Can anyone recommend what type of cognitive training program program may be most helpful for my 8 year old daughter. Tutoring does not appear to be addressing her underlying learning skills, so I am looking for an alternative. I have been reading alot about Audiblox, Brainskills, PACE and Fast Forward and am confused about which program may help her. She has been tested at the public school and does not qualify for special education services. She is performing about 1 year below grade level at the present time in reading and math. She can’t remember math facts and painstakingly has to count on her fingers simple facts like 10-1=9 time after time. She has difficulty sequencing and is very slow with computation. She seems to go totally blank. Her relative weaknesses as indicated on her test results are verbal comprehension, verbal expression, verbal reasoning, long term factual recall, visual organization, and listening for details, concepts and reasoning. She has average auditory skills and CAPD was ruled out. She has difficulty in listening (understanding the meaning of words, understanding new ideas), (I might add that on her audiogram she has borderlilne thresholds in low frequencies), she is a very reluctant reader as well.( I would appreciate any insights anyone might have.
Re: Have you thought about Add-Inattentive?
I agree that you need to get a thorough speech and language evaluation done, preferably privately. The school system in my area (nothern Virginia) will find students 100% age appropriate in their language skills when an outside speech and language pathologist will diagnose a moderate language disorder. My daughter’s speech and language pathologist was “appalled” at the school system’s results. It all comes down to money. The schools are getting bombarded by families seeking special ed services for their child and the school will try to deny services whenever they can get away with it.
I hope you go ahead with an evaluation now before your child suffers years of social alienation. These children typically have a very hard time keeping up with their peers. Especially teenagers.
Re: Confused about what type of cognitive training program t
I would also go for the speech and language evaluation. Find someone who is familiar with FFW and you can get an opinion on whether it would help her. My son did FFW last summer with good results, upon the recommendation of a slt and audiologist. He has CAPD though and thus is different than your child. My gut reaction would be no but I am not a slt.
I am going to do PACE this summer with my son and was recently trained. One of the trainers was a slt. I spoke to her about some of my son’s unresolved language issues and whether private speech therapy would help (he gets some in school but some problems are said to be “normal”—sorta like your child) Her attitude was that we should do PACE first because it would help his development.
I have some familiarity with Audioblox and would say that it is stronger on the visual end of things. One complaint I have heard is that it doesn’t have an auditory processing component. It does have fluency training though so it depends what is hanging up your daughter’s reading. Evaluation by a speech and language therapist would help determine that.
We decided to do PACE instead of Audioblox because of the auditory processing component of PACE. My son has long standing speech and language problems (was classified as a preschooler with a disability because of it) and was diagnosed as CAPD last year. PACE is also faster and my son has been through a lot of therapy so that was important to us. Audioblox is much cheaper though.
Another thing that occurred to me is that you might want to get hold of the book Language Wise by McGuiness (sp?). It has exercises in it designed to increase verbal intelligence. I plan to use it after PACE. Neither Language Wise or speech and language therapy will help the visual problems you mention though. This isn’t to say they won’t be useful but that you may have to do several things to solve your child’s problems. Believe me, I know! My son, in addition to CAPD, has visual efficiency and processing deficits, and sensory integration problems.
Beth
Re: Confused about what type of cognitive training program t
FastForWord is an auditory training program usually used for CAPD. However, it has also been used to develop receptive and expressive language skills in autistic children. I’m not sure it’s possible to determine whether FFW would be helpful or not for your dd, if CAPD has been ruled out.
I would be interested in knowing exactly how CAPD was ruled out? I am working with a 13yo boy who has problems similar to what you describe (except more severe), and he was diagnosed by an audiologist with an auditory processing deficit.
The remaining three programs all deal with cognitive training. These programs do not directly deal with the verbal deficits you are describing — the speech pathologist route would be better for that. Cognitive training would probably help quite a bit with factual recall, visual organization, concepts and reasoning.
Audiblox is the least expensive of the three (about $80 for book, video and starter kit) and can be done at home if you are willing to spend 1/2 to 1 hour a day working one-on-one with your daughter. It can take 6 weeks of training to be sure you are getting improvements, but most children will get some kind of gain. This would be a low-cost, reasonable approach to take. If she improves with Audiblox, you could consider PACE (which costs in excess of $2,000 but does more in less time). Brainskills is a lot more expensive than Audiblox, probably a little better, but covers a lot less ground than PACE.
Mary
Re: Confused about what type of cognitive training program t
Where is a program like PACE purchased from? Do they have a website with more info?
Thanks,
Jess
Re: Confused about what type of cognitive training program t
PACE website is http://www.learninginfo.com
A typical PACE program consists of 3 hours of one-on-one tutoring per week with a trained provider, and an equal number of homework hours per week — for a total of about 12 weeks.
Parents can become providers for their own children by attending the training seminar, or you can go through an outside provider (which you can find at the website, or by email to the company).
Mary
Re: Confused about what type of cognitive training program t
My 9 yr old daughter was first diagnosed with visual processing problems at about 7. After we went through therapy for that (privately, my optometrist caught the problem), then she was diagnosed with ADHD, which we have been treating with accomodations and medication for about 1-1/2 years now. About six months ago, she was diagnosed with central auditory processing disorder and then OCD. We have been through doctors visits, several medications, therapies and school meetings. I feel like we start to get a handle on one thing and another pops up. The other night, my dd went up to her room to get something and about 15 minutes later, I hear banging. I ran up to see what she was doing now and found every book that she and her sister own spread all over the floor in their room. She had decided the bookshelf needed straightening, so she took everything out of it, spread it all over the floor and the banging I heard was her hammering the little nails back into the back of her old bookshelf. She then proceeded to sort and stack all the books, organizing and rearranging until the bookshelf finally suited her. She did this all while she is supposedly on medication to control her obsessive/compulsive disorder. I called the doctor the next day, -he took her off the medicine.
She has all the problems that a kid with speech and language delays has but she may also be ADD-Inattentive. Many of the kids that I tutor who are Add-Inattentive have a hard time with sequencing of information, things like months of the year, seasons, math facts etc, they have a very hard time focusing so if the CAPD was ruled out I would strongly suspect ADD-Inattentive and what you have shared shows a strong speech and language deficit. Have you tried a Speech and Language pathologist for services and testing?