<p>vision and hearing are fine, ths school tests people like him all the time for these things.
autism, I will go ask and make sure they look into it.
he does not have FAS, because he still has his lip dent. All FAS kids do not have a lip dent. Its the little dent right below the nose.</p>
<p>I would suggest a vision therapy evaluation. Given parents’ history, he may also have fetal alcohol syndrome which causes many brain problems. Poor kid!</p>
<p>ps vision therapy probs can happen even with 20/20 vision… it had to do with function & coordination. Kids can often become exhausted easily when working and give up easily because their eyes don’t behave correcty & are not coordinated together or smooth…</p>
<p>look at visiontherapy.com for some info.</p>
<p>Thank you for your post, you are doing a great thing and I truly admire you.</p>
<p>If he likes games, but you think that chess is too much, you can start a modified “chess game” with only a few pieces. For example, you can play with only some pawns and a King for each side and the idea of the game is to be the first to get a pawn to the end of the board. This teaches how the pawns and King move and some other basic ideas. You can build on that if you see that he has an interest.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about his age, even kindergartners can play if they have an interest. That is the key–if they have an interest. With an interest, they are eager to learn.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Keep up the good work! I would seriously work with the grandmother to get the school to look at assessing him educationally. This could provide information regarding his processing deficits. It may be done already, if they are considering him “special”, but if it is, then he should have a handicapping designation and an IEP (has to meet the criteria, don’t know without the testing). This can be done through the schools, no cost to grandmother. Good luck and keep working!!!</p>
<p>About self-esteem: in my experience with troubled kids, self-esteem is very often a problem. I’ve found that they are willing to try more things, and not just give up or shut down, if they trust me (develops over time) and if I arrange for the next steps to be just right, not too big, not too little.</p>
<p>Then, when they’ve done something well, I can praise that one step only. I find that students with low self-esteem cannot necessarily accept a comment like “you are smart” but they can accept a comment like “that was a smart idea” because really it can’'t be denied, they can see for themselves that they did some specific thing correctly or well.</p>
<p>Someone else who works with troubled kids told me that her preferred technique is to say “you must be proud of yourself”, which is not actually praise and so they can accept it. I don’t use that approach (I sometimes say, “I am proud of you”, which also cannot really be denied since I am reporting my own feelings and not making a statement of value or worth) but she finds it effective in her situation.</p>
<p>my brother is in 2nd grade (and also stayed back) and still cant read. hes not mentally disabled, he just has very severe learning disabilities. he goes to a special tutor and has an aide who helps him each day in school. its a struggle for him so a lot of times he just gives up.
keep giving this kid attention, but dont think that he is mentally disabled, he’s only in kindergarten. he may need a professional tutor to speed up the process.</p>