Not What I Expected: Help and Hope for Parents of Atypical Children

by Rita Eichenstein

Why didn’t Isobel’s elementary school recommend that she be tested? The unfortunate answer: schools don’t typically recommend testing first-graders because they are in denial. Yes, schools can also be in denial about the needs of atypical children. Despite extensive research on the importance of early intervention, it is quite common for schools and even pediatricians to take a “wait-and-see” approach that ends up having the effect of “wait to fail.” Administrators and teachers are aware that there is normal variation in the learning timeline of different children, so students are not screened until they show a profound lag in academic mastery or pronounced difficulty in social-emotional behaviors. In some schools, this means it can take until third grade or later to discover that a child is lagging. It is not uncommon for me to test children who are already in middle school or even high school and have somehow scraped by, eluding the casual and benign eye of their teachers for many years.