still not grasping NVLD

Will this link be user-friendly enough?

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

Yours truly,
Kathy G.

little lulu wrote:
>
> I’m sorry, I have a really thick skull sometimes when it
> comes to truly understanding something but I am still not
> seeing why they sub group these specific children when all of
> the symtoms cross over to learning disabilities in general.
>
> I’ve been reading and reading and I just don’t understand
> what makes this group of kids different from any other kid
> with SLDs. Is there a category of verbal learning
> disabilities also.
>
> Most people on here really have a knack for summing things up
> and talking in parent-ease. Can anyone sum up NVLD specifics.
>
> Thanks

From what I’ve read, it starts out pretty straightforward. (Then people always try to overcomplicate it and add self-contradictory things and their own opinions and politics … but let’s stick to the basics.)

The original studies on LD’s were on dyslexia, ie difficulties learning to read.Of course this is verbally related.
Later work has been done on dyscalculia or difficulties with mathematics, but of course this involves verbal explanations and reading and writing too.
Then we got ideas like CAPD, and that of course relates to verbal things too.

But there is a small and confusing group of students who are fine verbally, in fact *often gifted verbally*, but who show patterns of learning difficulty in *other* areas — may have trouble visualizing or dealing with visual input, may have trouble with spatial orientation, may be able to verbalize math prodedures but have trouble with math *concepts* (note this is a “may”, not an always; this is not identical with math difficulty!), may have difficulty with interpreting expression of emotions and/or social relationships; often have serious difficulty with time, organization, etc. On testing these people do fine or exceptionally well on standard IQ tests because of the good verbal ability, but show unevennes in performance on more detailed testing and subtest scores.
The pattern looks like a learning disability all right, but *not* in a verbal area —so thus non-verbal learning disability, NVLD or NLD.

As you know, there is still a debate about how these students get served under IDEA…NVLD is not in the federal definition; some evaluators still see it on the pervasive dev. disorder/ Asbergers spectrum, not under language based LD.

My daughter has both, including the SI problems of light and noise hypersensitivity. In fact, when I went to a seminar on Austism, I was amazed at how much of what she had as a younger child (& a few of what she still displays) was on the Autism scale (or PDD). However she does NOT have the social issues. Only too bossy. (My husband says she gets that directlly from me :-) .

You know, I think it goes back to ignoring the label (except as needed for services) and focusing on helping the child underneath all those labels.

The more I learn about NLD, and autistic spectrum disorders, and the longer I live with my kids, the more I have come to believe that NLD is a developmental disorder in the same category as AS or PDD. We certainly know that there is a large overlap between the AS and NLD populations.

NLD kids tend to be early, strong talkers and decoders because they are less impaired in those areas than in the visial/spatial and tactile areas. So they practice more and get better at it faster. OTOH, it would be a mistake to overlook the language component of NLD.

NLD kids DO have a number of deficits in the area of language. Many, if not most of their social problems have a basis in not being able to “read” non-verbal communication. Since 60% or more of all communication is non-verbal, this is a HUGE deficit. Their problems include not only body language, but also pragmatics and prosody, which are cleary part of verbal language.

While they are often strong decoders, their comprehension is often way behind their decoding skills. Even worse is inferential comprehension. If it’s not spelled out in black and white, they don’t get it.

It wasn’t that long ago that Asperger’s wasn’t an accepted category for eligibility. Now that it was included in the last DSM, that one is covered. I have no doubt that NLD will be included in the next DSM. (Dr. Rourke is hard at work on that as we speak) Enlightened school systems realize this, and are already servicing these kids without making evaluators cram them into another category.

It is SO important that the needs of these kids be recognized and met as early as possible. It is a disorder that is easiest to deal with if interventions are started early, but one where major academic difficulties often don’t show up until late elementary school or later, when the underlying deficits are much harder to address. It takes a lot of education to get schools to respond to the needs of NLD kids, but it is imperative that their parents not accept a “wait and see if he’ll grow out of it” attitude. NLD is a disorder that kids grow into, not out of.

Karen
Karen

I think this is where I’m having the difficulty. I am not so much looking for a “label” as I am searching for where does he fit in where I can find the proper interventions for him.

