Dyslexia question?

The cause of dyslexia is neurological and it is considered a language-based disability. Thus, it can and does effect more than just, reading, however the areas that are hardest hit, presumably because they are so dependent upon the neurological skills that dyslexia negatively impacts, are reading and writing.

This is an interesting question. I was just reading in the Shaywitz “Overcoming Dyslexia” book that they differentiate between types of dyslexia. (p. 140)

developmental dyslexia- phonologic weakness primary, language system intact, reading impairment at single word decoding level

language learning disability- primary deficit involves all aspects of language, including both sounds and meanings of words. Reading difficulty at decoding and comprehension, verbal IQ may be effected

acquired alexia- loss of reading ability due to brain trauma or stroke effecting brain systems needed for reading

Janis

Thanks for the replies Anitya and Janis!

I read the book “Can’t Read, Can’t write, Can’t Talk Too Good Either” a long time ago when my oldest was very young and it described a child with dysfunction in all areas of language. I think the diagnosis of that child was Dyslexia. Later on I had 2 more children and, wouldn’t you know, my youngest has a whole host of learning problems, mainly in the language area. I am starting to wonder if she isn’t Dyslexic in the broadest sense, like the child in the Book….meaning she has trouble with ALL aspects of language; couldn’t rhyme words or remember nursery rhymes, can’t spell well (guesses in the most outlandish ways…not phonetically), is having a tough time learning to read even in special ed, can’t follow multi-step instructions, mixes her word order up in a spoken sentence, letter reversals…you name it she’s had problems with it! I was just curious, though, if Dyslexia is strictly “a written word problem”…reading and writing, or if it applies to all forms of language AND who would be best to take my daughter to for an evaluation? She has been dx’d with Asperger’s, but I am wondering if it is truly that, or just a horrible case of Dyslexia that started in toddlerhood! She does fit some of the Asperger traits, though, so maybe it is just “denial” on my part.

Debra,

Some of those are symptoms of auditory processing disorder. Audiologists who specialize in APD are the ones who evaluate for this. It certainly can be an underlying cause of dyslexia…either the decoding or language-based kind. I favor audiologists who are also speech-pathologists as they can give more comprehensive recommendations for therapy. There is a professional listing link on the site below.

For more info: go to www.ncapd.org. Unfortunately the message board there is down, but there is a chat with an audiologist/speech pathologist on most Tues. nights from 8-10 pm if you have questions.

I’d also recommend the book I mentioned earlier, “Overcoming Dyslexia”, by Sally Shaywitz as it is the most up-to-date book on dyslexia. Two good ones on APD are “When the Brain Can’t Hear” by Teri Bellis and “Like Sound Through Water” by Karen Foli.

Janis

I read somewhere that Dyslexia comes from the Greek word meaning “difficulty with words or language”. It is difficulty in learning to read and write – particularly learning to spell correctly and to express your thoughts on paper-, which affects those who have had normal schooling and do not show backwardness in other subjects.

One dyslexic child may have a very different set of dyslexic characteristics to another, but will share with all dyslexics the specific difficulty of learning to read, write, and spell.

Janis, Thanks for all of the good info. I will look into the books you mentioned…I am very fond of books anyhow, so would love to read them (that is what seems so hard for me to understand…reading is my favorite thing to do, I can’t believe my child hates it so much!). My daughter did go to language therapy for 1 1/2 when she was 3-4 (she’s 7 now) but I don’t know if there was an audiologist / speech person there. I don’t know how much to pursue this because she is already in special Ed for reading/spelling, and don’t know if anymore “labeling” is necessary for services…the teacher already knows that my girl has problems! I guess I am just very curious about the exact cause of all of her problems.

Maricel, Thanks for your reply, also. I appreciate all feedback!

Sorry, forgot to post my name in the above message!!! It was me…Debra!

Debra,

I can see we are somewhat alike! I did go as far as the APD testing for my own child just because I was curious. I am sure many LD kids are APD, but that is never officially diagnosed. All the schools really diagnose are the academic problems. But what is more important than getting APD testing is making sure the school is using effective methods for remediating the reading and spelling problems. Most aren’t, unfortunately.

