I have a kindergarten student who has struggled all year with attention & phonics. With lots of help, he has learned letter sounds & can blend CVC words, although not with fluency; & he rocks really fast when he reads. He does not sing songs, do finger-plays, memorize things we do orally as a group. He does not look at what I am pointing to when I give a visual. He seems to be daydreaming more often than not. He is having speech therapy for omitting initial sounds in many words. He talks fast, & can be hard to understand. He has naming difficulties sometimes. I asked speech therapist if she thought he has aud. processing problem, but she said no.
Siblings are also inattentive & take forever to complete work in their classrooms. Mom says she had problems in school. Family is going to have all the kids evaluated at a Scottish Rite Clinic whenever a space becomes available, but I know they are not interested in medication if that is the diagnosis. My heart goes out for these kids. I don’t know if the SR Clinic evaluated anything but reading, even though that would be nice to know. I feel my student will not do too poorly according to national norms because he can do simple phonetic reading, but I know there is a problem. Anyone had experience with this ?
Re: ADD or APD?
Shay what have you found that helps your students on the Autism spectrum learning MS words? I ask because I planned on using PG this summer with my son who falls on the spectrum. Do you find that children with full blown Autism or Aspergers are the one’s it don’t work for but it does help the students with PDD-NOS? Pervasive developmental disorder is an umbrella term for the following dx’s: Austic Disorder, Aspergers, PDD-NOS, Retts, and Childhood disintegrative disorder. Do you find it works for some of these case’s but not others? My son scored a 10 on the coding portion of the WISC but only a 5 on digit span. His teachers feel his short term memory problems is what interferes with his ability to read. What has been your observations with students like this?
Re: ADD or APD?
Keep looking for a diagnosis and professional help.
Meanwhile, try some simple interventions of your own: when doing group things, sit the child next to you and guide him directly. See if you can get his eyes on your finger and guide him to the object you want him to focus on. Guide his hand over the letter you want him to learn. When you have a little time while the other kids are playing, try looking him straight in the eyes and getting him to imitate sounds and words and songs.
None of this will cure the problem and he should certainly get professional help, but every little bit of progress will help.
If you do find any communication methods that help him, try convincing his teacher next year to do the same.
Re: ADD or APD?
Hi Kay,
While I realize that there’s probably more going on with this child than what I’m going to suggest here, I do think it’s possible that his vision development might turn out to be a big part of his problems.
The main reason I say that is because of the familial tendency you cited….siblings had school problems and so did Mom. Poor near-point binocular vision skills, from my observation, tend to run in families, and they also will generate ADD-like symptomology for the simple reason that the kids can’t do what everyone is asking them to do in school…..read and attend visually.
If the parents have never considered an assessment of their kids by a developmental optometrist, then they should do so. It’s possible they’ve been down that route already, but if not, they should. It can be tricky making such a suggestion as a teacher, since many school districts discourage teachers from recommending developmental vision assessments, even though I have seen vision therapy work wonders with many kids.
As I said, this probably isn’t the whole answer, but it could be an important piece of the puzzle. The optometrist they go to should be one who either has a vision therapy department or who routinely refers to one. Most optometrists don’t.
Good luck trying to help….Rod
Re: ADD or APD?
Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. Shay, I failed to say that this little guy is very social. I’ve never thought he could be autistic. He seems to just have a problem staying focused & auditory memory is a problem. Perhaps the visual problem as well; he will look at something when I call his attention to it, but then looks away. Thanks again.
Hi Kay, It really sounds like a form of communication disorder, Autism. I had a student that had some of the symptoms when he was young and everyone missed the diagnosis until he was in 10th grade! His father was a carreer marine and they of course traveled a lot and some of his records were lost through the years. When he came into my class, I knew that something was wrong because I had worked with various degrees of autism before. I was able to teach him to read using PG but not when it came to MS words. His memory wasn’t long enough to remember the first chunk when he got to the last chunk so that he could blend them together. He could also be PDD, Pervasive Development Disorder. I was my student’s advocate and I was there when the parents were told the results of the tests. I was almost in tears, couldn’t look at the father. To be told that your son really couldn’t be what you thought that he could at the age of 16, was awful. I feel for the parents of the children. How many other children are involved? Do they have the same or similar symptoms?