Your post is very informative (as always). Although he fits the NLD category with numbers (from IQ) he is not consistent with the other criteria. He is not a strong decoder at all, he will guess when confronted with a word he doesn’t know or admittedly skips them. And he has significant deficits in the visual/spatial areas. Both of these are strengths for NLD (usually).

And the big one. I’ve talked with you before about this one, social skills are his strength. He is most definitely able to read social and emotional cues, sometimes to a fault.

I am just not getting how they are fitting him into the NLD category. I just thought maybe I was missing something.

Thank you for your most helpful advice.

Thank you for your explanation, this makes it a little clearer.

I can see some of the issues of NLD that relate to my son. His verbal scores are definitely his strength. But from what I gather, NLD vs. SLDs (dyslexia, etc) has the big issue of the lack of social skills you mention. This is where I’m thrown.

I believe his strengths are social skills. He makes friends easily, can read social/emotional cues and body language and all that good stuff. When he was younger he was slower at seeing the “gray” areas but that has resolved itself. He still has trouble handling dissappointment, but this is not unusual from what I see in other kids his age.

The big question, can someone have NLD without all of the social deficits described? This is where I’m getting hung up. I truly feel he fits the dyslexia criteria lists I keep finding yet he doesn’t fit the A.C.I.D. formula. He’s a great big puzzle to me.

Its not so much that I’m looking for a label, but I do believe I need a direction to look for resources and information so I can make proper intervention decisions.

Basically, why fight the school for the NLD specialist and related servcies that the neuropsych recommends if thats not what he really needs.

I totally agree. My son does not have the social issues either and my son gets his bossiness and low frustration tolerance from me as well. LOL.

I’m not really looking for a label, just the right category that he fits so I can ensure that he’s getting what he really needs.

NLD specialists will focus on the social end of things because those skills are essential to getting by in life (from what I’ve read) and he doesn’t need that. That’s all intact for him.

I just want to know what I’m really looking at with him so that he has the best shot at doing whatever he chooses to do with his future.

Thank you for your response.

Visual/spatial skills are NOT a strength for NLD people. This is one of the defined areas of deficit. As far as decoding skills are concerned, it is true that many NLD kids are good decoders, there is nothing in the diagnostic criteria about this. And there are definitely NLD kids whose visual/spatial deficits are severe enough to interfere with decoding. There are also kids that are both NLD and dyslexic, which can muddy the waters.

While it is a common occurance for NLD’ers to have a split between VIQ and PIQ, this isn’t considered diagnostic either. There are reasons for this split that are not related to NLD, and there are many NLD’ers who do do not have a significant split.

Most NLD’ers DO show at least some difficulties in the area of social skills, but in some people they are quite subtle. Others have learned to compensate, and still others (like my son) are in an environment that is more accepting of differences, and so, have not run into major difficulties as a result of their social deficits. It was not until AFTER I learned about NLD that I could see patterns of behvior in my son that could lead to social difficulties.

We work very hard on propping him up in these areas with direct teaching, and he continues to do well enough. He’s certainly not one of the “in crowd”, but he has a core group of friends who are all nice kids, and he is relatively happy.

While there are some professionals who are handing out NLD “dx’s” to children who do not manifest any social deficits, from what I’ve read, these children do not meet the criteria proposed by Dr. Rourke, or the other head researchers into NLD.

Karen

It has not been my experience that people who really understand NLD focus just on the social aspects. Most that we’ve worked with have been quite pragmatic about choosing to deal with the child’s WORST deficits first, and then working from there.

I don’t know how old your son is, but many NLD kids don’t experience social problems until they are a bit older. (middle school seems to be the height of the problems funnily enough ;-) So it may be that it pays to keep a watchful eye out for future trouble…Don’t go looking for it, but be aware of possible problems.

But if your evaluator is sure of the dx, s/he may be seeing aspects of his personality that are outside the norm for his age group. They may appear “perfectly normal” to you, because you are used to him. I know this was true for me. There are things that my son did that I just didn’t think were unusual until I started talking to other people, and asking teachers and friends who knew us well for their candid opinions. Their answers made me realize that although my son’s issues were mild, and he certainly was far from friendless, he was NOT without social issues.

