sens.integ. & LD

in most states they have a childrens hospital or department where you can ask with a refferal from ped. for a testing cycle. They normally will test hearing language speech nerological and simple logic but any conserns you have you can mention and normally they will test accordinlly. good luck and don’t give up till you know one way or another.

a mom also struggling.
denise

Denise,

Thanks for your encouragement. I’m new to this and am finding it exhausting. We have a referral from our ped and we’re waiting to get an appointment with the developmental department at our local medical university.

Polly

polly
i understand completely. It took six months to get my duaghter in for testing. It is better to caught it now while you have the summer to set up some programs or information for the school he will attend. Just remember that what ever happens at school it is more important that he feel encourage to keep trying and that he enjoys learning.

You’re right about the umbrella term. There are many different kinds of LD.

Sensory integration disorder can interfere with learning, so it is a form of LD. Most schools do not provide OT services for SID unless it clearly interferes with learning. Many times SID interferes with learning in subtle ways, or interferes more with socialization, and does not qualify as a severe LD in the eyes of the school.

Occupational therapists who are trained in SID can do a lot for it, and there are a lot of fairly easy protocols that can be done at home too.

LD’s have nothing to do with IQ. A child can have a very high IQ and have one or more LD’s. Gifted children with LD’s are often missed, because they use their superior intelligence to compensate for their LD, and are seen are “average” learners. With the right kind of help, they can make full use of their IQ potential.

Mary

Polly,

If you suspect SI, I would get hold of the book the Out of Sync Child by Carol Kranowitz. It is really oriented towards preschoolers and has tons of helpful activities as well as information in it. I bought it after my child was diagnosed with SI.

The sensory motor system is the foundation of learning and deficits in it make academic learning more difficult. Basically, a child with SI deficits uses up energy that should be used for cognition coping and compenstating.

Beth

Beth,

I bought and read The Out of Sync Child last weekend after reading an excerpt from it about vestibular dysfunction and language “problems.” His speech is much more fluent if he can move while he’s talking to you. So much of what I read described my son: he loves to spin, he’s clumsy, he is a picky eater (but doesn’t avoid just one texture…he’ll eat yogurt and pudding but won’t eat mashed potatoes, and god help you if you forget to take the crust off! LOL), he doesn’t like his bathwater too hot, he doesn’t like the vacuum cleaner noise, etc. It’s funny though, he has no tactile defensiveness and never has, even as an infant. That’s what threw me off about SID (until I read the book) because so much of what I’d read before always seemed to focus on “fussy babies that didn’t want to be touched” and I never had that problem with my son.

Anyway, it’s a great book and I would highly recommend it too!
Polly

Polly,

Glad you liked the book. I never thought of my child as having SI either. He could ride a bike at 4—but always fast to compenstate for his vestibular system, as it turns out.

I was thinking about what I would do if I was in your shoes. I didn’t have a good handle on these issues until my son was 7, although in looking back at preschool reports it was all there in some form or another.

1. Sign him up for gymnastics. My son has been taking since Jan and much to my surprise is turning out to be pretty good at it.
It is great at integrating the body.

2. Swimming lessons. Helps coordinate the body too.

3. The vacumn cleaner comment makes me suspect some sort of CAPD. He’s young to be tested but many people use sound therapy. The cheapest is TLP (the listening program). It isn’t as strong as some others but many report really good results. We have done some sound therapy as part of Neuronet therapy but wish we had done it much earlier.

4. Have his vision checked out by developmental optometrist. Deficits in the auditory and vestibular system can impact the development of vision. I don’t know how young they can check them but we took our son to a regular optometrist when he was finishing K, on the advice of the teacher. We were told that he wasn’t tracking but it was developmental. A year later he still wasn’t. We just completed 9 months of eye therapy. I wish we had done it sooner.

Good luck!!! I didn’t think learning disability until my son was in first grade. The sooner you get a handle on it, the sooner you can do something.

Beth

Polly,
The term learning disabilities (learning difference) refers to a neurobiological disorder related to differences in how ones brain work or is structured. The brain variance affects a person a person’s ability to speak, listen, read, write, spell, reason, organize information, or do mathematics. However, ADD and ADHD is not within themselves learning differences. The term sensory integration comes from the occupational therapist, they are train in brain physiology and function. Sensory integration intervention are used to help children with learning differences, usually these method are used in early childhood special education programs.
Language auditory processing(Language auditory perception) manifest itself in several ways:
1. Phonological awareness-having the ability to recognize only the sounds that are in a word. Example, when the word cat is heard the ears hears it with one pulse sound, however an individual who has phonological awareness knows that cat is made up of three sounds or phonemes.
2. Auditory Discrimination- is the ability to recognize a difference between phoneme sounds and to identify words that are the same and words that are different. Example, mitt-mat or big-pig, these words have very slight sound difference.
3. Auditory memory- is the ability to store and recall what is heard. Example: you may ask your child to go to his room, put his toys away and vacuum the floor. Is your child able to store this information and retrieve it as needed to carry out your request.
4. Auditory sequencing- The ability to store and remember the order of items in a sequential list. Example: alphabets, numbers, and the months of the year are learned as quditory sequences.
5. Auditory blending - is the ability to blend single phonic elements or phonemes into a complete word. Example blending the phonemes m-a-n into man.
Talk with your child’s teacher about your concerns, she will be able to point you in the right direction. IDEA 1997 allows for preschoolers to receive services under developmentally delayed for cognitive develpment and communication development. Although your child is 5 years old , it is still not too late. However, your child will have to take a test for Auditory processing (perception) and found to have a deficit in this area.
The relationship between I.Q. and learning differences is for the the purposes of qualifications for services. It means that is a difference between his ability to learn(I.Q.) and his achievement( how much he has learned what he was taught). There has to be a 20 points difference for initial services and a 15 points differences for re-qualifications in special services.

