Can someone give me some perspective?

one that guides you through the forest of trees and seem like Gigantic Redwoods to you. and eventually they will look like little saplings in retrospect… I have been where you are..as a parent. My daughter is still hearing impaired and has dyslexia but she has come so far from where she was. you have TIME on your side, you are on top of it in FIRST GRADE. I didn’t get on top of things until my daughter was hitting 4th and 5th grade. She is now in 8th grade and is mainstreamed but she is doing pretty good. We have more things to do still but she is holding her own and she feels good about herself.

I would strongly suggest Earobics and some fluency training like Great Leaps or Read Naturally, she needs the auditory imput, also books on tape, have her learn rhymes and the clapping games like Miss Mary Mack, and others. She will get it you just have to build up her auditory memory and you also may want to check out her visual skills, and see if she is having problems with Attention and maintaining focus. We always thought our daughter’s problems were related to her hearing impairment/CAPD but it wasn’t just that…it was that she was ADD-Inattentive and she was zoning out in class. Once we got a handle on that she just took off…she still struggles with her attention but she has come so far…

Take a deep breath, don’t beat yourself up, just take it one day at a time. I am a speech pathologist who specializes in treating kids with Auditory processing and Dyslexia disorders…so if you need to bounce ideas off of me, let me know…Hang in there…Rome wasn’t built in a day…:-P

suzi -

I have been where you are. I was just an total anxiety machine about my son’s dyslexia, ADD [not diagnosed til middle school], and a boatload of social and emotional issues. The school preferred to pretend that there wasn’t a problem. To top it off, my own family members were not supportive of my efforts to get my son the help he needed and that just made it all even harder.

As Pattim said, you are doing well to have a concrete diagnosis in first grade, and I agree with her about Earobics. The key is early intervention — before they start to internalizing their frustration with academics difficulties and turn it into emotional pain. If the school isn’t delivering enough help, get help privately. We had 4 years of private tutoring for our son, and it had a huge payoff.

My advice is to do everything you can to make the next 5-6 years of school as positive as you can possibly make it for both of you. Try to make homework a fun time to be together. Work together to get through it. Identify the “non-learning” tasks and help her through them. For example, when she gets one of those Internet-based-learning-through-technology-that-wastes-hours-of-time-searching assignments [who designs these stupid things?], locate the sites she needs, then let her take over. Kids don’t know how to search the Internet efficiently. They can waste hours just trying to locate something relevant, and they get hopelessly distracted by the irrelevant. Next, manage the workload. Don’t let her go through the entire worksheet and find out she did it wrong. Make sure she understands what to do at the outset. If she’s spending hours on a math worksheet, stop! If it means stopping halfway through because she’s too frustrated, do it! Get all the accommodations you can from her teachers. On long term assignments, help her pace her workload so she doesn’t get caught with a huge amount of work to do on the night before the assignment is due. Use technology wherever possible to help her get around her weaknesses.

When assignments are slightly beyond her reach, find alternatives for her, like spelling lists that are appropriate for her level, books on tape for reading assignments (or reading the book to her). Spend your “fun” reading together time on books that are fun and at her level; don’t spend it reading school work. At this age, grades are not important (and if you think they are - let it go, for her sake). Learning to love learning, and feeling successful at learning ARE important.

Encourage her to recognize her gifts. She is still young and you may not see them yet, but when they appear be sure to help her see how wonderful her gifts are. For our son, it was electronics, for others it can be heightened artistic ability, or sports, or science aptitude, or music, or a connection to animals, or many other areas. They need to see that they are able to excel in ways that others may not.

You also need to understand that there will be some things they will just not be able to do until their brain has the developmental maturity that allows them to do it. Our son just couldn’t do the most basic addition and subtraction until 7th grade. Then suddenly it clicked. He also had trouble understanding social skills (another source of anxiety for me). That also finally clicked in at about the same time. Big developmental milestones occur between ages 8 and 10, and again as they enter adolescence, 14-16, and again at 18-19. Every one of the stages represents a reason to be hopeful for your child. So be patient, accepting, and supportive.

My son is now almost 14. He has had a wonderful three years in middle school. He has made such tremendous gains in so many areas, I am no longer worried about him. He will find his way in this life. For the past two years, I have been gradually turning full responsibility for his schoolwork back to him. He is not quite there yet, but we are getting there slowly. I start to see him think more like an adult every day, and I realize it is now time to turn control back over to him. Thankfully, I believe he is ready for it.

There is so much to feel hopeful about!

Thanks for your reply! I already see one gift and that is artistic ability. She won a county wide art show for K-2nd grade. She’s very creative, so I’ve been helping her pursue those interests (art class, projects at home). She will be at a private LD school this summer and maybe for the fall also. I’m really hoping to see some progress in reading soon.

