stress and LD?

polly

most children react to new baby in some form or another. my oldest son wanted to take his brother back for a nicer model he was four and perfectly normal. I have five children all togther and four are having difficulty in many ways. they have both educational and mental disablities. Most of the time they seem to bounce back but for soom kids stress of even things they like good things can cuase strange impulsive reactions. my duaghter loves animals so i bought tickets to the circus i thought she would love it but all the people all the lights all the noise she cried to leave in ten minutes. if it continues i would have him see a concelor there could be the beginnings of a anxiety disorder or another of that kind. Good luck

Kids who have LD often operate at the edge of their abilities. Things are just more work for them. My (parent) guess would be that your son’s difficulties adjusting are using up energy he would otherwise use for higher level functioning. He is also generally digressing emotionally which is pretty normal. My daughter was 2 when her brother was born. She had pretty much given up her binkie but it was constantly in her mouth as soon as he arrived at our house. Given that it has only been a couple months, I wouldn’t worry too much.

There have been several studies which would corroborate the idea that stress aggravates LD’s. Hell, for that matter, even those of us without LD’s find our cognitive processes interrupted by stress.

With my boy, the stress of being in a bad school program caused him to behave much more typically autistic than he had previously. We pulled him and began homeschooling, and his behaviors improved (as well as his level of functioning).

Absolutely. Stress aggravates everything in adults and children alike. My own LD son who had language issues reverted completely when his younger brother was born and stopped talking at all and made sounds and noises for 6 weeks. Very disconcerting.

It also comes at a time when you’re busy dealing with the demands of a new baby and dealing with sleeplessness.

It’s also a special kind of stress when a new baby comes. It’s the stress of many things including feeling threatened by the presence of a new baby. A new baby is a different kind of stress to a young child than is Dad getting a new job or even moving to a new school.

The time after the birth of the new baby and dealing with my 3 year old LD son was without a doubt the hardest time in my life. You’re not alone.

It will get better. Good luck.

Thank you all so much for your encouragement! It is so nice to know someone else is going through (or has been through) the thing you’re dealing with—even though I wish none of us had to deal with this—in the last two weeks I have done more worrying about him than I ever have before. I’m just so afraid that I haven’t caught this in time and I do NOT want him to have any sort of negative attitudes toward school. Pie in the sky, I know, but I can hope, can’t I?? :) I’m trying not to beat myself up about it because I can’t go back and change the past. I’m just afraid that his “LD-ness” is going to be mild enough with regards to the public school system that he is not going to qualify for any type of Resource help in school. And he is SO easily frustrated that sometimes I don’t even know how to approach “teaching” him something new (always disguised as some sort of game) without being afraid that he’ll refuse to participate at all. It’s also really dumb, but one of my biggest fears is that he won’t make any friends or be the subject of ridicule as he gets older and his peers are more aware that his speech is a little “baby-fied” and that his responses don’t always make sense.

Whew. So sorry to ramble, I can’t help it…I’ve been carrying around so long I just had to “put it down” somewhere!

Polly

I’d be so bold as to ask why he was discharged from speech therapy? If he still clearly has language issues and “baby fied” speech and trouble with speaking clear sentences, speech/language therapy can’t hurt.

Polly, you don’t say how old this son is but as you clearly recognize it doesn’t pay to worry about catching things sooner. The other fears you mention such as will he have friends or be ridiculed - those are all common fears that come to all our minds and that to a certain extent we carry with us. My son is 19 and I’m just beginning to be able to not worry about him being ridiculed.

But even at age 19 my son still has speech issues. If I had it all to do over again, I would get him more speech/language therapy.

Good luck to you.

I agree with you. My daughter is 19 and was released from speech and language therapy in third grade and didn’t receive any more therapy until 11th grade. I did push for more help at times but not hard enough. I believed the school system “professionals”. They told me I was harming my daughter by continuing to ask for special services for her. This supposedly caused her to feel different and weird. Weird was what she felt at beginning language therapy again at 17 years old. But she needed it and had needed it all through the years. She should never have been released from the program in third grade. For the last 18 months, she and her therapist worked mostly on pragmatics and getting her to feel comfortable initiating phone conversations, etc. She just graduated from high school 10 days ago and like your son, Sara, she still has language issues.

We need to get our children help when they need it.

I agree, but easier said then done. My 5 year old was just taken out of Speech by the school district without my consent. If your interested in the story see post that says “ok Socks, What now?” anyhow….. He obviously still needs therapy but is no longer the magic 1.5 standard deviations behind so he gets no more. I can fight them, which I plan to do but it’s a slow process and in the mean time he starts kindergarten at a disadvantage.

I do not know if it will help or if you would even have time for it now but I am in the middle of reading The Misunderstood Child by Larry Silve MD. It is a great book. The biggest thing I have learnd from it so far is that my son is LD. That means he is LD in school as well as at home. If he can not organize his binder then he probably can’t clean up and organize a messed up room without some direction. It is helping me understand some things that really fustrate me. I am learning how LD affects the entire child. Maby not ready to accept it but none the less learning about it. When you have the opportunity it really is a good book. I learned about it from this wonderful bullitin board of parents and ordered it from Amazon.com. Take Care!

And they don’t outgrow it. Dealing with my ADHD/LD son has taught me a lot about dealing with my ex husband and present husband why they do things that drive me nuts!!! Now I just need to figure out why I chise 2 men with the same problem (my son was only 4 when I met my 2nd so we were not sure yet of the ADHD, definitely did not know of LD)!!! The best thing you can do is teach your child to live with their differences and how to deal with others socially.