Just had to tell my son's camp counselor about his LD... : (

I also do not always discuss LDs everywhere I go. Sometimes I just do not have it in me and I know I am going to tear up, choke up and frankly sometimes I feel these issues are personal and I get angry that I need to discuss it with total strangers. I just take a chance at times and do not put it down on medical forms, or discuss it with counselors and coaches. Sometimes it backfires and other times it doesn’t. Sometimes explaining the issue makes the caregiver soften up a little, but some people do not get it anyway, and then I feel like why did I share these personal problems with them anyway (it did not help my child)? At times I feel that my child needs to cope with the real world whether they understand my child completely or not. It can be extremely painful for my boy, but I cannot always protect him.

Thanks for validating my conflicting emotions. I also think sometimes that if everyone were more honest about their shortcomings there wouldn’t be a stigma about differences in the first place. I try not to see my son as a walking disability. I also am grappling with the finding the right balance between letting him develop his own strategies, and running interference for him. He’s only 8, and is just starting to understand his own issues. How old is your son?

I have to say that in a situation where my NLD son will be spending any amount of time with a group, such as at camp, it would be unfair to both him and the staff for me NOT to tell them about NLD.

I have found that the best thing to do is to send an article about NLD to the camp along with his registration forms, and ask that all staff who will have contact with him read it. In my son’s case, there are safety issues. NLD kids’ poor visual/spatial skills can lead to getting lost or swimming into too-deep water if not closely supervised. I also want staff to be aware of potential bullying situations, and to know that sometimes his literal responses can seem rude when they aren’t meant that way.

My son is at camp at the moment, for the second year at the same overnight camp. When we arrived this year, they welcomed him with open arms. They said that learning about him had helped them with other kids. Letting them know about NLD was the best thing I could have done.

Karen

We do not have the safety issues, but we did have the bullying and some team sport difficulties. My son is now 15, and it has gotten easier for us. Safety was not an issue once our child turned 9. The only safety issue prior to age 9 was crossing a street, which is a safety issue for all children under this age anyway. There was never a program where he was asked to cross a street without help , or he would not have been there!!! I am glad that I spoke up when my intuition told me to do so, and clammed up other times.

it sure is a hard decision, isn’t it.
i know that my family thinks that i am now making excuses for him as i try to teach them about nvld. some of them really think that it is a parenting problem-especially his father-my ex!
has anyone found a short but informative article that would be appropriate to give to coaches, etc.
charlene

in this scenario , and many others too, especially regarding discipline. My son can be mischevious on purpose, or impulsive. Its hard to know where to set the limits. We don’t want to punish him for being who he is, but he’s not incapable of learning from his mistakes either.

If we had those concerns I would have more proactive as well. My son is at a very small local camp with friends from school so for right now we don’t have the same concerns. (they do take an overnight, and I worry about him wandering off into the woods, but at his age they have to supervise all the kids closely!)

I’ve always begun each school year with a meeting to let the teacher know what the issues we were watching were (prior to understanding the big picture with him we just intervened as we saw fit, a little OT, a little speech). Now that its clear he has an learning disability I would be remiss if I didn’t bring all of the nuances of it to the attention of his teacher in the Fall.

I also find most people don’t know what NVLD is . I should find a description that applies to him and give to his teachers. Good thought, thanks!

Karen,
For school we have an iep and I openly discuss the issues with his teachers too.

Charlene,
My mother thinks it is a parenting problem. She thinks I need to send him to a military school or perhaps some boarding school program to straighten him out! Just thought I might add that she has a teaching degree and was a middle school English teacher!!! My son is a good kid, who has never been in trouble! He just does not plan and organize well. He does well in school (with assistance). She seems to think that if some guy in a military uniform yells at him his LD will fly out the window! How can I expect the world to understand LDs (teachers included) if my own mother does not get it. I do not think that my mother comprehends that LDs exist (afterall she can’t see it).