Suzi

I wasn’t going to pursue the ADD testing, but now I think I will after reading your post. Her kindergarten teacher says she doesn’t see that in her, but I do. I filled out Brown ADD scales and will have her teacher go ahead also. What did you do to treat the ADD?

Suzi

Suzi,

Just so you know. My son was 2 years behind in every subject in first grade. He couldn’t identify all his letters. His problem was mostly related to seeing and remembering symbols and sequencing. He couldn’t count to 100 in second grade.

He is in third and in a regular class and is able to do most of what the other kids can do but still is a little behind in writing and math. He has made alot of progress fairly quickly so I am convinced he will make it the rest of the way.

I have found that the only thing I can do to take the stress away is to get him help. Help has come in many forms.

It is very stressful. I have had so many nights of just not being able to sleep.

I don’t think my son will have a life long problem despite a very big problem in the beginning. He has many deficits and we just address them one at a time.

It helps that he buys in and knows this is what he needs to do to be successful. I can’t do it for him. He really is the one that has to do it.

You have to rule out all the variables and that is done by testing and also observations of the teachers, yourself and professionals who are familiar with CAPD/ADD. Also what I have found helpful is to ask kids where they go in their mind when they are there physically but not there with me mentally.

You can also check her vision and tracking…too..I had those issues as kid on top of a hearing loss…and I had Vision therapy and speech therapy…on top of that I was ADHD/gifted…so I have personally expereinced the whole gamut..

Many times kids that are good and relatively quiet students in the classroom and good kids at home are zoning out, they tune in now and then enough to appear to get it all but eventually this behavior becomes a detriment. For our daughter we did Brain Gym, and used an auditory trainer for her from kindergarten through 7th grade but by 3rd grade her highly structured teacher whom my daughter adored, said, “she just isn’t focusing…” I was so mad at the teacher because I thought it was the CAPD and she had dyslexia…That summer I got trained in lindamood-Bell programs and taught her to read, but she was still behind and by 5th grade it was a huge gap….The ADD-Inattentive personality was interfering with her abiilty to learn. However, there was a pattern….when we looked at alll the IQ tests that she had had since kindergarten there was a conistent drop in processing speeds from 122 in kindergarten to 72 in 5th grade, she was losing ground….She has been on Concerta for about 3 years now and she is doing great. We still have lots of vocabulary and language holes to fill because of her being tuned out for so long but we aren’t losing anymore ground anymore. Usually parents are right on the money with their suspicions of their kids problems.

I don’t think it hurts to rule out ADD..that is just one more piece to the puzzle to yeah or nay… We knew our 17 year old son was ADD back in 3rd grade but we chose to not medicate. It wasn’t until 9th grade that we had to do something because he couldn’t keep up with his studies due to his inattentive behaviors.

Good luck!

Three of my highly creative artistic kids are ADD-Inattentive. That is where they shine…me included… The dead give away for my son’s is that during class they would draw all along the perimeters of their papers things from their imaginative mind but they were tuning out the rest of the world when they were drawing.

yeah really lighten up

My dd was diagnosed at 5 with somewhat severe AP (she’s NEVER been given a dyslexia diagnosis, but she fits the mold to a tee). Her K teacher told us she never had a child like mine. We could go over and over and over sounds/symbol and it just didn’t click. And yet her handwriting and artistic abilities were well beyond her years.

The more I read, the more depressed I got. I became literallly obsessed with ‘fixing’ her. I cried at night and felt such helplessness toward her.

I recommend going full-force with remediation while she is young. My dd is in 3rd grade now and there is no way we could fit intense remediation into our busy schedule now - between homework everynight, monthly projects and extracurricular activities - we just don’t have any time left in the day. And remediation is easier/quicker when they are young! I’m so glad we didn’t wait until now to start.

My 3rd grader is doing GREAT. She’s reading at profienct/above proficient on her state testing scores. Staying on top of her class work. The ONLY time she hated going to school was when she was in K and prior to any remediation. By 1st grade she LOVED school and still does. She’s probably not ever going to be a great speller and will probably have some struggles going forward, but I’m not ‘panicked’ about it anymore. I know she will overcome.

P.S. Have you had your dd checked by a good developmental optometrist? All the reversals you mention make me suspect that there is a visual problem. Reversals are a sign of mixed dominance in the eye - she might be leading with the left eye vs. right? Makes me think there might be a weakness in right eye of some sort. Dispruptions in your auditory system, can effect occular development.

No, I haven’t had her examined by a developmental optometrist. On her evaluation, she did a Berea-Gestalt Motor Test where she had to copy abstract designs, 2 different times. One was timed, the other not. It didnt’ make a difference to give her extra time. Errors were 27 timed and 23 untimed out of a possible 48 errors. All errors were detail left out within the design . Does this sound like she needs to have further testing? They did say she had a very mild visual processing that is common among dyslexics. How do I go about finding a developmental optomotrist?