Janis

Thanks again for replying, Janis!

I don’t know if the school is using the proper methods to teach my daughter how to read…I hope so, but I don’t know if it is too early to tell (just finished 1st grade…she can read a very little, but not much). The teacher (sp ed) is great as far as personality goes and I think she is doing a good job relating to my daughter. They are learning phonics (the 4 kids in the class with my daughter) and also “wall words” which are sight words. My daughter seems to be good with the sight words, but horrible at sounding out words. She has no interest in reading (I guess that would be predictable since it is so hard for her) but she likes me to read to her. We (I) read a couple of books last night and I had her read the last sentence in each book. She was not happy about that and fussed about it, but I told her she had to do it or I wasn’t reading the next book…so, she complied. I want to help her but she is so difficult to help because she is so very oppositional about reading. She whines and falls on the floor any time I ask her to read anything.

How old is your child? Have you had good results with teachers?

It does occur co-morbidly with other deficits. Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t Aspergers in the SSI spectrum. Is she is sensitive to sounds as many children with SSI are, but I have seen in children I have worked with who have Aspergers that it does have a global impact on their acquistion of language specifically with integration of sensory stimuli. She may be able to use words intelligently but she isn’t grasping the meaning behind the words, meaning she is smart enough to go through the motions. However, her intentions are very self centered, she may ahve problems taking the others point of view as she may have issues with social interactions with others.

She may not have a lot of “common sense, and acts impusively because of problems with focusing and attention. It is really hard to say with a child who has Aspergers where their deficts lie because they can be quite pervasive and are interlocked into so many facets of communication. What I have seen is that kids with SSI issues may be great word callers They “read” using their visual memory but they have difficutly in connecting the sounds with the symbols they represent.

Debra,

My child is 7 1/2 and just completed her second year of first grade. She was the youngest child in her class the first year, and I just did not think she was ready in any way for second grade, so we gave her an extra year of first since the teacher was good and they use Saxon phonics, which is also good.

She is in a charter school and we have a very good principal who used to be an educational psychologist. Well, he still is, actually, but his primary role is senior principal of the school. So he understands special ed very well and has been very receptive to training in best methods. Now I can’t say everything is perfect yet, but they are far ahead of the regular public schools as to training and methods.

What I would suggest is that you call the LD teacher and ask her what specific program she is using to teach decoding skills. You should ask her what specific methods she has been trained in. I think your daughter should be further along with decoding if the resource class was doing it’s job. The word wall is a clue to me that she may not be using appropriate methods, but I’ll reserve judgement until you find out. It takes a structured, multi-sensory language program to teach reading to true LD kids. A little phonics and word walls won’t do it.

I will be glad to help you and there are other great reading teachers on this board who can help you. But you must attack this problem now and do not trust that the school knows how to fix the problem. I have many sweet, wonderful friends who teach special ed. who truly love the kids and are completely clueless about remediating reading. It makes me crazy, but that’s the way it is.

Janis

Thanks for the replies!

Patti, my daughter has been dx’d with Asperger’s and before that PDD-NOS. And yes, you are right, she does have problems in all the areas that you mentioned!

Janis, Thanks for the information, you sound very educated on the subject and I appreciate your input! This reading problem of my daughter’s has me doubting myself constantly! I don’t know for sure what method is being used at school. I know that there is a lot of decoding and symbols to go along with it, ie: crossing out silent letters, breve’s, accent marks, putting blocks around same sounding consonant pairs …clo[ck]…things like that. I thought it was Saxon, but I’m really not sure. I know that the math that is taught at the school is Saxon. I don’t know what my daughter should know at this age, either. Believe it or not, I have two older daughter’s (14 & 12) who did just fine with all of their learning, so this is all new to me. I’m sure the Asperger’s is complicating everything because it makes her very oppositional about things that aren’t her idea AND she never does anything solely to “please” others…you know, “Please read this to mommy, it would make me so happy” …that kind of reasoning just doesn’t work with her.

