where are all the teachers/profs?

I’m sure your positive experience will continue. Your child seems happy to go to school, too. Is that true?

Your kind words are appreciated.

Are you forgetting that it is called summer vacation? Remember, this is a job for teachers, some live it year-round with LD children of their own, but for the most part these are not their problems for 3 months out of the year. They’ll be back.

As a teacher of LD and ADHD/ODD/bipolar teenagers, it is my pleasure
to come here and share my thoughts!! When I do occasionally come across
a parent who seems “on the attack”, I simply chalk it up to their frustration
rather than personalize it. If I do leave a chat upon such an attack, it is only
because I have enough “stressors” to deal with by obligation……….I don’t
need them in my online experiences. Feel free to e -mail me, parents, for
support or any questions!!

Jim

As a teacher of LD and ADHD/ODD/bipolar teenagers, it is my pleasure
to come here and share my thoughts!! When I do occasionally come across
a parent who seems “on the attack”, I simply chalk it up to their frustration
rather than personalize it. If I do leave a chat upon such an attack, it is only
because I have enough “stressors” to deal with by obligation……….I don’t
need them in my online experiences. Feel free to e -mail me, parents, for
support or any questions!!

Jim

My daughter loves school. She thinks she is “the best thing since white bread”. When she went into K-5 and got her card in the mail telling her her teacher’s name she responded, “Oh, Mom, I bet Mrs. Onur is going to LOVE me”. She was born with this attitude.

When she was diagnosed with all these LDs, it really didn’t cramp her style much. She just keeps plugging. I have always told her that she just has to work harder than everyone else to get the same result b/c her brain works differently and learns differently. She’s cool with that and has a great self esteem. I attribute that to God, good tutors and good teachers!

My own child was anxiety ridden and it manifested in ADHD symptoms. The Ritalin just made him more quietly anxious. Even though I tried to convince him he was aces, he never believed it. My personality has always swayed toward, “to know me is to love me.” So, he didn’t get this from my segment of the gene pool.

The easiest kids I tutor/teach think they are peachy. The most difficult are the least resilient with low self-image. They seem pre-disposed to worry, fret, and be upset. Never believe that the lining is really silver, but must be instead radioactive.

Several years ago, I attended a full-day seminar at the LDA national conference on NLD. (VIQ 15+ points ahead of PIQ with normal FS IQ by their definition at that time.) The researchers who presented indicated that kids with more than 1SD discrepancy between VIQ and PIQ (with higher VIQ) had a 35% higher incidence of emotional issues such as anxiety disorder. I don’t know what new evidence has presented since then but I sure see tons of anecdotal evidence for it.

I’ll bet Mrs. Onur did love her. I have several sweet little Language-based LD girls (lower VIQ) who are just preciously sweet. I do enjoy that occasional girl. I enjoy my boys, too, but it’s nice to have a break.

Honestly, Mrs. Onur was quite perplexed by her. To this day my daughter will point her out and say, “Mom, that’s the teacher who never taught me how to read”. (not that there could be anything wrong w/HER!). :-)

So according to this conference, kids with more than a 1 STD lower performance IQ than verbal IQ by definition have NVLD? That is interesting because one article I read talked about the probability of being NVLD, depending on your spread between verbal and performance. The probability was much lower if the spread was 1 STD than if it was 2 STD.

Two things:

1. Maybe I am looking for a definitiveness that doesn’t exist yet in diagnosing my son. There doesn’t seem to be one definition of NVLD.

2. I don’t know how old or how your son is doing now but Dr. Amen talks about there being 6 types of ADHD and some of them involve anxiety and yes, Ritilin makes it worse. You might look at his book “Healing ADD”. My son fits the profile of ADD-inattentive in his book.

Beth

***

More than a decade ago, folks in the LD community referred to kids with lower verbal IQ (1SD is enough to mean something statistically) to have Language-Based LD. They meant, the child’s problems are in the language area rather than the Performance area. Well, the “handle” Non-Verbal LD popped out about five years ago to describe children with a lower performance IQ. Kids with much scatter on both sides were known as flip-kids. (That was my son. On the VIQ side, he went from a 16 in Similarities to a 4 on DS. Not as much scatter on the Performance side, but much lower score. Block Design only ranged from 9-12 over the years.) To my knowledge, no one performed any research before they gave the “handles.” (FYI, that’s kind of how the term LD was invented, too. A group of parents and professionals came up with it 35-40 years ago to use with a category of children than didn’t fit in other categories.)

I have attended some excellent national conference sessions on assessment put on by the Lab School of Washington. Their staff psych is astounding, or at least was five years ago. For those of you able to go to national LDA conferences or living in Middle Atlantic States, check out some of offerings. I learned lots & lots that way.

