Tas, as far as the questionairre, I would do something a bit sneaky and just do a verbal interview with the teacher and fill in the sheet from there. Most of what is on those you can work into a casual conversation about your DD with her teacher. I would then provide both to the pdoc and verify they are fine with this method, because it is an important part of med management.
Long term, you will need to know whether the school has a policy about teachers discussing students amongst themselves (at my DS's school, teachers are not allowed to talk about the kids) as you can wind up with a school full of teachers biased against your DD. If all the teachers are aware of specific issues your daughter had and are biased against her, or your cannot work with the director, I would think about pulling her out.
Before you consider that too seriously though, it would be good to have a formal meeting with the director and the teacher to discuss your DD's progress since she began treatment. You'll get a lot of clues from this meeting about how your DD will be viewed by the school going foreward.
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right on. I went thru this with that last year w/ my son. I gave the form to the dr and she laughed at it and said that over her many many years of being a dr she had not seen ONE of those forms that was not contradicting the teacher filling it out. She said they all do that. I asked our new neuropsy if i needed a form for the teachers to fill out, he told me if i wanted to, but he didn't need to see it, he says they are all inaccurate and don't help him with a diagnosis. that's sad isn't it! Even the dr's know how bad the teachers are about keeping it consistency.
I would just go right to the director with all of the contradictory data circled, and tell her that the form MUST be filled out by the teacher alone, doctor's orders. Give the teacher a new form.
Thank you guys for your great suggestions and support. It is a private school. whenever I get feedback from her teacher it is reasonable and reliable but when the director gets involved my daughter ends up looking like she needs to be institutionalized.
I am going to talk to her teacher tomorrow and find out what was going on when they were filling out the form.
My concern with my daughter staying at this school is that the black cloud of the directors opinions will follow my daughter through every grade and influence every teacher she has. Nothing is low key at this school. My son is also going here as a preschooler and I have already seen the effect my daughters reputation in the eyes of the director on him. The teachers are now sending daily reports home for him with "ADHD" type verbage: "...was having trouble sitting still and focusing in circle, ...seemed very unfocused and hyper today." Mind you he is only 2.
It is all so very irritating to me.
Tas, as far as the questionairre, I would do something a bit sneaky and just do a verbal interview with the teacher and fill in the sheet from there. Most of what is on those you can work into a casual conversation about your DD with her teacher. I would then provide both to the pdoc and verify they are fine with this method, because it is an important part of med management.
Long term, you will need to know whether the school has a policy about teachers discussing students amongst themselves (at my DS's school, teachers are not allowed to talk about the kids) as you can wind up with a school full of teachers biased against your DD. If all the teachers are aware of specific issues your daughter had and are biased against her, or your cannot work with the director, I would think about pulling her out.
Before you consider that too seriously though, it would be good to have a formal meeting with the director and the teacher to discuss your DD's progress since she began treatment. You'll get a lot of clues from this meeting about how your DD will be viewed by the school going foreward.
.IMac38945.7036458333
I gave a child behavior checklist to my daughters kindergarten teacher with specific instructions to fill it out with her behavior as it is in the past month or so on medication. This is extremely important for her evaluation at her psychiatrist. The busy body director got involved in filling it out and together they scored her as having nearly every single behavior on the sheet. It is so inconsistant with the daily reports and ADHD question checklist I have given her that she has filled out for me by herself in the last couple months. According to the way they filled this thing out my daughter scores as clinical for every childhood disorder that the sheet measures. This is about as unhelpful as it gets.
I cannot give her teacher anything without the director sticking her nose in it. They did not follow the directions I gave. Additionally they scores contradicting questions as both positive. It makes no sense. like saying she is disobediant and saying she follows the rules too closely. Say she does not give and receive affection on the questionaire and then in her comments at the bottom saying Hailey is very affectionate. Stupid!!! What could possibly be the motivation for doing this this way. The other thing about this director is that if she sees my daughter display a behavior once than that behavior is a central part of my daughters character. It is so aggravating.
There was a one month time when my daughter started kindergarten that she did display many of the behaviors on the checklist and this is the image burned into the directors head. She has improved so much scince then and it is totally not reflected in this.
Alright. I am done raging. Is it time to find a new school for her??
As a fellow private schooler, I say talk to the school, let them know your concerns and investigate other options. Set a deadline for a turnaround from the director and if you don't see a positive change, put out your other applications. That's what I say, but if it were me, I would pull my kids out, at least by the end of the year, make sure that any records which transferred did not contain any negative comments relating to ADHD (positive or neutral would be ok if you do not want to withhold the info or are still working out meds and behavior could be a problem at a new school) and put them somewhere better.
The fact is, you pay a premium for a private education. I am assuming this is because you want the best opportunity/environment possible for your kids, and if you cannot get that where you are at, you should find somewhere where you can. Don't pay a school good money to label your kids.
graciepoints38806.6406365741If you want a true diagnosis, I wouldn't use the school, even filling in forms. I'd see a NeuroPsychologist. They are excellent at detecting ADHD and beyond and pinpointing problems. After you get a dx., then see how the school responds to the findings. That's what I'd do.I have been looking around at my options. It is pretty difficult here in the silicon valley to find private schools that will take a child that has the emotional reactivity that my daughter has. It seems to be her only residual problem that the meds arent quite covering. She has an average of 1 tantrum per week at school. In reality she will go for a few weeks with no tantrums, then have three in one week. Not very many private schools have the wearwithall or resources or whatever to deal with it. They all want easy brilliant kids. She's brilliant but by no means easy. I'm working very hard with her psych to get the meds right. Perhaps when we get the best coverage of symptoms possible I will investigate our school options...
Yeah. She puts on a show of adoring her when she talks to me. She praises her and tells me how good she is doing and then I get the questionaire. Maybe its just extreme incompitance. As I said earlier her motivations are a mystery to me..IMac38945.7038773148