I'm overwhelmed. Where do I start?

First thing to know is that the kids teachers are most accustomed to dealing with are kids with “verbal” learning issues — trouble with words. Fast Forward deals with auditory processing, not visual — so if these are relative strenghts for him, that would be an expensive investment that probably wouldn’t help much. If his oral language skills are a lot better than his reading skills then check out the motor processes of reading; hopefully Mary can jump in here and give you the low-down on good options for that, including vision therapy to teach tracking as you read.

Orton-Gillingham is multisensory, so it puts the auditory and visual together, though I would definitely talk to the tutor about his visual issues; probably the majority of kids s/he’s working with have more trouble with the auditory parts of reading.

An awful lot depends on just how severe your kids’ weaknesses are, how strong his strengths are, and what they are. Some remediation you can do on your own — if you’ve got a kid with major problems, or huge differences in strengths and weaknesses, then if you can afford it, getting somebody who’s got a few (dozen) years of experience to work with him can make a huge difference.

Hi Christy, hang in there. YOu start by taking a few deep breaths, telling yourself to go one step at a time, find some good support, and keep pumping yourself full of info — then find the best ways to share that info with the people around you.

My 11 yr old NLD daughter has benefitted from social skills groups, one-one psych therapy (just started recently as stressed piled up at end of 5th grade), OT (did 3 years of it), speech-language therapy (for inference, reading comprehension, pragamatic language - slang expressions, humor), writing tutor (extra support to help organize her thoughts and keep her focused). This year we will switch off writing tutor and put in organizational tutor.

NLD is a very big basket, and kids with this diagnosis can have a lot of different kinds of issues (all stemming from theright brain weaknesses). Does your son have social skill deficits, math disability, writing problems? Does he have executive function issues, organizational problems? Is there ADD/ADHD thrown into the mix?

A good neuropsych report should have made some recommendations for you: based on his specific areas of weaknesses, what did they suggest. Phone the person who did the testing and have a followup consult so you can have more ideas — they should know more, and be able to suggest what interventions will be most useful for him at this time. YOu can’t do everything at once, so you make choices based on his needs, your time and money. Don’t count on public system to do much for you, they don’t understand NLD (if they have even heard of it).

If you haven’t been there, check out nldline.com and nldontheweb.org for lots of articles, info, etc.

Hope that helps.

It would be helpful to know what areas of school your son is having trouble with. Your post implies that he has reading issues.

If that’s the case, as you seem to know there are many different programs out there touted to be helpful to children with reading issues. As the parent of a dyslexic son, I never could find my way through all the many offerings although some people swear by one or the other. Each one will often tell you that it is best suited to help your son over come his reading difficulties. As with all things, let the buyer beware and choose wisely.

While tutoring may help to close the gaps in skills between your son and others his age, you might also want to consider how best to support him in school. Will any or all of his work be accomodated or modified to better meet his learning needs? Accomodations and/or modifications can help him to be successful in school while he works to remediate his weak areas.

Good luck.

The last 7 years have been an emotional rollercoaster ride for us. It has its highs and lows, filled with anxious anticipation as we take the plunge in to some new therapy or direction, the thrill and fear as we ride it out, and the relief as we climb back up to meet the next challenge. Our son is 10, but was diagnosed with severe language and developmental delays at age 3. I’ll never love rollercoasters. But, I’ve learned to take my hands off the bar to celebrate moving forward. One of the best things about a rollercoaster is that you are not alone. One this rollercoaster, you will begin to meet parents everywhere you go who are riding the same ride and can help you.

I agree with all the advice of the other posters. Here’s a few more tidbits of advice.

1. Remember you can’t try EVERY intervention of program AT ONCE. Pick the top 2-3 things that will help your child the most and begin there.
2. Once you start OT and other programs, you’ll get lots of ideas of things you can do at home. Try to sit in on as many OT or tutoring essions as you can. It will help you to see progress and understand your child.
3. Be super sweet to your child’s teacher so that he/she has a good relationship with you. Give them as much information about your child as you can, but give it in small bites so that the teacher can digest it. Don’t demand or be critical, instead help to foster a “team” attitude with the teacher. Help them to see your child’s gifts, as well as his challenges.
4. Remember your stress and worry will NOT help your child. I speak from personal experience, the more stress I feel, the more stress my child feels. When I squash my negative fears quickly and focus on all his gifts and work optimistically on his challenges, we ALL benefit from it. I have 2 other children and an husband who needs me too. It is easy to let your life and your child be defined by their disability. ALWAYS say 3 positive things about your child before you begin explaining their diability. Even when you are talking to yourself.
5. Spend time in prayer. Having a child with a disability has taught me how to pray. It is an awesome responsibility at times to be in charge of helping your child overcome or compensate for a disability. I get scared that I am not doing enough, or doing the wrong things. But again, I am not alone. God has made each of us unique and has a perfect plan for my child. When I pray and listen carefully, the right decisions become clear. The Lord hand-picked YOU to be just the parent your child needs. You will be up to the challenge. Take a day at a time. A learning disability is a very scary thing. But, your child has a Mom who loves him and will work hard to help him. Sometimes the greatest gifts come from facing struggles.