These have become more apparent as he’s gotten older, particualrly his extremely literal interpretation of what is said to him, and his extreme naivety. It is REALLY important that we work with him on an on-going basis to make sure that he is not taken advantage of by more socially saavy kids.

As far as your son inheriting certain personality traits from you, we always say that our poor sons got a double dose of the “stubborn gene”, from their dad as well as me. But remember that the traits that are part of NLD are very often present in other members of the extended family. Sometimes this is called a “shadow syndrome”, other times, it’s even more piecemeal than that. But if a certain behavior pattern is common in a family, it is easy for the family to just look at it as “normal”, just the way a family that is full of musical talent will not be at all surprised that their children all are adept at picking up musical instruments.

Karen

I found this in an article. Basically, the social problems are a by-product of underlying deficits. My interpretation is that the primary neuropyschological deficits have to be present for NVLD to exist. The extent to which the measurable impairments in academic performance, social functioning, and emotional well being (the most obvious manifestation) varies probably by the extent of primary deficits and the demands of the situation (younger children are not typically called upon to perform in ways problematic for NVLD children). And of course, the same surface conditions (e.g., social, academic, ect) can have various causes.

“More recently (Rourke, 1995a), refined and expanded his description of NVLD symptoms. His model is dynamic in speculating that primary neuropsychological deficits lead to secondary deficits in modality-specific aspects of attention and, more generally, in the extent to which children actively explore their environment. These primary neuropsychological deficits include tactile perception, visual perception, and motor coordination. In turn, these secondary deficits lead to tertiary deficits, particularly in nonverbal memory, abstract reasoning, executive functions, and specific aspects of speech and language. Specific, measurable impairments in academic performance, social functioning, and emotional well being are direct by-products of this constellation of primary, secondary, and tertiary neuropsychological deficits.”

Beth

Hi AA,

I would never suggest that there isn’t an LD component to NLD!!! If there wasn’t, my son would not need an IEP, a 504 plan would be adequate. He definitely needs direct academic support… It’s just not in the area of reading. (though as I said before, there are NLD kids who do need help with that as well)

I also wasn’t suggesting that NLD and AS were simply different shades or degrees of the same thing. And for that mattter, I’m not fully convinced that AS and autism are shades of the same thing. I’m saying that all of these disorders affect the person in more ways than a specific learning disability. This, to some extent, echos Anita’s post on the teaching board, where she says that kids with a SINGLE area of weakness are easier to remediate than those with multiple weaknesses)

And I’m certainly not trying to make light of the severe problems that a dyslexic person could have in life without remediation. Certainly, not being able to read is not just a problem in school… the person couldn’t follow a recipe, or fill out a job application, or even find their way through a subway system.

BUT, a person with dyslexia, who doesn’t also have other issues does NOT have the physical challenges faced by most NLD children. And it’s not just fine motor stuff, but gross motor as well. How often do I hear on these boards that sports are the place where so many LD children can salvage their self esteem? Not my NLD kid. And he doesn’t LOOK different than the other kids, so there’s no reason for other kids to make allowances for him. How many dyslexic middle schoolers in our town cannot be allowed to walk to the center of town for an ice cream with a friend? Mine can’t, because he’d get himself squashed on the edge of the road the first day.

And then there’s the social piece on top of that. Certainly children with LD’s (or without, for that matter) can be tormented by cruel kids, but this is not because of their lack of social skills, it’s because other kids are cruel. Whether they deserve it or not, or whether we all wish we lived in a kinder, gentler world, many NLD children draw trouble like a magnet. Some because they behave oddly, others because they can easily be tormented into “losing it”, and others, like my son, who err in the direction of wanting so much to fit in that they are easy pickings for more saavy kids.

My point was not not to encourage an “us against them” position. One of my best friends has 2 severely dyslexic kids, both in outside placement. I am fully aware of how devastating “just” dyslexia can be. But Lulu wanted to know what makes the syndrome of NLD different from a specific learning disability. IMO, what makes it different is that there are a GROUP of deficits exhibited by this population and some of those deficits are in areas not usually considered to be directly related to learning. As I said in another post, some of these deficits can be quite subtle, and particularly in intelligent adults like yourself, the person may have learned very effective compensating strategies. But I think if the person really has NLD, if you look closely, you will see signs of deficits in all of these areas, even if you need to look at their history to find it.

Karen