What do you think she REALLY should “know” at this age. She’s almost 7 1/2 years old, she’s completed 2 years of Developmental preschool, one year of reg. ed. kindergarten and 1 year of reg. ed 1st grade with 90 mins of pull-out time daily for reading/spelling instruction, plus 30 mins weekly of OT. Please any advice would be most appreciated…I don’t want her to fall too far behind.

Thank you very much!

[quote=”patti”]It does occur co-morbidly with other deficits. Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t Aspergers in the SSI spectrum. Is she is sensitive to

I thought Aspergers is considered to be part of the *autism spectrum*. In fact, I wish they would just call this all the autism spectrum disorders and stop getting into all this PDD and AS and whatever. Just a personal thing.
Anyway I’m not saying that AS kids wouldn’t be sensitive to sounds but I for one am on excellent reader (or shall I say decoder— I can decode anything and maybe if it’s upside down it’s even easier :-)). Comprehension is maybe a different thing.

But my nephew who is definitely autistic is also dyslexic.

My understanding is that dyslexia is trouble with reading and spelling. But that dysgraphia and articulation problems can go with it.
I suppose if there is real difficulty with speech, like speech processing and so on it would be a generalized language disorder.

As a matter of fact, some AS kids do very well in school, at least the academic part!! When they actually get to the getting along with other kids part, well that’s a different story.

>What I have seen is that kids with SSI issues may be great word callers >They “read” using their visual memory but they have difficutly in >>connecting the sounds with the symbols they represent.[/quote]

I taught myself to read at 3. I’m sure I wasn’t decoding then.
But I can decode now. Mind you it doesn’t take any repetitions to remember the word afterwards. And I could remember words and the looks of words before I could decode. As for comprehension, it is pretty poor. I have no trouble with most nonfiction but my reading of fiction is pretty much Harry Potter for which I am something of a Potternut. :-)

—des

But I was trying to be sensitive to what a parent is going through. :) I can see the whole picture because I am an SLP, but each case varies in regards to Aspergers. From what I have seen working with children who have these types of disorders is I have to be really careful with how I word things with the parents. Also as an SLP I can’t come out and diagnose a disorder over the web, but I can describe similar situations and see if that may help them in some way.

I don’t think a child should be forced to read when it is something that just causes contention, and perhaps developmentally she isn’t ready to read right now. That doesn’t mean that it won’t happen within a few years. But what I would focus on now is to get a child that is this oppositional to reading comfortable with listening to short stories that are of interest to her, to keep vocabulary up. Also perhaps something like Writing with Symbols would help, where she can “write” through dictation and then illustrate and read her own stories. Make literacy FUN!! :wink:

What I am concerned is that the more reading is pounded down a child’s throat the more oppositional they will become to reading and this opposition can have a negative impact on a relationship with the caregiver.

Decoding sometimes doesn’t make sense for children with Aspergers/autism. and to continue with more of the same decoding exercises could be exasperating the problem.

Perhaps a more predictive reading approach, with familiar stories would be good to use Also using a fluency program like Great Leaps or Read Naturally with audio tapes to help with the auditory processing piece would be better approach. I suggest this because if she is memorizing words like I suspect she is this would speed up the sound symbol relationship.

Aspergers puts a whole different spin on teaching literacy using a phonological based approach, for children with the autism spectrum it confuses them. They think in VISUAL imagery not connecting a sound/with a symbol like others.

I am off my soap box now… :oops:

You brought up a good point pattim, about the negative relationship with the caregiver (mom) when forcing academics. That is something that I worry about a lot. The reg. ed teacher told me that the 1st grade homework assignments were for “parent/child bonding” purposes! When a child has LD’s or developmental issues or whatever, homework is NOT a bonding experience!!! I feel compelled to help my daughter learn as much as I can, but sometimes I make her do academic work that is much too frustrating for her (and me!) just so the teacher will know that I am a CARING parent, because caring parents care about their child’s education!!! This is a difficult position to be in.

