Anyone have a kid in college with slow processing speed?

To add to the above, the data has to support the requested accommodation. Most schools are pretty reasonable and want to comply with the ADA guidelines to provide equal access. That said, this is different than the access to education provided by IDEA.

MaineCare (Medicaid) paid for our son’s psychological testing. Our private insurance wouldn’t have.

If you do proceed with getting current testing and wonder if you are covered for it - check to see if you have access to a Health Advocate. HAs are very savvy about finding and getting the benefits you are entitled to get.

And most important to remember…IF the school provides accommodations through the disability office, it will be up,to the student to advocate and access those accommodations. most colleges do not have a case manager who is going to communicate with all the profs, or communicate the accommodations to the profs.

This will be up to the student.

In addition, the college isn’t going to force the student to go to the tutorial or learning center…or whatever. Again…the student will need to do this themselves.

Remember, the diagnosis alone is not sufficient to justify accommodations.

I know someone who has a child with a diagnosis of ADD inattentive, which, knowing the young person in another context, I find difficult to credit. Of course, I really know nothing about what that means. (The young person is in their mid-20s, and very accomplished in a certain field.) The mother said she didn’t really believe it either, but accepted it because it allowed access to services in HS. She said that the major issue seems to be slow processing speed.

In any case, this student has attended several colleges and hated them all, but is now at Landmark College in Vermont, loving it, doing extremely well, and saying that they never knew it could be this easy to study and learn. Landmark is, I gather, designed for students to do the first two years and develop the skills they need to succeed in a “regular” school, and this kid is doing it somewhat in reverse, but I gather it is a potentially life-changing experience.

ETA, I see that they have both AA and BA options. Anyway, Might be of interest to someone else.

Landmark is a college that is designed to deal,with students with learning challenges.

Just out of curiosity: In 4 short years, your son will (hopefully) graduate and land a job working with other adults.

What accomodations will he be able to ask for to compensate for his slow processing disorder? If none, shouldn’t he at some point succeed without accomodations in college, to better prepare himself for life after college?

Some people are fast. Some people are slow. I am fast. My wife is not. (She may have a disorder, I have no idea, she has never been tested). However, at work we both have to succeed.

Undergraduate work is very, very different from many “real life” workplaces. College has very specific expectations about having to take a specific range of courses, about having to take timed tests, and many other issues. Someone with slow processing speeds is going to have an especially tough time with testing and with having to take coursework in some subjects. They’re most likely not going to choose careers that emphasize those same areas. That’s how they’ll succeed without accommodations in post-college life. Similarly, a kid who is on the autism spectrum will choose work that doesn’t require group projects or having to give talks. Someone who can’t handle high stress and tight deadlines is going to choose a low stress field. Etc etc.

This is no different than accommodations for physical disabilities.

@SlitheyTove I wish I could simply agree with you. Honestly, I do. I don’t agree with @moneyisimportant either, though. Real life isn’t that easy. Employment is far more complicated. The employment statistics for Aspies are not pretty and it certainly isn’t as easy for the majority as finding jobs without group projects or giving talks.

One of our ds’s neuropsy evals was paid for by the state through the dept of rehab in order for him to qualify for job placement services. He needed a job coach on location just to manage an unskilled labor job. His anxiety makes him shut down until he gets comfortable.

The truth is that the OP’s child may end up with some difficulties in finding a job that he can maintain. Employers want employees who can manage a certain workload quickly and efficiently. Finding that niche may take more effort than the typical grad. Whether true or not for any individual really depends on their ability to adapt, cope, and produce and be valued as an employee. The OP’s son may not have a problem with any of those and thrive. It is just too complicated for blanket statements (just like the rest of life.)

In regards to the fact that my son opted not to have accommodations at the community college (ie. He chose not to take his exams where he would get time and a half in the disaiblity office):

I think community college is a whole lot different than going to Penn. I am pretty sure Penn will be a whole lot harder. And my son struggled plenty in certain classes like Italian and all his math classes. He had a private math tutor for all of his high school math classes with the exception of geometry, which he took two years to finish. My oldest son tutored him in AoPS Algebra I. Another friend’s math genius son kindly tutored him for free through AoPS Alg. II, Trig at the college, Pre-calc at the college, and finally Calc at the college. He normally used the tutor once a week, but there were times when it was once every two weeks, and in Calc I, he somehow used him even less.

So, he had his own special accommodations to get through math class. He hated college Italian, but somehow managed to get a B. Midway through the semester, he finally took advantage of the Italian tutor. And actually, I recall that his teacher for honors US and World History at our co-op allowed him to not do all the reading, and she just graded him on the work he turned in since he couldn’t keep up. He did fine on the tests, but could not keep up with the assignments.

Other than that, he did fine in college physics because the math was doable. He did fine in college English because he likes English and there wasn’t a huge amount of reading. Again, though, this is community college vs. Penn.

Re. diabetes: the only accommodations he would seek are ones that would allow him to eat sugar if he’s low, check blood sugar as needed, and possibly (though he’s never used this even though I think he could/should have) talk with a professor if his blood sugar is so high he can’t function on a test. He took at least one standardized test with high blood sugar. It was not pretty, but oh well.

As far as employment, that’s a valid concern. The only jobs he’s had have been as a cellist (he’s done just fine) and as a cello teacher. (Again, he does fine) He’s never worked 40 hours a week, but worked about 25-30 hours a week as a cellist and did fine. Honestly, I sometimes wish he would just decide to go the music route and teach/play for his career. Hard road, but very doable for him. But that is not what he wants. He may come back to it, though, if he can’t work a “normal” job.