Hi Karen,
One thing you could do is try to find a brochure or even a short and simple explanation on the net about NVLDs. Although these two situations are not exactly the same, every year I always copy a brochure to give to my daughter’s teachers to explain her chronic illness so they can be prepared just in case she becomes ill. Fortunately my daughter is in remission, but if I suspect there may be any chance of a problem, I always discuss it with her teachers, sports coaches, etc…

This year, although I didn’t need to inform the swimming coaches about my daughter’s illness (She’s that healthy! Yessss!!!! :-),
I did mention that my son sometimes has a problem hearing directions and may need to have them repeated. I mentioned that he seems to have a LD and may need a little extra attention. They thanked me for sharing this information and have been really wonderful with my son. Also, they know not to take it personally when he appears to be ignoring them….although we’re really working with him on greeting people appropriately!

The latest one he has started is saying “h.” for “hi” and “g.b.” for “goodbye.”

For years my parents thought that if we had started telling my son to greet people when he was 2 then he would be doing it now. Fortunately, now that we’ve identified him as LD they realize he can’t help it. Meanwhile, my daughter who is younger, is a social butterfly. Same parents, same household, different kids, different wiring. If only we could parent away these problems!

Aah, the fine line between LD and behavioral choices. If only I knew. Here’s where my ambivalence begins. I have decided as a parent I am going to err on the side of grace. I would rather have a child who laughingly remembers that mom almost went to the poor house b/c she had to buy all those soccer shoes (1 keeps getting lost) than remembering a mom that always yelled at her b/c she could find the other shoe. I’ve been both moms - I prefer the poor house. :)

… especially teachers. P.S. Check the thrift shops for used soccer shoes!

Karen,
At least your parents get it now! My mother just tells me that I have the kids trained not to say hello! She wants them to run up to her with hugs and kisses. Neither of my kids, although loving, doing this on their own.

Here’s a brochure you might find useful—it’s an online one, but you could print it out and take it to whoever needs it. Here’s the URL:

http://www.geocities.com/zorrothefox2000/nldbrochure.html

Hope it helps!

Yours truly,
Kathy G.

Laura wrote:
>
> Hi Karen,
> One thing you could do is try to find a brochure or even a
> short and simple explanation on the net about NVLDs. Although
> these two situations are not exactly the same, every year I
> always copy a brochure to give to my daughter’s teachers to
> explain her chronic illness so they can be prepared just in
> case she becomes ill. Fortunately my daughter is in
> remission, but if I suspect there may be any chance of a
> problem, I always discuss it with her teachers, sports
> coaches, etc…
>

Yikes! Streets are still a HUGE issue for us at 11 1/2. We have it written into his IEP that the bus has to drop him off at our driveway. Otherwise he wouldn’t survive the first week of school! I’d like to believe that the safety issues will lessen sometime soon, but I haven’t seen any sign of it. You can teach him the “rule” for one set of circumstances, but the minute you’re not paying attention, he’ll find something new to get in trouble with. :-/

Karen

I use the Sue Thompson article. (I think there’s a copy on this site) I tell them that not all areas are big problems for him (he has less social trouble than many NLD’ers) and I highlight the parts of the article that are most relevant to him. So far, most people have been pretty receptive. If they weren’t, I don’t think I’d want him there.

Karen

My son has an IEP too. But even though it is written into the IEP that all staff that have contact with him must read the materials we have provided on NLD, I don’t leave it up to the SPED dept. to hand this out. I make copies for every teacher, make an appointment to meet them just before school starts, and hand the information to them. That way they can’t possibly say they didn’t receive it.

Karen

The one that Kathy G. posted the web site for is a good shorter one. For people who are going to be spending more time with him, I give them that AND the Sue Thompson article!

Oh, and as far as family members are concerned, my brother is one of the sort who thinks that most “LD kids” just need a good kick in the pants. He took my NLD son with pretty severe visual/spatial issues on a bike ride on the edge of a narrow, winding country road last summer. I guess when he came back with several more grey hairs, he told my SIL that maybe I was right, there WAS something a little different about my son ;-)

Karen

I think the big difference is whether you correct or punish. We don’t get our NLD son get away with anything. But we don’t PUNISH unless we are SURE he was willfully disobedient. That hardly ever happens. That doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences when he does something wrong. Even if it’s an accident, or he didn’t know better, if something is damaged or whatever, he has to help rectify the situation. Then we discuss what a better course of action might have been.

If he did exactly the same thing again on purpose, there would be SERIOUS consequences. But as I said, that has almost never happened. He just manages to find some new way to get in a scrape.