The best to you,
Edna

Having an LD does not relate to IQ. There is something called being “Dually Exceptional”. My son has ADHD, a Visual Processing LD but an IQ that is Mensa level (when given a WISC by a Child and/or School Psychologist , but when tested in a group situation with a TCS tests average). He also has the usual CAPD type symptoms that go along with ADHD-too many auditory stimuli throw him a curve (we went to see N’Sync and he wore ear plugs halfway through).

Most schools are not yet equipped to handle the needs of these children and they go for a hodgepodge of services, Accelerated this but Corrective that. Don’t ever assume that becuase of an LD, your child is not intelligent and don’t ever let his teachers do that either. Albert Einstein definitely had ADHD and Dysgraphia, and some would argue Dyslexia as well.

In technical terms, most people consider ADHD to be a LD but it is not as far as schools are concerned-in order to get an IEP and/or 504 there must also be another coexistent LD. And as an educator, I would say the majority of children with AD(H)D have another LD usually involving Visual or Auditiry Processing. Many school districts have testing available at age 4 and offer a Special Needs Pre-K for students that need it (in NJ it is mandatory that each district offer this but most people are unaware). Check your district before you spend any money on testing yourself, but be prepared to be your own advocate if necessary. Good Luck.

My son has add inattentive and qualified for sped under OHI. He was dx mild capd in addition to the add in 1st grade but subsequent tests don’t find it to be a significant issue as much as the add. So you do not have to have a co existing ld to qualify if the add is severely affecting school.He was qualified in 4th grade.

You are very lucky if your school district put your child in SpEd just on ADD alone, but obviously it was effecting schoolwork as you said. But the way it is supposed to work is that a child who is performing at a level lower than THEIR ABILITY qualifies, but in reality the child must be performing at a level 2 grade levels below their GRADE LEVEL. Most school districts would have come up with a 504 allowing more time for tests and less homework and blown you off at that.

For kids like my son (whose name appeared in the last post accidentally due to his being online in the kids room and sending a message) who have IQ’s that qualify them for Gifted Programs but whose Reading skills are sometimes off due to ADHD and/or LD there is no program. My son went through testing so he could receive OT but due to the fact that he was operating at a “level appropriate for his grade” he could not receive services. He attends accelerated math and in that area is operating at a level 2 grade levels above his grade level, so if other skills are not equal to that and his IQ is above average, he should qualify. My son works 10 times harder than any other child in his class to get the grades he does, and because of that he does not qualify. Unfortunately the district also feels that a 47 CAT score in reading comprehension is acceptable since it is “average”……but a child whose total battery was a 96 due to the fact that his other scores were so high needs help. But he tested out of Corrective Reading because he can read. And that moved us to the point where we are now, which is that I (like many people on this site) would not accept no for an answer and we found a co-existing medical condition that was causing an LD that the disctrict refused to admit that he had……………..

In my experience, school districts will not qualify a child as SpEd due only to AD(H)D, if your district did, you are lucky; or being that you are posting here, you may not have taken no for an answer. Many people do. I would suggest that if your child is on medication and still having the ADD effect schoolwork, maybe a different medication is in order. We made a recent change in medication that was a disaster and switched back-my son has teachers who do not even realize he has ADHD (such as Art, Gym) because his medication works so well. If only they were at our house at 4pm when he gets home, the meds have worn off, and there is homework to be done!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At our meeting in VA, we discussed 504 vs. sped, some in the meeting were looking at 504, we are military,we wanted something that would travel with us well, my husband asked me what I wanted before the meeting and I said sped. so that is what we insisted on, backed up by the school district psychologist. He had been evaluated before in 2nd grade, and we were told he was a late bloomer. I went into the 4th gr. meeting and told them the flower had bloomed and fallen off the stem, now how do we explain his difficulty? His 4th gr. teacher and my other child’s 2nd gr. teacher were very supportive of us, had experience with adhd, led me to a lot of resources. My evidence was the 4th gr. teacher stating that he was failing everything, gave scores on his reading and math, I had progress reports from the 2nd gr. up that stated how hard he worked, how he was a delight to have in class but still struggling, and standardized test scores from 1st gr. up that were scored in single digits, he had been in reading class since 1st gr. and tutored over the summers by the school reading specialist.His test scores on the eval showed he was average IQ, but most of his scores were well below average. He just wasn’t successful despite all we were doing and his self esteem had hit bottom in 3rd, he told me he was stupid and dumb and he should just go kill himself. Obviously we went at a run to the counselor!! He only needed to go for about 3 months, but it helped with his anger about his difficulty and I think also to have someone besides mom to talk to. We also had a very good school, we were very involved parents(my husband was pta pres.) our principal had a good working relationship with him and myself so that made it easier on us.