A big issue is also his low energy, which may relate to the slow processing, or perhaps it’s the other way around. I really don’t know.

I do like Penn’s forms because a doctor can fill them out and be very explicit about what the needs of the student are and what accommodations would be beneficial.

Appreciate the feedback from everyone.

One of mine has T1D. Accommodations included extra breaks, and the school wanted her to test in a separate room with her own proctor so they could accommodate her need to test, possibly inject or do an insertion, deal with alarms etc. It’s funny but unusual glitches have happened by coincidence before an exam.

She also had excused absences and lateness (once she had a pump clog which made her high enough to be very sick and couldn’t make it; once she was too low to walk across campus and was very late). And a single room because she gets up at night to test and needs a scheduled existence (also a seizure disorder).

Does your son have a pump and continuous glucose monitor? If he goes away, the latter is very very reassuring to us parents, because we can get blood sugar graphs and readings on our phones, with alarms- helpful overnight for safety.

Another one of mine has some learning challenges and bipolar 1. In our experience, a psychiatrist diagnoses ADHD with an interview and questionnaire, and we were told there is no actual test for it. Neuropsych’s will test attention and focus but the session is one on one in a quiet environment (or they play the radio for distraction) and not that effective at diagnosing. Reduced course load, extensions on papers and projects, are very important tools. If a school accommodates by allowing reduced course load,then they also should provide financial aid for any extra semesters needed as a result.

The daughter with learning challenges left residential college after a year and is now taking just one class per semester. She is a hard worker and applies herself to jobs, and has gotten smarter at finding work that suits her strengths. It takes awhile for them to find their rhythm in life but that’s true of everyone- I’m still working on it myself!

Very helpful information, @compmom regarding the diabetes and reduced course load accommodations. I wonder if, in addition to the neuro-psych eval, my son should go back to his old psychiatrist (he has not been on meds since he graduated high school, and thus, stopped seeing her) for a “check up”? Also probably good to see his old counselor, too.

I’m sure for people whose kids are “normal” this all seems crazy. 2E kids are so very complicated. My son always felt stupid, always called himself stupid. We did not expect his IQ to be so high. He has potential and works so hard when he’s in class. I would love for him to succeed in college.

He does have a pump, which he wears, and does have a CGM, which he refuses to wear. If it was an all-in-one thing (he uses an Omnipod), he’d do it, but he doesn’t want one more thing sticking into his body, unfortunately. His pump causes him pain fairly often, but it’s partly his own fault for refusing to try it other places. He has very little, if any, fat, so it is a problem.

I would love to have the CGM numbers and feel reassured, but at this point, he’s managing 100% and I no longer ask if he’s high or low. (Except that we know when he’s low when he comes rushing out of his room to get juice from the fridge).

What is a “2E kid”? No advice, but wishing you well.

Twice exceptional. Gifted and LD.

Thank you.

@moneyisimportant Your comment may have been a bit sarcastic in tone (or that is how I read it, apologies if I’m incorrect) but a mother of a child with learning issues who got time and a half on exams, that was a question I often asked myself. What will happen to my son in the “real world”? Then I realized something – for most of a person’s years of education they are required to take a wide array of classes in a variety of subjects. Some classes play to their particular strengths and others to their particular weakness – or area of disability for a learning disabled student. On top of that, as students mature they often find more and more ways to compensate for their learning issues.

In order to be successful as an adult with learning issues, it was critical for my S that he found a career that dovetails with his strengths and minimized his weaknesses. One does not have to be as well rounded in a career as they do in an academic setting. For example, can choose a career involving a lot of reading and writing but little math if that is their strength, a career that is heavily quantitative if that is their strength etc. In fact college level work seemed to get easier for my S as he delved more and more into his major, he used his extra time only for classes he felt he needed it, and he has been successful in a work environment. I’m guessing he might still puts in more hours than many of his peers, but with technology that is possible to do even by putting in a few hours on a weekend at home.

So for my S the extra time was crucial in getting him through the education system , but he has managed extremely well in his chosen career… So IMO there is a difference between what is necessary to help a LD student move through the educational system and the ability to function well in a chosen career.

@happy1 - thank you for sharing your experience. My DS1 was borderline proficient in his reading standardized tests during elementary school and early middle. We had always suspected something was a bit off with his processing speed, but he did reasonably ok in his school subjects, and so the school would do nothing for him. He is a junior now and taking mostly college prep courses with support from me and private tutoring.

Absolutely correct that the support is to get them through the academic system which requires competencies in multiple areas. He takes one AP in his area of strength. We are in a pressure cooker school district, but many kids run their own race, so that at least has been a blessing. He participates in EC’s which play to his strengths and have buoyed his self-confidence. He has a part-time which he loves, and that too has helped us all tremendously in gauging his strengths.

Re: students in college with LD’s : I have a few such students every semester. The majority of them know how to self-advocate, and have a keen awareness of their weaknesses. Some of the students make an effort to "wean off’ the time extensions, and ask me to work with them, which I am glad to do.

Just wanted to add : so glad to have found this forum - parents here are so supportive and non-judgmental.

Making sure that before he starts college he has a 504 plan in place (an IEP won’t do it) will ensure that he gets accommodations he is entitled to. My son uses these: note takers, time and half on tests, an alternate testing environment. These are pretty standard accommodations for colleges.

^^^As far as I understand there are no IEPs in college.