Where do I go from here?

It is good that you are having S/L therapy. That’s a great start. What are you planning to do for reading instruction? Weren’t you using PG at ho

Oh, I totally disagree with basing anything on the SCAN. This audiologist must not ahve been an APD specialist. Really, it is a waste of time to have a child tested by someone who doesn’t specialize in APD. My child was tested for APD at age 6…about 6 tests besides the SCAN.

Janis

The audiologist is qualified to test for APD, she tested my brother. However, she said that my son was not old enough for the full eval and based on the scan probably didn’t have processing problems.

Also, I am not sure he was emotionally ready for the full eval. He got very upset just having the SCAN, I ended up staying in the room with him. Also, she said that the Speech and Language Path that did the originally SCAN six months ago didn’t understand how to score the test and created her own rules which is the reason there was such a huge difference between right and left brain scores!

We are doing PG also but it is harder now that he has started school. First becuase they learn A, “AH” Apple and secondly because he has nightly homework and after we complete that, he is pretty burned. We are trying to work out a schedule where he does homework in the afternoon and PG at night!!

I just want to get him what he needs and he doesn’t do well on testing! I dread the thought of having more testing and I know he does also!!

K.

K.

I strongly suspect that this audiologist does not specilize in APD. My child only had one low score on the SCAN, yet she most certainly was diagnosed with APD after a full battery of tests at age 6. You have to go to someone who specializes totally in APD testing. Yes, there are some tests that can’t be given at age 6, but certainly the SCAN is not the only one. And if he has auditory memory problems…he probably DOES have APD. Do you live within driving distance of Washington, DC? There is a great APD expert there.

Janis

Unfortunately, I am no where near D.C.? I am in Massachusetts about 2 hours outside of Boston. Also, the audiologist is listed at the National Coalition on Auditory Processing Disorders, Inc. I think the problem is that she doesn’t test under the age of 7. She is going to see him again at age 7, which is next June.

I am not sure what to do. I am considering waiting until age 7 only because of his test anxiety and seeing how he does with the speech and lang, earobics, Pg and school.

K.

K.,

Then I would say that you are making a wise decision and doing all you can. I know it is difficult to do extra work in the evenings when they are so tired. I did get my child’s homework reduced last year as it was taking much too long. You may want to consider that if you feel you need to invest the time in PG instead.

Really and truly, it doesn’t take an official APD diagnosis to do what a child needs. You need to probably be doing exactly what you’re doing whether you have the official diagnosis or not.

Janis

I appreciate your response! Sometimes you need to here encouraging words from parents who are there now or who have been there before!!

Thank you,
K.

It would be interesting to see subscores on the IQ as my ds at age 7 had very similar scores to yours—VIQ 91 PIQ 107—both up 13 points 4 years and much remediation later. He did get dxed CAPD (not until age 8) and before fourth grade never scored above 1st%ile on the TAPS. I am quite sure my son would not have gotten the sound/symbol thing either (though at that time I knew almost nothing about that kind of thing), except for perhaps the best thing I ever did for him. I pulled him out the ps—then smitten with whole language—and sent him to the parochial school where first grade was taught by a nun who had been teaching children to read for forty years. With almost no prior instruction, he started reading by the end of the second week. We’ve had numerous problems related to reading speed and comprehension, but the decoding has never been an issue. As ds’s SLP once said, “By looking at his language scores you would think that this is a child who might never learn to decode. You should be down on your knees every night thanking God for Sr. Theresa.”

In another words, I have a child with a profile very similar to that of yours and he learned to read in line with his peers (and BTW spells very well) because he did not also suffer from dysteachia. I was lucky to find a teacher who gave all her children what they needed to break the code in the normal course of her instruction, and I could only wish every first grade teacher was a Sr. Theresa. My suggestion to you since you will have to be Sr. Theresa, is to avoid first grade burnout by 1)dumping the homework—having this in first grade is just silly and doubly so for a child who is not being taught to read properly during the school day, 2) doing phonographix instead.

Like you, we did language therapy 2x a week in first grade and it was definitely helpful. I didn’t know about Earobics then so we didn’t do it, but it sounds like a good idea as long as it can be somewhat fun and doesn’t become tortuous. Brainbuilder was very problematic for us, but ds definitely still has problems with working auditory memory and I wish I had known about it much earlier when he would have been more tractable. Ditto PACE. The summer of second grade we did FFW with my ds and saw huge gains in language scores—you should definitely consider this for next summer at the end of first grade (to avoid overload during the school year). Depending on how things go, you could consider PACE for the following summer. (Based on experience, if I had to do it over and knew what I know now—this is what I would have done. As they get older, you can’t fill summers with remediation efforts because they catch on that no one else is doing it and they won’t stand for you “ruining” yet another of their vacations.)