We are presently at a DODDS school in Germany, we arrived here with IEP in hand, but they have different rules here. They are not administered by DOE so they interpret the laws and make Army regs. based on the stateside rules. The upshot is that it is actually easier to qualify, they have a category A which is phys. impairment but includes OHI which is what my son qualified under, since he has had the adhd dx since 1st gr. it was automatic.
He only spent one yr in resource room (VA 5th gr.), he was put in reg. classes with support here in Germany(6TH)I was worried but the majority of teachers were great from the start, he actually made honor roll 3 times this yr.None of it was given to him, he worked hard as he always does but he really had a great year in both 5th and 6th grades, because he was given what he needed to be successful, his confidence is high.I do know that high parent visibility helps a lot, when we first got here I was shy and didn’t know how to approach 8 different teachers but I got a handle on things finally and the 2nd semester went very smooth.

I know different school districts operate differently, I have been reading this board for the last 2 yrs or so. I thank my lucky stars (and my son’s) that we were in a district that was able and willing to do so much for my sons, my younger one was given speech services in 3rd from same school(VA), believe me it was a lot easier for me in those meetings. I knew he was not entirely intelligible but didn’t pursue it until the doc who eval. him for adhd suggested speech also. He had been in speech as a 3yr old at an Army hospital. I am sure that helped qualify him.

Anyway, I feel for the parents who have to fight so hard, it is beyond me why schools do what they do.I can say this, every eligibility meeting has been a nightmare for me, I go in thinking my older son is going to be found not to need services and I will have to ride the rollercoaster again. I am not fun to live with when I am on the ride ! My best wishes and hopes go out to all the folks who have it harder than I have had so far, but maybe my experience can prove that it can be done and be used as an example for school districts that think that adhd doesn’t need to be addressed by school personnel.Best wishes to all.

What is good is that you had a good outcome with your school and you are sharing it on here-most of what you see is negative about school districts cooperating. You are proof that the school district will listen if you don’t give up and you are prepared with wht you want when you go in. I am sure it is hard changing schools often when you are military and it is great that you got what you needed.

What you see so often on here is parents that have given up fighting the system and decide to homeschool, which is great. I don’t have the patience and I can’t see paying taxes and not using them. We moved because I did not like the school district my husband’s home was in when we got married (2nd time for both of us) but my house was not big enough. I spent those 2 years in that house paying to send the kids to private school while paying taxes for the school. It is great for those parent who are able to do homeschooling if that is their choice, but if it is being done only because they can’t get what they need from the school district, then something is wrong!

On a personal note, I have a friend whose son is classified and they are moving out of the country-it is not military but a business move, the children will be going to an “American School” there but do you have any pointers for her???

I guess first, are they going to a DODDS school? American contractors dependent kids can go to them but they pay tuition. I know in some places like SHAPE,Belgium or India they have int’l or American schools. My friend in India says it is great but I don’t believe her daughter has any school issues.
My best advice is to have a full copy, hand carried, of all school paperwork, tests, all that she can think of to substantiate the classification. I had a lot, but I hand carried a sealed copy from our stateside school and didn’t look in it and should have. I had copies of tests that were not in the school’s file, so when I brought them, the sped teacher was suprised because she didn’t know about the tests and I (dumb me) assumed she had looked at them already. They retested him to see if he qualified under DODDS, which he did, but I worried the whole time until the meeting. The other thing I did, when I arrived here in July, was to go directly to the school and talk to the sped dept., I just happened to catch the director for the school, and had a lengthy conversation with her.She commented that I seemed to have a pretty good handle on what was up and our first meeting to go over the IEP that I came in with was within the 2nd week of school. They will follow the IEP until the eligibility meeting and go from there. Just make sure your friend hand carries it, don’t listen to the ol’ husband who says “I’ll mail it, it won’t take long”. It took 3 weeks for that stuff to get here!! If your friend wants to email, I’d be happy to talk to her. This bulletin board has done wonders for my typing and computer skills! Just let me know. By the way, my husband and I agree about the tax thing and schools, also I couldn’t homeschool my oldest, I don’t have the discipline(my add) and my son and I butt heads too much.When he was little he would ask how to make an R and when I showed him he would tell me that wasn’t how you make an R.Personally I think he would make a good lawyer, but he wants to work on cars, at least for now. Anyway I hope I helped some.Thanks for the enouragement.

I don”t know if it’s DODDS. They are going to Hong Kong. I will pass on your message and offer of help. Thank-you so much, I am sure she will feel better knwoing she has advice from someone who has been there.

Beverly, no problem, that’s what we are all here for!Tell your friend good luck in Hong Kong for me, and not to forget that there is a lot to learn there that isn’t just in books, being overseas is a wonderful opportunity for the whole family.