I really do appreciate all input and I am glad that I posed this question. Maybe Dyslexia can occur with Asperger’s or maybe Asperger’s looks like Dyslexia in the language arena. I have not pushed my daughter much all this summer because I really felt she needed an “academic break”….she was shutting down last school year and refusing to do any work for her teachers. Now I am starting to ease her into reading by simply reading to her! I hope that is a good approach.

I decided I might read thru the whole thread. One of the things complicating working with AS kids is that “new is bad”. So if something new is introduced they immediately won’t like it. This is especially true if it is hard. It isn’t true that no AS kids can decode or it is hard for all AS kids but in some cases other approaches might be looked into, but keep in mind they will all be work and unpleasant at least initially. I think LiPs might make some sense because it uses visual and kinesthetic modalities.
Of course most AS kids would hate it initially as it is very new! :-}

BTW, some of the AS pages refer parents to CAPD pages. I think that some kids who are dxed as AS are CAPD.

You might look at the Oasis page— sorry I don’t know the URL, but you could just type “Aspergers”+”OASIS” into the search engine.

—des

“BTW, some of the AS pages refer parents to CAPD pages. I think that some kids who are dxed as AS are CAPD. ”

Oh, I think so, too, des! In some disorders, there are many overlapping symptoms. And the professional who diagnoses does so through the lens of his own expertise. I don’t think many people understand APD at all.

Debra, I probably need to read back through the whole thread because I somehow missed or forgot the part about the AS diagnosis. As Patti said, that might change instructional methods. However, I will tell you that Saxon phonics was used in my child’s regular ed. class, not special ed. They need to use a program like Orton-Gillingham, Phono-Graphix, Language!, Lindamood-bell, etc. in the special ed. class for dyslexic children. You were probably describing Saxon phonics. My child’s school also uses Saxon math in the early grades (regular class) and it has been good for my child.

Janis

So I won’t be around to answer questions. I thought I was the one with ADD…but I picked up on the AS as did Des… it sounds like you have a feeling for what I am concerned about.

Here is a fun idea…does she like music? Try Sounds Like Fun CD from Discovery Toys. I know the district I work for uses this in pre-school classes with kids who have autism, it is fun, it is predictable, and the audio has some guitar playing but the words are really crystal clear. I think this may be something that can be fun and can also teach her language.

I was talking last night to someone who tutors AS/autistic kids with Phono-Graphix (Reading Reflex). She says that many kids in the spectrum need to be taught using a structured language/phonics approach and that she thinks it is an error to assume most kids with autism need a sight approach. Anyway, she personally is having success with Reading Reflex and she is tutoring several kids this summer.

Debra, the book Reading Reflex is very easy to follow if you could get your child to work with you. Or you might could hire a tutor to do it with her if that would work better. Or better yet, buy the special ed. teacher a copy and ask her to use it!

Janis

Patti, I’m not sure if my diagnosis would be ADD or just middle age memory overload! ;-)

Janis

Going back through the posts, I was under the impression that Debra was not sure about the Asperger’s diagnosis and that her daughter also has APD symptoms which have not been diganosed. I think I would pursue that testing if it were me.

Janis

[quote=”Janis”]I was talking last night to someone who tutors AS/autistic kids with Phono-Graphix (Reading Reflex). she thinks it is an error to assume most kids with autism need a sight approach. Anyway, she personally is having success with Reading Reflex and she is tutoring several kids this summer.

Janis[/quote]

Well there is a difference betweeen AS/ high functioning autistic kids who have language and lower functioning autistic kids without language. If the kid had no language, no speech sounds to work with they might be able to memorize the sounds but they would be entirely meaningless. (I think we talked about a case of this here). But AS kids do have language, and can learn to decode— although there are probably exceptions. Even if their visual memory is unusually good it would be unlikely that any child could learn to read say beyond a 6th grade (usually I’d say 3-4th) without a means of decoding. There are AS kids with dyslexia, this is not entirely unusual but they may have a more difficult time with sounds/etc. than more typical dyslexic kids.

I’d go ahead and try the Phono-graphix, if that didn’t work I’d go on to LiPs.

—des

I agree, des.

