Young Adults with LD

Hi Janet, I have a 20 yr. old daughter who has LD. I think I have seen everything and been thru a lot for the past 16 years. Please feel free to e-mail me anytime you feel the need to talk.

My daughter is six years old with severe capd.
I am just now starting down what I know is going to be a long hard path
over the next 10 to 15 years.
I would love to communicate with those of you who have been down
this path already and could give me some advice.
this website has been a lifesaver for me.

please e-mail me and give me any advise that you have. My daughter is 16 years old and in LD classes. I am having trouble with the school and social services and other people who feel that she should never be left alone or allowed to date or anything. When she was younger she was sexually abused and this does factor into the situation. But I also feel that she needs to be able to interact with her peers and others in order to learn social skills and be able to live. I am at my wits end and have no idea where or what to do. Like I said she is 16, blonde hair blue eyes and very a cute girl with a sweet personality. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

hi manju,

I have a 12 year old daughter with ld and really need to connect to other parents who may have been through the same issues. I would appreciate advice from someone who is further down the road to the future. Please e-mail me if you want to talk.

Jyoti

I don’t know if I can offer any advice. My daughter was never identified as having capd but she does have difficulties with auditory processing and word retrieval. Testing was done a couple of years ago at the Children’s Hospital in Washington, DC when her psychiatrist at that time thought she might have a pervasive developmental disorder (PDD). Testing revealed a mild to moderate language disorder, multiple learning disabilities, social anxiety disorder, major depression, and executive functioning deficits. The only thing that was a surprise to me was the “executive functioning” deficits.

When she was little I would call her or try to get her attention from another room and she never seemed to hear me. I would then get right up next to her and she still would be engrossed in the TV or something else and wouldn’t hear me. Then if I touched her or raised my voice she got very irritated and appeared to be disoriented and not care why I was trying to get her attention. Her hearing was fine according to the tests. Her auditory processing though was deficient. She began speech and language therapy at age 3 and continued until the end of third grade when she was released from the program.

Nothing more was done until the 11th grade but that’s a long story.

My advice is to get her all the help you can with her language difficulties and love her unconditionally. It’s also important to learn the skills if you don’t have them to be a good advocate for your child. Email me if you like. God Bless
Janet

I have a 13 1/2 year old daughter with CAPD. When I took her to the first audiologist to have her tested, they did find that she had this disorder. There recommendations were very brief. Last year we had her tested with a different audiologist and we learned a great deal more regarding this disorder. She did a few programs that were recommended by her and she also uses an FM unit doing school to help her listen to the teacher and cuts out background noise. If you would like more information, i would be glad to help out in any way I can. We also went through the same problem with her trying to get her attention. It is very difficult at times and need lots of patience.

Dear Moms,
I am totally new to this board having found it in a new newsletter in which I’ve subscribed. We have a 26 year old daughter who was evaluated in the 3rd grade for audio perception problems. They described her brain as a messy bureau drawer. The information would go in, but when she needed to retrieve information, she got confused. She did pretty well with the help of IEPs and wonderful teachers through high school. She was able to go to a small private college, but dropped out after 4 years without graduating. They let her just kind of go on, even tho she wasn’t making the grades. We were trying not to push her. The loved the place. We just figured that it was such a good learning experience living away from home. Our biggest problem with her (she lives in another state) is that she simply doesn’t understand basic things. We can’t reason with her over the smallest of things. Things that would naturally follow for us, don’t for her.

She’s been looking for a job for 6 mos. She says she is so busy. (Her mind probably is). Her father either wants her to get a job and help with apt. payments or come back home. She doesn’t get it. Is there anyone out there that would like to talk about older kids with LD? In a “normal” situation, tough love tactics would be the thing to do, but that can’t be fair when the child doesnt’ understand, does it? Or does it? She has a temper and can’t understand why we are so adamant about her helping to support herself.
Sorry, I hope I haven’t gone on too long. I’ve never had a forum to say my piece. Thanks for listening. Any suggestions welcomed. Emmy

I have no idea. My sister sounds like your daughter. Growing up with her has been totally frustrating and it only gets harder. She wound up never having a job in high school, got frustrated with the one job she did have, and has generally been treated like a princess her whole life. Everyone always took care of her because they thought it would be unfair to expect more from her. Now she married an abusive guy that she met when he was still married to his first wife and he doesn’t “allow” her to work (which she claims to be OK with). I hope to God that they don’t have kids b/c I would worry that I would become responsible for raising them.

If she doesn’t have the skills to negotiate life, how will she manage once you’re gone? My parents didn’t do my sister any favors by supporting her and since they couldn’t provide much, I have a feeling that she felt economically forced to get married to a jerk. I don’t see things improving, but if things had started differently, they might have turned out differently.

She doesn’t have the best social skills, so she screams at us constantly for not being supportive of her decisions and has lost most of her friends who might have been able to be good role models or examples for her.

Good luck!

Dear Kate, Thanks for your words. You had some good thoughts and I appreciate you sharing them. I hope the best for your sister. I understsand the concern you have for her. It must be very difficult for you. One other question: do you have difficulty expressing your love for her? Does she accept and understand that? If anyone else out there has any experience with adult children with LD, I would very much appreciate hearing from you. I need some support. Thank you, Emmy

Emmy! Kate! Everyone! Please, I need your help.

I have a 29 year old sister with LD and I am 31. I have always had problems dealing with her all of my life, and now that we are adults it is getting worse. I am searching for a place for support for families where it is ok to be angry and frustrated and then work on understanding. I have so much anger that I need to vent, and I want to do this in a healthy place without offending anyone. I am in therapy; however, I feel that I would benefit more by talking to people in similar situations.

Apparently she views me as the favorite and has always been jealous of me. She is so bitter and angry about so many things, and so am I, and she is a very difficult person to love, but I am trying. Her social skills are not good at all, and I have actually seen them get worse, not better, as the years have gone by. I just spent the weekend with her and her new baby and my parents. Her behavior was completely unacceptable. Extremely rude to my step mother and father. Complaining about her 4 month old baby for being hungry and not sleeping through the night, and ignoring any suggestions that we had for her about this. I am so worried for her husband and child. If she keeps this up, she is going to lose both of them.

She seems so set in her ways, and I want her to get help. She NEVER admits to being wrong about anything, and everyone else is wrong or ganging up on her. We are a family in desperate need of help and understanding, but how do I get her to do her part too? Years ago, I stopped walking on eggshells around her and started to tell her what I really thought of her, for my own sanity. I got so tired of my family telling me that she is different and special and needs to be treated differently, all the while she has appeared to me to know exactly what was going on and has actually mastered manipulation to get what she wants. Then, if she gets caught, appears to turn around and have everyone blame it on her LD, including herself.

How many vacations, family get togethers has she ruined. Not to mention my own wedding. As you all can see, I have so much anger, and I have not gone through this LD family unscathed at all. I developed an eating disorder as a child, and I strongly feel that I may have a mild form of ADD. I did so well in school, that I don’t feel that it was ever caught, especially since my sister got a lot of attention for her LD. My own 6 year old son is now being diagnosed with ADHD. Now I am learning my own strategies as a mother to help him.

I have so much more to say, but I just don’t know if this is the most appropriate place to vent. I need some advice about where to go to talk to others about their REAL feelings. Not the tip toe around kind that I have been made to have for all of these years. I apologize if I have offended anyone, and I really look forward to any comments or questions. Thank you so much, Kay