Have I told you, I loved you today?

I have been around since 2000. This board has also been my life saver. I found it when I decided I was the only one who was going to help my son who had finished first grade without learning to read. The lovely school psychologist, who was happy with his progress, told me that the real problem was that my husband and I had not accepted the fact we had a child with a disability!!!!

Anyway, this is a place where you can find support, ideas, and interact with some of the smartest and most dedicated parents I know. I feel grateful that I am raising my children in the age of the internet. It would be a far more lonely journey without it.

And Socks, thank you, for giving back so much.

Beth

Oh Yes! Thank you socks and thank you Beth.

You won’t find anymore fine, intelligent parents anywhere. It seems strange that my son will never know this community which has helped me take him so far. You are all the family he doesn’t even know that he has. You are his guardian angels helping me to help him find his way.

All you have said, same goes here!
Amy

Amen to all of the above.

n/t

The feeling is mutual…

Friendship is of itself a holy tie that is made more sacred by adversity—Dryden

Hugs,

p

.

I read your message and I wanted to cry. I am happy for you that you are at peace now. My journey with LD is only just beginning. I feel so alone and I am glad I found this message board. My son is 4 1/2 yrs old. My husband and his family began at age 2 saying there was a language delay. I, as his mother wanted to give him the benifit of the doubt. After all he is a boy. At age 3 I took him for a speech evaluation. He was uncooperative with the evaluator and a neurodevelopemental work up was suggested. The study suggested a “flavor of PDD”. My pediatrician did not feel this but left it up to me to decide if I saw those behaviors. I am the parent. I did not want to see those behaviors. We had another speech eval done and it diagnosed him with Childhood Aphasia, processing problems. A neurologist eval said no PDD just language delay. A year in speech and we notice improvement but preschool has presented a problem. His teacher states he talks unintelligible. I see make attempts at socializing with other children but they do not understand him and he walks away discouraged. We are again going to have another neurodevelopemental work up done, but now I feel like we are beyond the point of early intervention. I feel so responsible that I didn’t listen to everyone in the beginning. When it all comes down to it, I feel like everyone is looking at me and I feel responsible. I am so afraid that my son is going live a frustrated life, unable to express himself. No one can give me a clear prognosis. They only say, he is young, and remember that reading is a processing issue too. I try to look on the bright side and say I am doing everything I can but I feel like I really have let him down. Can you offer me suggestions to feeling better? I feel let down by the system and that I have wasted a year of his education in evaluations.. Help?

You have had your son in speech therapy to address a problem that you know he has, whether it is a flavor of PDD or aphasia or processing issues — you are getting him help for him and it is not too late. I was much like you. My daughter was not speaking at 2 and the pediatrician was not concerned. At 3, he told me I could get her evaluated “to make me feel better because I would probably learn there was no problem” (which, like you, I wanted to believe). The evaluation showed a severe language delay. We started in speech therapy at 3 1/2. I, like you, felt guilty and remorseful that I did not accept the early warning signs and get her help sooner, but I really believe each child is different and some children cannot even go through the therapy until they reach a certain point. My daughter had such extreme separation anxiety (which later on I realized was due to other problems — such as sensory integration issues) that I don’t think she could have been receptive to therapy. She is now 10 1/2 and we are still working on it. Your son will make progress and you did not waste time with trying to understand the source of his difficulties by having him evaluated.

Don’t feel guilty - you are well ahead of where most people are!! 4.5 is still young. I didn’t discover this board until my dd was 5.5 (and this board truely saved my dd and my sanity as well!) and how I wish I could have started at 4.5.

Don’t let ‘them’ tell you he is too young to diagnose, see if he will outgrow etc. You didn’t waste your time on evaluations. You can’t really go forward until you know what is wrong. Most people never get a good evaluation and thus they never address the issue. Learn to read the evaluations. Then educate yourself on the deficits. I spent HOURS surfing this board and the internet - reading all the sites on auditory processing, CAPD, ADD, LD, wrightslaw etc. etc. I ordered books, I went to seminars, I did one program after the other - each targeted at a specific deficit I was trying to remediate(and I learned what most of those deficits were from the smart people on this board). The LD Journey is a hard one - it’s long, it’s unfair, it’s painful, it’s tiring, it’s EXPENSIVE but it is also rewarding in it’s own strange way and you will get to know your child better than ever before. I know how my child thinks, learns, what motivates her and we have a bond that I believe would never have developed had we not been on this journey together.