Sorry, but there has been quite a bit of research on the syndrome of Non-Verbal Learning Disorder, lead by Byron Rourke. It is not a “typical” LD, in that it cannot be dx’d just on the basis of IQ tests or IQ vs. achievement level.

Children with NLD will show deficits in a number of specific areas:

Social
Visual-spatial
Fine and/or gross motor
Higher-order thinking (problem solving, part-to-whole, inferential comprehension)

The severity of the problems in each of these areas varies from one NLD’er to another, but with careful observation, it is probably likely that at least subtle deficits will be seen in all areas. Interestingly, the split between VIQ and PIQ is NOT a criteria for NLD. While it is a common finding in people with NLD, it is far from definitive. There are many reasons for a VIQ/PIQ split that are not NLD related, and there are many people with NLD who do not show much (if any) split. This is often because a few key subtests on the verbal side pull the VIQ score down. Similarly, MOST NLD’ers are very early talkers and early, strong decoders. But there are certainly many people with NLD who were not early talkers or readers, either because of co-morbid conditions, or (in the case of reading) their visual-spatial disturbances are severe enough to interfere with learning to read.

NLD is much more of a developmental disability than a specific learning disability. It affects all aspects of the person’s life, not just academics. It also doesn’t go away, with any amount of remediation. You can teach compensating strategies, and avoid secondary emotional complications by providing thoughtful, appropriate accomodations and supports. Most NLD’ers have some great strenths that they can call upon, with proper training, to compensate for their weaknesses. With the knowlege that is currently available, and proper intervention, children with NLD can grow up to lead happy, fulfilling, productive lives.

But it is a big mistake for educators to think that a dx of NLD can be made simply by looking at IQ scores.

Karen

It appears to me that different people mean different things by the same terms. Yesterday the neurologist my son saw told me he had a right brain dysfunction. When I asked about wheter he could have NVLD, he told me that was what he was telling me. But he knew nothing about many of the categories of which you speak. He did eliminate Asbergers.

Beth

Thanks for jumping in here, Karen - I was about to do it!

Lil

your child are the only ones who can diagnose. Anyone else is just thinking & suggesting ideas. You have had what seems to be extensive and valid testing. What is it about what your medical professionals have told you that don’t seem to ring true? Ditto educational professionals?

I know many moms whose kids don’t really fit any diagnosis. Their kids are really eclectic. It is one of the reasons that I get tired of pinning everything on a “label.” I think you are onto something with the part-to-whole. Want some games/activities from WISC III Compilation for OA? If so, what age/grade is your son?

Nothing ever worked perfectly for my son. His wiring has finally connected, but it took until he was 14/15. Now, at age 18, he learns pretty well—except now feels that he knows it all .

The dialog, which began on another board, really concerned what “signals” one gets from the IQ testing. No one, that I know of, uses an IQ test to exclusively diagnose anything.

My own son exhibited all those symptoms you mentioned, yet was not diagnosed NLD because he also had language-based issues…so many kids…so many symptoms…no easy answers.

This is my son too—with the language based issues as well. Very confusing at times, I think.

Beth

We have had about every testing under the sun except neuropsychological testing—IQ testing, OT, auditory, vision and visual processing, educational. The school psychologist gave us no clue to what I have been putting together over the past two years. I didn’t think she was particularly competent. I still don’t understand some of the results, most notably the 77 standard score on the Woodcock JOhnson long term memory test. I have never noticed my son to have long term memory problems—short term yes. I had two audiologists suggest the right brain weaknesses to me.

What I guess I am trying to sort out is whether we have come to the end of the road with the neurologist’s diagnosis of a right brain disorder and ADD. He also said he was LD in terms of reading ect (no news to me!!). I read about NVLD and some of it fits my son and some doesn’t. The neurologist tells me this is what he has but he hasn’t done the tests that I have read about which are more psychological. So, I surmise that he means NVLD in a different, more generic sense of the word. Is there anything to be gained by seeing if he fits the NVLD criteria that Karen talks about?

My son has language based disabilities as well. In this way, he doesn’t seem to fit NVLD at all—or at least he has none of the strengths. He is not articulate, he spoke late, he still doesn’t decode well, he doesn’t use verbal means to talk himself through things. But he has some motor issues, some visual/spatial issues, perhaps some social issues.

Beth

Do I recall from another post that your child is both NVLD and dyslexic? If not, I apoligize for mixing you up with someone else. If so, could you share with me a little about what your child is like? Did you have a neuropsych diagnose the NVLD?

Beth

I’m going to jump in her too, I hope you all don’t mind.

I have a daughter with “severe specific learning disabilities in all academic areas” and “significant process delays”. She also has fine and gross motor skill problems, sensory integration problems, add, and a gifted IQ. Throw that into a mix and you’ve got a real puzzle.

She has recently been showing more often a word retrieval problem, so we are getting ready to look into a speech and language evaluation.

