Help, 11 year old just diagnosed with moderate learning difficulties

[Crunchy01]

Hi all, i hope im posting in the right place. My daughter is 11 and starts secondary school in September. She jas just been diagnosed with moderate learning difficulties in particular, discalcular. I have no idea where to go with this. She is about to do her SATs in May but not sure if this is a good idea, if it will do her any good. I also dont kbow what i should tell her about this diagnosis, she calls herself stupid and i dont want her to feel this way. She is a lovely, well behaved little girl that fills my world with joy but im so frightened she will be bullied when starting secondary school as she misses a lot of social concepts too. I dont want her innocent world turned upside down. Any advice on how/where to start with all this will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you x

I assume that she was diagnosed by an educational psychologist who did a thorough cognitive assessment? What are her scores like?

She was yes, i dont really understand them tbh but for maths shes on the 2nd centile and most others she scores between the 8th and 14th centile. Theres something xalled a T score but im not sure what thats all about,,,

Do you have scores for things like non verbal reasoning, working memory, processing speed etc? Sorry, just checking as our ed psych only did 3 subtests. Have school talked about an EHCP (you can apply for an EHC Assessment yourself).

If she thinks she's stupid then I would tell her. It means that you can confirm she's not stupid but the way her brain works makes things like maths more difficult for her than it is for others. You can also then use this as an opportunity to highlight the things she does better than others such as being kind, or being musical, creative, sporty, helpful - all those other things which are valuable in life and aren't measured by Sats.
Second percentile means that 98% of people will score higher than her in that particular test.
There are things like social stories which are ways of exploring how people respond to social situations which might help her to unpick situations and understand how people might respond.

None of this stops her being her though. She's still your much lived and fabulous daughter!
I would be making contact with the sendco/alnco at the secondary school though to see how they will be able to meet her needs. Transition should already be aware of this because she'll have been on some kind of differentiated curriculum through primary. Might also be worth a chat with her class teacher re Sats.