gifted and also bring him up where he needs it. I am so sorry that you had to go through this. The school should be held accountable for what they put you through, especially after you showed them what all of the experts said. There are no words for how badly they handled this. Good for you for fighting for your child.

 

[DVCcurious]

She has anxiety and she just did not want to do the work. They wanted to put her in special needs and I told them that she just didn't want to do the work, basically being lazy, not that she was incapable of it.

Thank you for your kind post. I pulled out this section because this is the EXACT same thing that happened with me. Mary Camarata said my son had extremely high anxiety and would push back in situations that made him uncomfortable. When the school tested him he was defiant and wouldn't answer all the questions. (this is in 2017 before things became personal and I think they were honestly trying to help, after May 2018 when we rejected the self contained classroom they were honestly trying to get us which led to the CPS fiasco).

In our December 2017 CSE meeting the school psychologist (the one who abused him in 2019-2020) said that he scored in the 1% in all these areas. That meant he was learning disabled, etc. And I asked a simple question: How can you possibly assume you know what my son is capable of based off a few tests? You are working on the assumption he tried his best. I'm here to tell you my son rarely tries his best. He has anxiety, he doesn't know you, and he is in a new environment. He doesn't understand the ramifications to him of his performance on that test you're giving him. Those are all reasons why he may have scored poorly.

They blew me off. The psychologist is like 'I KNOW how to test kids! I can get through their barriers! Don't you tell me how to do my job!"

 

[jodifla]

They worked together at as researchers Vanderbilt in what I believe was his lab. It appears that they still work together as a team. I'm glad that she was able to help your son. However, that does not negate the fact that she has a "soft science" masters the same as the school psychologists that the OP distains. FWIW, my DD has a BS in Rehabilitation Psychology and is thinking of studying Dance and Movement Therapy in graduate school. It would be a shame if a parent looked down his nose at her and discounted her own knowledge and experience because she studied "DANCE!".


My degree is in Computer Sciences and my guess that's not "techy" enough either.

So two people may walk out with the same degree, but what they do with the next 20, 30, 40 years makes all the difference in their level of competence in the field.

Being a researcher at a university in your subject field, where you are continuing studies, testing kids, following up on this testing, testing your theories against actual results, publishing research papers, etc. nets very different professional skills than being an SLP in a school setting, from my experience.

I once watched Mary get 5 turns of conversation from my "nonverbal" child in a few minutes -- and she said almost nothing. My child was happy and excited to be conversing. He did not feel punished or less than. Mary was teaching us how to get our child to speak.

Meanwhile, back at home, I was taking my son to pricey, private speech lessons, and would watch remotely as the well-regarded SLP chased my kid around the room and tried to get him to cooperate, him fighting the whole time. I showed the tape to Mary, she made some suggestions for me to give the SLP.

Luckily, this local SLP was open to learning. She tried all of Mary's suggestions, they worked immediately, and it was smooth sailing for her and my son from then on. She said it was quite eye-opening the difference the suggestions made.

So it will depend what skills come out of a dance graduate degree, I would think. By the time we saw the Camaratas, we'd been taking our son to SLPs for 4 years. So it wasn't hard to see the difference when we got more results in 5 minutes than we'd gotten in 4 years.