Suzi

Hearing how these children go on and find a way really gives me some hope. I really need to stop obsessing about it! Part of my problem is that help is so far away which adds extra stress. Thanks for your reply!

Suzi

Well, your daughter is way ahead of the average. Very few kids know the letter sounds consistently or can deal with two-digit numbers at all at this age. So things are going well.
It’s important when you are in a highly competitive school to look around at the rest of the world and take an objective view.
Just for a reality check, I’m presently dealing with two students who entered Grade 2 at age 7 1/2 with about the skill level your daughter has now. So you are ahead of the game.
Mixing capital and lower case letters, and reversing, are both common at this stage. Ye, DO correct this —left uncorrected it becomes a habit that is very hard to break. On the other hand, don’t panic, it happens and at this age can soon be straightened out.
Keep up good tutoring, work on those issues, don’t let her quit over the summer so she doesn’t forget. She should do just fine.

I have a remediated dyslexic ADHD Inattentive dd who is finishing 4th grade, almost 10 yo.

Kind. was not good. By 1st grade my spirited child who couldn’t wait to go to school on the big bus didn’t want to go to school at all. She knew about 5 sight words, finally learned all her letters but didn’t know letter/sound combinations. She couldn’t sound anything out. 1st grade, age 6 was the horror year - getting the correct diagnoses, making huge decisions, advocating/battling the school, securing the correct help and questioning my sanity. I was a mess, fixated anxious upset.

Little by little, when I saw my dd make progress where there was none before, it gave me guarded hope, joy and a small bit of confidence that we were on the right track.

Today I had my dd’s IEP meeting. I am so mixed - she is on a year of declassification. But as I thumbed through a binder of test scores, notes and report cards for the last few years I am amazed and so happy at how far she has come. Even this year to last year - unbelievable progress.

It is so important to have your own informed opinon about dd’s needs, be vigilant and her advocate, have your own action plan/roadmap, make sure she learns that learning should be fun not painful or a chore, don’t let school issues come between you and know that early correct intervention is giving your child the best possible chances for success.

A word about the ADHD. My dd has never been a behavior problem - the “sweetest” little girl in the class - she was overlooked since after all the ADHD wasn’t hurting anybody but her. Many many ADHD kids have reading problems. Sometimes it is the ADHD getting in the way - other times it is the ADHD plus phonics problems. Sometimes it is easier to accept an LD or dyslexia than that confusing controversial ADHD diagnosis. This is what her neuropsych told me - if dd had just the reading issues or just the ADHD, she probably would struggle but make it through OK - b/c she was bright enough to compensate. But having both was a double whammy to her. Well he was right. When we addressed one and not the other - she made some progress, when we addressed both she took off. I’m so glad we did.

So, I really believe that correct thorough identification of issues and blasting her with early intervention was critical. Saved dd’s self esteem.

Definitely look into this. It could be one piece of the puzzle. The earlier you go after these deficits the easier they are to remediate.

I found a wonderful developmental optometrist for my son.
I would look for someone that requires that you do home exercises every day. Twice a week therapy is just not enough to get the problem dealt with quickly.

Your daughter may only need glasses. Some don’t even need therapy.

Read PJKs post below.

Hi, my 7 yr old ADD/Inattentive son draws on all his papers too. Sometimes he even draw on his table at school which, of course, gets him into trouble.

Well, there’s much hope here - especially in light of the fact that she have found your problems SO early. My daughter was evaluated at the end of 1st grade and found to have LDs in all areas.

The good news, as you have already read, is that with early, direct intervention, these kids can suceed. You will STILL have to be the advocate, cheerleader, etc., but you CAN do it. There are many “survivors” on this board and others who are still in the “trenches”. (Me? It depends on which day you’re asking :-). Hang tough -

and just as an aside If you see any weird or “outlandish” posts, ignore them.

Linda F -

Reminds me of my recent IEP where one of the “Team Members” asked my daughter “Doesn’t it BOTHER you that we are sitting here discussing you?” (I think that was directed toward my insistence with the school that she attend her IEP - she’s 10). She just responded by shrugging her shoulders.

After the IEP, on the way home, I told her, You know, everyone was talking about you and what you need to help you increase your strengths and weaknesses, etc. And everyone was talking about you - and what is “best” for you? I said, “Everyone thinks they are the ‘expert’ on you - including me - but you know what? Do you know who REALLY is the expert on you? YOU are the expert on YOU. YOU are the one who knows what really helps, what really works, and how your brain works best - so YOU are the expert. She sort of smiled.

She’s in for the long haul. I want her early on to know her strengths and limitations. She’s well on her way. She requested to scribe her writing FCAT this year. As she told the teacher, “I do better if I talk and YOU write”! :-)