Karen

that my son is in regular private school, so despite the tremendous expense, we get nothing! Well, that’s not completely true. We do get small classes, a wonderful nurturing philosophy, and excellent curriculum, but we don’t get any services. But that’s a whole other conversation…

unfortunately for me and my son, I am a very organized (controlling?) person. Even when he was a baby I had to learn to be more patient, and get used to the fact that you have no control when you have kids. Throw his issues into the mix and you can imagine the potential for disaster - but I had an epihany about 2 years ago (way before we knew officially he was LD) that he is wired differently and we ‘d better all just accept it. So today when he came off the bus and told me he probably lost his hat I just laughed. You’ve got to pick your battles right? : )

This was the first description of NLD that describes it the way I live with it. ( there is disagreement from our “team” of professionals about whether my son is truly NLD or not, but this article rings true in many ways) Its not quite so scary as some of the Sue Thompson literature. THANKS!!

Thanks Rover! I just might do that.

Oh, the bike ride. I almost had a nervous breakdown the first time we went on a long ride. She fell off every time the pavement had a bump. She also “forgets to look” before crossing streets. My OT told me that it was “practically a miracle” that she was even riding a bike and that safety is a really BIG issue. She’s better on a scooter.

BTW, where the Sue Thompson article everyone’s talking about?

I tried to get the geocities nld brochure, but all I got was a long list (65) of geocities and no nld brochure. What am I missing? There were 65 different sites, but none had Zorrothefox or NLD brochure. THanks for your help.

Poke around in “LD In Depth”. If it’s not in there, you can definitely get it from the NLDontheweb.org web site.

Is your daughter NLD? I don’t think you’d actually said that in other posts in other sections. If so, there’s your reason for keeping her on an IEP. The problems that NLD kids experience get WORSE as the expectations go up as they move through school. Most need MORE help as they get older, not less. If your daughter is NLD, and also doesn’t have the typical strengths in reading and memory that many NLD kids have, she’s really got a double whammy, and they are really going to bneed to support her.

My NLD son has a lot of issues that need support, but he’s always been an excellent reader (at least decoding… inferential comprehension, as expected is much lower) and has a great memory. He can spit back facts at you all day long.

Karen

I recently had this same issue come up. My son’s swim teacher was trying to teach him breast stroke. She kept moving her arms in a circle and asking him to follow along. He has bilateral motor issues and dyspraxia which makes following along on an activity like this very difficult.
He was not doing it and I could see that from her vantage point she thought he wasn’t trying.

I explained the issues regarding the dyspraxia and bilateral coordination yada yada to her and she just kind of said OK. After that it seems she just sort of stopped teaching him. Like he can’t learn or something. She now lets him dive off the board or do whatever he wants during lessons. She even cut his last lesson short because I was home with my other child who was sick while my neighbor was with my son at the pool. Swim lessons are a big part of my remediation plans for him. Swimming is a great activity for working on what he has.

To make matters worse his swim teacher is his swim coach. He is now is an afterthought when it comes to placement of where he will be swimming at meets. He is automatically placed with the poorest swimmers (some younger) even though he is better than others his own age at freestyle.

I will never do this again. I will advocate for my child by instructing the instructer what works best for him. I will do this without applying labels that most do not understand and that for them is just a convenient way of saying well that child CAN”T.

I plan on having a sit down with her today as these issues became apparent to me this week. I will explain to her how important swimming is to him and how he really can learn and usually is quite tenacious at developing new skills when given the right motivation. I will gently imply that his failure is her failure. He can learn.
Thanks for bringing this up it was quite timely for me.

nt

Did you copy and paste the URL into the window (or whatever it’s called—forgive me; I’m still not quite familiar with computer vocabulary)? I did that just now, and I accessed the brochure.

If you still can’t access it after another try, let me know and I’ll copy and paste the brochure into a post here.

Kathy G.

Leah wrote:
>
> I tried to get the geocities nld brochure, but all I got was
> a long list (65) of geocities and no nld brochure. What am I
> missing? There were 65 different sites, but none had
> Zorrothefox or NLD brochure. THanks for your help.

Kathy,

I am having the same trouble. I’d really appreciate it if you could cut and past the brochure here. Thanks!

Beth