She has a 19 pt. spread between VIQ and PIQ, in favor of PIQ. However, she has many, many of the NVLD symptoms, except, she has no real social problems, except that she is too bossy. She has “outgrown”??/compensated /remediated out of most of her weaknesses, so they are not readily apparent to others.

I just consider her LD, but I would LOVE to go to the some of the conferences - are plain, little ole parents allowed to attend or do you have to be a teacher/professional?

***

Yes, parents are encouraged in any & every session of an LDA conference—at least they were when I was attending. It is a parent organization. When the Lab School does their evaulation workshops, they usually have one parent session and one professional session—sometimes even split into two professional sessions. Some of the professional sessions are pretty high-level. If a parent were very, very familiar with the terms, general statistics, etc., I’m sure they would welcome attendance at even the higher professional ones. The programs will usually state what kind of audience to expect. Why not get on their mailing list? Landmark does some wonderful things, too. I sure many do.

I learned lots & lots by attending LDA national conferences. Of course, I learned much at IDA conferences, too, but the scope is a bit more narrow.

Just got back from the library. They ordered that Jerome Rosner book for me and I’m going to dig in this evening. It’s dog earred and tattered, so must have seen some use somewhere. They can get me just about any book. Nice to look ‘em over before purchase.

Your daughter sounds like language-based LD, probably Dyslexic. But, if she’s reading, happy, learning…who cares what handle we put on it. Eh?

Do I just e-mail them to get on their mailing list? Isn’t one of their big conferences in Atlanta - or I’m I confusing it w/something else?

Yeah, her evaluator didn’t like the word “dyslexic”, but sent her to LMB and SI OT. Her tutor says she’s dyslexic.

She’s doing well, but she really has to work hard. If she could do all her tests orally, she would do alot better. And she always has these long, roundabout ways of doing math, especially word problems. By the time she’s finished I’M confused! I have a feeling we’ll be working on math tutoring b4 it’s all said and done. On Cloud 9 is supposed to be pretty good, I think. There’s also a “math strategies” class at the local special needs hosp. I’ve been toying with putting her in. I just hate to overload her. She’s not sinking yet, so I’m kind of waiting to see. It’s hard to know what to sometimes, but I guess you understand that.

Thanks for the info on the conferences. I find it all very fascinating. If I wasn’t spending all my money on tutoring, I’d go to school and study it.

Thank you for posting this. It answers a lot of questions for us regarding NVLD and the term LD. Had no idea this was how this all came about

Karen,

What do you think about a child that fits all other categories of NLD except for social deficits (are actually strength) and reading (poor decoder and weak comprehension).

They want to classify my son as NVLD, I’m just not accepting this because of these issues.

I’ve read a lot about NVLD and just can’t decide because he’s not textbook.

The list I gave is the list specifically given by Dr. Rourke, who (literally) has written the book(s) on NLD. (I believe several of his articles are available on this web site) Unfortunately, when people start lumping children who have LD’s on the non-verbal side in with children who have the syndrome of Non-Verbal Learning Disorder, the waters get mighty muddy.

I wish there were a different, more distinct name for the syndrome, but so far, it’s the best we have. The experts on NLD are very clear that a child has to show deficits in most, if not all of these areas to mee the criteria. It will probably be listed in the next DSM, and Dr. Rourke is the leader in writing the criteria. So it probably makes sense to stick close to his criteria at least for now.

Karen

I guess that’s exactly why I _would_ want a Neuropsych. As I said either on the parents board or in our private e-mail, a good neuropsychologist may or may not be able to give you a name for what is going on with your son (or several!) but they WILL be able to help you develop an educational plan specifically targetted to help in your son’s weak areas, while using his strengths to work around the weaknesses.

And as Susan said, none of us here can say for sure whether he has NLD, but I can tell you that there ARE NLD children who have trouble with reading and speach. Motor problems can affect speach, and visual/spatial and other issues can affect reading. Then there are other kids who unfortunately just have a tossed salad of issues, and you just have to work on the problems whether you can come up with a name or not.

If it’s an issue of qualifying for sevices, a label can be important. In your case, though, I believe he’s already qualified, right? In that case, what you really need is guidance in setting up an appropriate educational plan.

Karen

That’s for sure! I guess I’ve just become a really strong believer of a good neuropsych eval. Until we went that route with our first son, we had meeting after meeting at school, with everyone really trying, but no one really having a clue what to do. Once we had the neuropsych in hand, we had a clear direction in which to head, and a person we could refer back to as needed.

We’re skipping all the intermediate steps with our younger son, and going straight to the source of good information. That’s what neuropsychologists are trained to do… figure out our puzzeling children!

