Neuropsychology Central

[mertel]

My child has an IEP in place for OHI (other health related impairments), but has also shown signs of nonverbal learning disorder, though not
"diagnosed". In order to get help with executive functioning skills in the school system, do I need a definitive diagnosis?

I'm new to this board so any info would help. She has not had a neuropsych eval as of yet, but we are looking into that.

Her evaluation shows her academically on target, but getting D's and F's this past semester due to missing assignments, etc. What to do?

[lash]

I'm not a school psychologist, so this is non-professional advice, and is based entirely on what I understand after working twice a week for one year in an elementary school about 4 years ago. Just making sure I include that caveat.

To my understanding, what exactly you would need would vary by the school district; you should check with the principal or school psychologist. In theory, the IEP she already has is a reflection of difficulties noted on testing or some other evidence found by the school, so they are clearly willing to make accomodations based on actual difficulties that your child does demonstrate. I've seen kids who probably have NLD who are classified as OHI, so it's not as though she's grossly misclassified even if she does have NLD--it's a fairly controversial diagnosis and hasn't fully made its way into many districts' vocabularies. For an IEP, the actual diagnosis is less important than the targeted "difficulties" and the recommended accomodations.

When you say "executive functioning," that can mean a lot of things, so I'd talk to the principal/psychologist about the specific, practical difficulties your child has that limit her ability to receive better grades. If they're not interested in doing further testing to explore that, or if they're not able to (which is another possibility, since no area of psychology attends to everything, and that includes school psychology), you could find out from them what your district requires in order to allow for IEP modifications based on an outside evaluation.
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Lee Ashendorf, Ph.D.
Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial VA
Co-Webmaster, Neuropsychology Central