About the auditory processing, despite everything ds’s score did not budge until fourth grade when for other reasons and as a last resort we put him on adderall. You might keep the possibility of ADD (ours did not have the H) and medication in the back of your mind as you see how things go. In retrospect, had I known there was a possibility that it might have made such a big difference, I would have considered giving medication a trial back in first grade. Even knowing what I know now, I still might not have done it. But sometimes I think back on all the things he missed back then and all the catch up we’ve subsequently had to do and thought maybe it would have been something we ought to have done.

Truthfully, K., you are far ahead of the game compared to most parents I see. So pat yourself on the back and know that you are doing the best you can for your son. :-)

Janis

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These are his test scores from last march and april:

CELF-Preschool:
Receptive Language: Receptive Language Score 89
Linguistic Concepts 9
Basic Concepts 7
Sentence Structure 7

Expressive Language: Expressive Language Score 88
Recalling Sentences in Context 6
Formulating Lables 11
Word Structure 7

Peabody Vocab Test-R SS: 101 53% and 5th Stanine
Expressive Vocab Test SS: 94 34% and 4th Stanine

SCAN-C Test of Auditory Processing Disorders in Children
Subtest:
Filtered Words 10
Auditory Figure Words 13
Competing Words 8
Right Ear first task-Right Ear advantage = + 1 typical
Left Ear first tak - Right Ear advantage = +1 typical
Composite Standard Score: 103

(Just found out that this test was not done properly, so can’t be counted)

Wepman Test of Auditory Discrimination
Average Score = 0 Standard Deviation
Standard Deviation = -1SD

Test of Auditory Skills
Average Range = at Grade Level
Score: 1 Grade: Beginning Kindergarten

The Test of Phonological Awareness-selected subtests
Rhyming 109
Segmentation 110
Isolation (Initial Consonant only) 99

ALPHA Test of Phonology
No errors noted.

WPPSI: Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence

Verbal: Verbal Scaled Score 90
Information: 7
Comprehension 9
Arithmetic 10
Vocabulary 12
Similarities 4

Performance: Performance Scaled Score 105
Object Assembly 9
Geomtric Design 6
Block Design 12
Mazes 11
Picture Completetion 16

Full Scale Score 96

My son did not test as having CAPD on the SCAN, but he could not follow oral directions at ALL - not even single step directions. His language was immature and he used a lot of umm’s in his sentences. He was clearly frustrated when trying to name objects while trying to describe something to me. His auditory memory was very weak - a 3 to 4 year old level when he was 7 years old. Because of this he could not learn to read and he could not follow along in the classroom. He was diagnosed as the bottom 1% of children with LD and I was told “school will never be a good place for him”.

We tried BrainBuilder, FFW, and Earobics, none of which helped increase his auditory memory or his vocabulary and language comprehension.

Finally we tried Audiblox, which has a language component. The gains my son has made have been incredible (he is 9 yrs old). Until the language area is remediated, gains are almost impossible in any other area. AB is a complete “cure” for these types of issues (IMHO!),
Wendy

He is very young. It is true that boys develop slower than girls. If you want to use a non-evasive reading program, try Phono-Graphix in the form of the book, Reading Reflex.

Please remember that he is only six years old. Do PG and chill! He may be experiencing maturational educational lags. If you do much more to him, in the way of testing, he may really start hating school, and then where are you going to be. He can deal with PG even with poor teaching in school.

We have been doing PG since about Mid to early August, we are just trying to figure out how to work are schedule now that school has started!!

K.

Time, boy I sure could use more of it as well! Still trying to get 48 hours in 24. I have been able to cut some ‘corners’ in PG depending on the need. Email me and I will help you possibly shorten the time.

My son is reading about 2nd grade level. He is in the fourth grade. He surprises me on some of his reading because he gets words that I wouldn’t think he would know but messes up on smaller words. He also doesn’t seem to hear vowels. Where should I start with PG? Should I start at the very beginning? When he is reading he seems to be figuring out the larger words by the content of the sentences or paragraph. He leaves the vowel out when he writes.

Thanks, email is on it’s way!

K.

Did you give him the tests in the book to see what he already knows? Could he possibly have memorized some of the bigger words??

K.