I have written several times over the past few months about the stress of parenting an adopted child with special needs. My adopted child has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as well as across-the-board learning disabilities. The combination has made third grade just oodles of fun. Right now, dealing with my special needs adopted child’s many issues is the largest stressor in my life.

We have now reached the halfway point of third grade, and things are not looking good. I spend an hour on homework with him each day, and I have to walk him through every single step because of his learning disabilities. He cannot read long passages or process multi-step questions. He also reads by the word, not the phrase, and frequently “forgets” what he read by the time he gets to the end of the paragraph.

Are you wondering if your child is developing on target, ready for school, or needs intervention? If your child sometimes has difficulty mastering new skills, or learning, you may be wondering if your child has learning problems. These concerns may be at the forefront of your thoughts if your child was recently adopted from foster care, an orphanage setting, or was exposed to drugs, alcohol, or violence. When parenting older adopted children, psychological testing, educational testing and assessments can become common items in your child’s yearly agenda. The school psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists tend to rattle off test and assessment names or acronyms. Then they place the commonly used abbreviated names, usually initials, on documents such as IEPs to support their educational or therapeutic recommendations for your child. Apparently, they think we all know exactly what those tests are, how they are given, and what they prove or disprove about the abilities of our children. The names of these tests become familiar over the years, however I still have no idea what they really are. Therefore, we at Adoption Under One Roof are researching specific tests to help give our readers insight during IEPs and meetings with therapist.

Today’s topic is SB-5: Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales - Fifth Edition.

As I have shared several times, my adopted child has special needs, including learning disabilities. His learning disabilities have made third grade quite a challenge, especially in his reading class. His lack of fluency in reading affects his ability to succeed in all of his other classes, even in math, which is his strong class. If he cannot read the text of the math problem well, then he is going to struggle with solving the problem.

I decided to look into getting my adopted child a tutor, and that wound up being a lot more work than I would have expected, doubly so since they are pretty expensive, charging anywhere from $30 to $50 an hour. If somebody wanted to pay me $30 to $50 an hour, I would definitely return their calls, but I digress… I had a heck of a time getting several leads to return my phone calls.

I also looked into some learning centers, but they are very pricey and don’t offer one-on-one work. My adopted child is already getting small group attention at school. I really want someone who will focus on his individual needs.

I was very fortunate to find the perfect tutor, and she is even a teacher at my son’s school!

As I wrote about previously, I pushed for an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for my adopted child when he was still in the second grade. The staff at his school was skeptical at first because his performance was on the low end of normal. However, I knew that there was no way that my adopted child with special needs would be able to sit through a standardized test without modifications, and in North Carolina, standardized testing begins in the third grade.

When I met with the Special Education teacher for the first time, she summed up my concerns by saying, “You want to get an IEP in place before everything blows up in the third grade, right?” Talk about a succinct way to put it! Sure enough, my adopted child qualified for an IEP, and the process identified several learning disabilities. My son was able to begin the third grade with modifications in place.

We are now one quarter into the school year, and my adopted child just took his first benchmarks, which is pretty much the first practice standardized test. The purpose is to give the children experience in sitting through a real test as well as to identify any issues that need to be addressed before the real deal takes place at the end of the school year. My kid did not do well.