Karen

There are LOTS of parents at the NLD specific and general LD conferences I’ve been to. Particularly with NLD, in most school systems, as a parent, you’d better have learned all you can about it… The special educators are starting to get up to speed on it, but the classroom teachers, more often than not, haven’t even heard of it when your child enters the class.

Karen

When my son was first dx’d we struggled with that too. The evaluator also was on the fence about the dx just because he seemed to do better socially than many NLD kids do. BUT and I think this is a big BUT, there were some extenuating circumstances. He had been in a Montessori classroom for his whole school carreer, and had spent the previous 3 years with the same group of children. He only had 3 same age, same gender peers in his class. They were more like siblings than typical classmates.

Also, his perceptions of things are often skewed. He thinks everyone loves him whether they do or not. (not uncommon with NLD kids until they’ve had their nose rubbed in it repeatedly in middle school) He is incredibly loyal and kind to his friends, so he still has a core group of friends from his younger years. But he hasn’t made _ONE SINGLE_ new friend in school since he left the Montessori 6-9 classroom two years ago. He just hasn’t noticed.

The big social issues we’ve had in the last year have been misunderstandings with teachers. As you move up though upper elementary school, teachers tend not to speak quite as directly, and are likely to start joking with the kids more. He doesn’t get the jokes, and sometimes they get him really upset.

If you;d asked me at the end of 3rd grade whether he had any social problems, I would have given a resounding “No!” (in fact, that was what I told the neuropsychologist at the time) Now, at the end of 5th grade, I would have to say “yes”. We have been proactive on the peer front, and have him in social skills/pragmatics groups both at school and privately, but middle school this fall is really worrying me.

So, I guess to answere your question, I’d want to know the age of your child, and what kind of social setting he’s been in. LOT’s of NLD children do at least OK socially until middle school, then the floor drops out from underneath them in the less protected, nastier world of adolescence.

Karen

Thank you for your answer. My son is 10 and going into 5th grade. In the school setting the teachers say he has many friends and fits in socially. His peers are cordial to him from what I have observed.

At home we have two boys the same age and those two tend to play together more and only come to our house occassionally. My son says the other two drive him crazy. He tends to play more with his brother who is 7.

He is friendly and plays with children he knows when we see them at the ball field, pool etc. A new boy (1 year older) moved in on the other end of the block during the winter. We introduced them when they moved in but they didn’t connnect. Last week my son says he just went up to the door and asked him if he wanted to play and they have been playing off and on since. It took him a while, but I was proud of the intitiative he took.

The only curious things that I find are these: when he has his one good friend over, when he’s had enough, he’s done and doesn’t have much tolerance after that point. He becomes irritable. And when he is over at this same friends house, when he’s had enough, he wants to come home. He does the same thing with the neighbors I mentioned; when he’s had enough, he just comes in. But he fits in really well where ever we go and always buddies up with someone in an unfamiliar situation. I just kind of accepted this as temperment, he knows what he wants and is not afraid to do what he wants to do.
Am I wrong assuming this?

He is also what I consider overly attuned to others feelings. He always likes to make sure everyone else is happy otherwise it ruins him. He is very good at reading body language and facial expressions; but sometimes it is to a fault. It is difficult to discipline him (although we rarely have to) because he just gets crushed when we are upset with him.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just in denial? But I don’t see these as problems I see it as personality and temperment. How do you make the decision that it is social deficits.

At the point where you are now, I think I’d be doing what you are doing, just being watchful, aware, and cautiously optimistic. If your son didn’t have other signs of NLD, I don’t think I’d give it even another thought. Because I know that some higher functioning NLD kids get to high school, college or beyond before being identified, I’d keep an eye on things and be ready to step in and help if he does start to flounder socially.

Karen

Gee, I post all over these boards but stayed away from the parents’ ones because I figure I only had relatively small problems with my kid and who am I to judge someone else’s parenting with other and much more difficult problems?

When my daughter was little, she was milk allergic with frequent upset stomach; subject to frequent and severe throat and ear infections and fevers; hyperactive and didn’t believe in sleep; fast developing verbally and slow developing in hand coordination (a recipe for frustration in the physical learning stages!); moderately visually handicapped but not treatable by glasses (retinas); and an *extremely* strong personality who can on occasion outstubborn even me, and could since six weeks old. (You know those baby books that tell you a month- old baby will stop crying after an hour, and can’t roll over? Well, they’re wrong.)
I got a lot of funny looks and a lot of unsolicited advice.
The particular comment that got to me was to be told that I shouldn’t be so stern and severe with her, she was such a sweet and obedient little thing (Maybe there was a reason she was like that?)

Anyway, I finally figured out an answer: when people told me how I should raise her, I offered to loan her for twenty-four hours. Nobody ever took me up on it.

Since I’m not going to be walking in your shoes, I’m going to be careful in laying down the law to you.

But if you want advice and suggestions, you know where to find me to ask.