Hope you have a good day!
Rosie

Christy, slow down. The first thing you need to do is that.

After that, you need to get to know your child’s disability. Not in professional terms. What, exactly, can’t he do. Is it that he sees mixed up images? Or does he see fine but cannot link what he sees to other information? Or something else?

Before you can decide on a program that will help him, you need to get to know his problem intimately.

Orton-Gillingham is a very good approach. It generally works, but you can only look for targeted help — that specific program that is best for your child — when you know what your child is doing, i.e., what’s going on inside him.

You can’t always rely on a person giving tests to find out. You can ask his teachers and tutor and see what things get said over and over by different people, and you can watch him work yourself.

Good luck. Carol

Most importantly, find an outlet for yourself. My first marriage ended in divorce and some of that was due to disagreements involving our ADHD son’s behavior and even that he even had ADHD.

Remember that you are the only mother your child has and that some of the best help you can give him/her is to step back occasionally and take care of yourself.

Hi Christy,

The others have all given you good advice. As the mother of yet another NLD child, I’ll add just another couple of thoughts. (well, maybe more than a couple, but who’s counting?)

1. Someone else already said that you can’t try all the different possible “therapies” and remediation, and they’re right. Pick the areas where your child is weakest, and work on improving those. At the same time, figure out the areas where he is strongest, and help him capitalize on those. It’s very easy to get so caught up in trying to “fix” things that we overlook the sometimes substantial strengths these kids have in other areas.

2. Stress is the worst enemy of the NLD child. (and I suspect many other LD kids as well) My own son shuts down completely if the stress level gets too high. When he’s relaxed and happy, he learns quite well. It may feel counter-intuitive as we try to “help” our child as much as possible, but for many NLD kids, less is more. You have to weigh the possible benefit of any therapy against the possible stress it will add to your child’s life.

3. You can’t “fix” NLD, or make it go away. What you CAN do is teach the child compensating strategies to get around their difficulties. This can be a time consuming, painstaking process, but it CAN be done. We haven’t found anything yet that our son hasn’t been able to learn, but it may take quite a while longer (and much more patience on our part) to teach him than it does the NT child.

4. In the mean time, while you continue to teach him, make sure that your school is accomodating his disability as necessary. Kids with NLD are very often viewed as much more capable than they really are. If you are hearing “He should be able too…” or “He’s not working up to his potential”, it is a red flag that the teachers do not truly understand this disability.

5. This is something that was told to me, that has really stuck with me… You can do all the different therapies, chase around to all the different professionals, and spend all your money. But at the end of the day, your child will still have NLD.

That DOESN’T mean that we shouldn’t try to help them as much as we can, and it DOESN’T mean that with the right help and support that they can’t have a wonderful life ahead of them. It means that we have to learn to love and accept them for what they are, NLD and all. We have to accept the fact that some things will be harder for them than others. But at the same time we have to celebrate the wonderful attributes they do have.

It can be a rude awakening to find out that your child has this disability. But these kids have a much better chance than NLD kids who came just 10 years before them. We just have to do our part to see that the get the help they need, and are protected from the psychological damage that can occur from unremediated NLD.

Karen

Christy,

This is just a little Mom advise there are many frustrations associated with finding out your child has a problem.

Do not forget to play enjoy your child they grow too fast and all the advise, books, tears won’t change that. You have to be your child’s friend. When they forget their spelling words, make a mistake on something you know they know forget everything they will still know you are their friend.

Take care.

Karen, can you define NLD and NT for me? You used the terms in reply to Christy.

Someone earlier in the chain gave an internet address on the NLD, but my computer would not receive them.

This is some good advice. I know sometimes I get so caught up
in helping my daughter and remediating all her problems.
But you are right, it is important to play and have fun too.

Hi Carol,

NLD (or some people use NVLD) is Non-verbal Learning Disorder (or Disability, depending on the source) There are files on NLD here in the LD On Line library, and I think there are also links to some of the NLD web sites. The two biggest are:

www.NLDontheweb.org
www.nldline.com

Our local Boston area group is:

www.nldsupport.org

NT is “neurologically typical”.

Karen