Val,
welcome to this board:-) You will be happy to have found us.
At peace? Yes,I suppose this is true,I am at peace. Do my kids still have learning disabilities? Yes Do they still have ADHD,Yes. Do I still have a learning disabilitiy ,YES! It is a journey,you will find yourself is some really interesting and strange situations. Best part is, someone here has been in the very same spot before. It helps.

My youngest has CAPD( central auditory processing disorder) for aprox. 3 months he was PDD like. He has a neuropsych eval with APHASIA in it! Both of my boys had articulation disorders and participated in speech for years,starting in preschool. You are timely in intervening,never let anyone tell you otherwise. you ARE the MOM. There is power in that.

The thing is,in this journey there will be many different opinions and labels,be true to that small voice. If it sounds like your kid,you know it,listen to yourself.. Give yourself the credit you deserve. When it is all said and done,you will be the one to know your kid the best.

Get your evals,but make sure you know exactly what the report is saying,ask yourself does it make sense,does it describe your kid?The very best thing to know is how does your kid learn? Once you know this,fight for your kids right to learn his way..

My son is nine, almost ten. When he was 2-3 my physician sister-in-law bugged me to get him evaluated. I thought she was hyper—seen too many sick kids—he was a boy, and all the rest.

His 3 year preschool teacher convinced me to have him evaluated. She told me her son had the same profile as a preschooler and later was diagnosed with a learning disability. He started receiving speech services at age 4. We found out he had undiagnosed ear infections that wrecked havoc with his development. He was a difficult preschooler as a result but we thought it was just his personality.

I think he would have been diagnosed PDD had I taken him to the right specialists. (He had speech, OT, and IQ testing done)

I don’t feel guilty. We were doing the best we knew and most of the time letting things go would have been the right decision. I didn’t want to be the hyper modern mom.

Your son is very young—other than speech my son didn’t get any real intervention until he was 7. We have worked intensely for the past almost three years. He has made amazing progress. In my book, you are ahead of the game.

I found this board when my son was 7. It has been a godsend.

Beth

Val,

You are WAY ahead of me too. I wish I started this when my son was that young. I really didn’t get him help until after first grade although he was at the bottom of both his K and first grade class. His first grade teacher pulled me aside and said, “Only you can help him.” I was in a cloud before that.

My son has made amazing progress. Don’t get bogged down with diagnosis or testing. Just go after each deficit one at a time. The testing can make you crazy because I swear I don’t think alot of those testers even know what they are doing.

You may want to think about sensory integration occupational therapy or a vision therapist (developmental optomotrist) who deals with sensory integration issues. It sounds like you did well by having him in speech. Hang in there and ask specific questions as they prop up.

There are wonderful people here.

Oh Socks,

You have done so much to help me and tons of others too.

Love U Too!

Hi Val,

Don’t beat yourself up for anything that happened in the past. I certainly understand your feelings just get speech therapy a.s.a.p.

Improvement will come, but it takes time so your patience will be necessary. Work with the SLP and help at home as much as you can.

Good luck and keep posting here it will help you all.

a guardian angel, and don’t look or sound much like one either.

If some nittly-gritty how-to advice can help, then please ask.

I started on the LDOnline board in the midst of some very difficult things in my life, and although I have few questions to ask (daughter is 20 and away at university), being able to help others and being appreciated for it has been a life-saver for me. So we can be a mutual-appreciation society, and keep those emails coming.

Sounds like you’re working on it, and that’s all you can do.

Here are some ideas for further progress:

Keep up the speech therapy, and can you get him more help?

Can you go to some sessions and find out what the therapist is working on and get her to give you “homework” to continue the practice more frequently?

You should go to your local university or college and find a good textbook in first-year linguistics, one that has a chapter on the phonetic structure of English. Study it over and over until you understand the 44 or 45 (depending on dialect) sounds that make up our language, and where and how they are formed. Then work with your son on making each sound clearly. All four-year-olds are still learning some sounds especially r (also read the chapter on speech development), but the more you work with him the better he’ll be, and every little bit helps.

Look at ESL texts and the kind of question-and-answer exchanges they teach, starting with “What’s your name?” “Where do you live?”, and, adapting these for his age, practice them with him until he can respond clearly and quickly to patterned questions. This is a first start in holding conversations.

