My son is 7 years old and due to go to Junior School in September. Both myself and his teachers have known for a long time that he has some form of learning disability. He has had his initial assessment by the educational pyschologist, and is overdue for his next. BUT she has now left and we are having BIG problems locating another. I have had the usual parent/teacher meeting today with both his regular teacher and “special needs” teacher, (although I use the term lightly) and I have been told that he is about 2 years behind his reading and writing level. This is getting to be an extremely desperate time because he is not improving , and we still don’t know what the problem is. He is a very bright child in other aspects but has some form of “memory block” (quoted by his SN teacher). He is not disruptive or subdued, and has no problem interacting with either children or adults and can hold a very lengthy and sensible conversation. An example of his problem would be that you can teach him ‘one’ word, and spend a whole day on that one very simple word….by the end of the day he can read it without any prompts and write it without any help. BUT the next day, if you show him the same word, he hasn’t a clue what it is. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP US? Either with help on how to push for more help and quickly….or even help with a possible diagnosis. Thanks in advance.
Re: Needing help & Getting desperate
My daughter could not remember sight words at all. Turned out she had severe developmental vision delays, which probably affected her ability to remember letter patterns for words. You might want to get a developmental vision exam (http://www.covd.org has a search engine to locate developmental optometrists). I was told she was completely dyseidetic (no visual memory for words). Vision therapy and PACE corrected this problem to the point where she no longer has any problem reading. She still does not pick up spelling patterns naturally, and needs explicit spelling instruction, but in all other aspects of language (reading, comprehension, vocabulary) scores above grade level now. (She was not reading at all at 8-1/2yo, and is now 10-1/2.)
A lot of children have no major problems, but need a good decoding program. If you haven’t tried Reading Reflex yet, that is a good place to start. If you don’t see progress after 10 or 15 hours of one-on-one using that approach, then you might want to get a CAPD eval. This is often covered by medical insurance, and you can find audiologists who specialize in CAPD at http://pages.cthome.net/cbristol/
Sorry I can’t help with the school stuff. We did everything ourselves, as I figured the school would just be a drain on our energy and time. (We homeschooled the year we did vision therapy, PACE and Phono-Graphix.)
Mary
p.s. 7 years old and two years behind in reading and writing??? What is a 5yo supposed to be able to write?
Are you in the USA? Some of the terms seem different to me,so I wanted to first ask that. If you are under IDEA then they MUST find a psychologist . It is illegal to not have him evaluated in three years,it a major violation. I would somehow let them know this. Do it in writing,of course. Your focus needs to be the evaluation, once you get this,then you can look at what would help. Good luck