Look at the Teaching Reading board. Many programs have been suggested, The Listening Program (TLP), Fast ForWord (FFW), PACE, Interactive Metronome (IM) and a lot of others. Ask around and find out what other people have done with kids whose profile is the same as yours. Many of these programs cost far too much money, but it’s an investment in the future.

Consider starting teaching him to read — properly, with a good phonics base. Sure, it’s early to start. But that gives him more time to learn, so he won’t be behind his class in Grade 1. What I’m saying here is heresy to the “whole-language” people, but it works: some kids can ‘work backwards’, using reading skills to improve their speech. If you learn the sounds and the symbols, then that can help you pronounce properly even if you don’t always hear the sounds — you can see them instead. If you learn to read well and easily, you get language input from reading , and your vocabulary and structure get richer. Don’t force it on him if he hates it, and go at a reasonable pace. Ask me for an outline of how to do this click my name to email me.

Hi Everyone and Val,

I am new to this board, and I think for the most part I will read and take in all that I can. I previously felt very comfortable talking about my sons unspecific learning disabilities and ADHD, feeling comfortable with the lingo when talking to teachers and the instructors in the school I am attending now to be an EA.
Upon reading your posts here, I am very overwhelmed and feel somewhat uneducated.
I don’t know about many of the areas of LD’s that you are talking about with vision and speech difficulties, in fact we haven’t even touched on these and I am in second semester. I certainly am confused, and don’t get me wrong, we are learning so much my brain aches at the end of the day, however I will be educating myself in these areas as well.
My son who is 11 now has severe social difficulties, he does not understand verbal or physical cues. He inappropriately jokes at others expense because he doesn’t understand what constitutes a joke. Hurting peoples feelings and of course not understanding why they don’t like him.
It frustrates and confuses him, and now he just hates himself and destroys any possible friendships before they start, to limit the pain of losing that friend later.
His negative behavior has escalated at school with acting out and swearing to get out of classes. I’m at my witts end.
He is getting older and I have been told that he will not recieve any more help than he receives now through the school board, as he is in grade 6. That it is up to me, to arrange counselling, and groups for him now on my own.
I have exhausted all groups, counselling services, Doctors, and testing. What more can I do. This is one of the reasons that I have decided to become an EA. I need to learn everything that I can to try to help him learn about his LD’s and learn to help himself in the future.

I think that you are all wonderful and I applaud all of you for being so open, that is the one thing that hits me first when reading all your posts. You ARE absolutely a family, whether you have met or not.
I will be learning from all of you, and I will try to join in, however I don’t feel that I have that much to offer. Just know that I think you are wonderful.

Bonita, in Canada

Bonita my friend,we ALL have things to offer:-) I understand what you are describing.My two have difficulty socially still.The laws in Canada are different then US special ed laws,but their are definitely people on this board that can help you. Please also come join us for a chat at www.net-haven.net any ,monday,wed,thurs night at 9PEST-11PEST it is a chat specificly for parents of children who are ADHD/LD or adults who are ADHD/LD

—A year in speech and we notice improvement but preschool has presented a problem. His teacher states he talks unintelligible. I see make attempts at socializing with other children but they do not understand him and he walks away discouraged.

First, I would start working on speech therapy at home with the kid. I found the materials for parents at www.hanen.org extremely useful when working with my second child (now 5 and a half), who was adopted at age 7 months, did not babble until she was 11 months old (post grommets placed in her eardrums to control her constant ear infections). I did not bother with formal speech therapy, because my first child (adopted at age 2 years 8 months) had had to have several years of speech therapy, and so at this point I knew what I needed to do. I did find I needed to teach her how to make the various sounds, however, as she was a bit unintelligible. I liked the Phonic Faces materials obtainable at www.elementory.com for articulation work and as preprep for work in decoding. I also used Fast Forward with her, www.scilearn.com as it had done wonders for my eldest’s ability to handle language, and this time I did not wish to be caught napping as I had been with my elder child. FF was very successful with my younger child as well, and her ability to blend letters and understand language really came off the table then. I followed it up with www.readingreflex.com, whose initial stages I used for teaching her to decode, and then the Bob Books series for teaching her reading. She reads very nicely now, and is quite normal in all other ways.