Janis

It is not at all unusual for children who fall on the autism spectrum to have eidetic memories. More often than not, they seem to learn to read words and spell very easily. They usually have difficulty with understanding. Frankly, when I see child of this sort, I don’t worry about the decoding issue. If they learn to read words and read at grade level, they will probably keep it up.

Generally I do NOT advise an over emphasis on sight reading because by about third grade reading level this breaks down for the typical child. The A.S. students I have worked with did not have that difficulty.

However, today we are diagnosing children as A.S. (autism spectrum) in private settings who really only have A.S. characteristics in one area. I question whether some of these children are on the spectrum at all. I have taught one such child for two years. While he has the diagnosis, from a private psych., he only shows A.S. symptoms in the area of language understanding. He is not an expert decoder.

But, when they show A.S. behaviors in several domains, they usually also learn magnificently by rote.

Though I think they were talking about an AS kid with difficulty decoding, which would mean maybe that they were not reading everything. I think if you get a kid with this kind of eidetic memory for words, you are not going to see trouble with reading/figuring out words. I myself have this and I had the barest intro to phonics you can imagine (we were in the middle of the whole word thing back then).

But dyslexia is not unknown in the AS population. So this is what to do with this kind of kid. I agree that many AS kids will have no trouble reading (ie figuring out the words). I feel that the eidetic memory for words might be sort of a savant ability that all kids do not have. I think that at some point they are going to learn/know letter sounds but it may not be a matter of really specific teaching. There is a lot of causal teaching of this that is going on without realizing it.” A is for apple” may not be the greatest phonics education, but it is enough for some kids, AS or otherwise.

As for someone dxed with AS in one domain and not another. There are dyslexic AS kids, that would be in the autistic spectrum in every area. Maybe you just haven’t run into them. I know a lot of AS kids excel in school and would never be seen in special ed resource.

—des

I reread this though and it makes me wonder what exactly the problem is. Is the problem reading? Or is the problem not liking or finding this kind of exercize meaningless?

I don’t know if I would do this sort of thing with a “normal” 7 1/2 year old. You want them to enjoy reading, etc. and not be writing in accent marks etc. I really think she should be *reading* and not figuring out all those marks and all. Looking for patterns is different— she can do that.

I think you can just beat the thing to death with some phonics approaches.

—des

>me doubting myself constantly! I don’t know for sure what method is being used at school. I know that there is a lot of decoding and symbols to go along with it, ie: crossing out silent letters, breve’s, accent marks, putting blocks around same sounding consonant pairs …clo[ck]…things like that. I thought it was Saxon, but I’m really not sure.
What do you think she REALLY should “know” at this age. She’s almost 7 1/2 years old

Just for the record, our school is changing to Open Court for regular ed. I wasn’t wild about the Saxon “coding” as it was called, either. I certainly don’t think it should be used in special ed. sicne there are programs that are designed for LD kids that would be better.

Janis

Thanks to all of you who took the time to reply to my question! I was offline for a few days and just got the chance to read some of the later replies. So much good information, thank you again!

I think it was Janis that mentioned me being unsure about the Asperger Diagnosis. Yes, sometimes I AM unsure about it because it is an “Autistic Spectrum Disorder” and my daughter does not “seem” autistic…but, then again, she has some really different characteristics that I’ve never seen in any other kids…not even in her older sisters. I was wondering how severe Dyslexia could be just in case THAT was really her problem, but since she has sensory issues, mood issues, lack of or little empathy, distractibility, impulsiveness, trouble with motor control, etc, I think it is pretty safe to say that more is going on here than simply Dyslexia. I just thought that if a person has AS (Asperger’s) then they would have excellent language and academic skills, and that is not the case with my daughter…although she really knows her animal facts and is very interested in learning about animals and insects.

Do any of you feel that her extreme difficulty with “smooth language” and reading problems could stem from non-stop ear infections from 7 months old until just up to last winter??? For the first three years of school she failed hearing tests in her left ear every time and had to see an audiologist and ENT for meds. I always made very sure that she went straight to the Doctor if there was ear pain, but being that she had such a high tolerance for pain, I hardly ever KNEW she had an ear infection until it had gone on for a long time. Do you know how much of her langauge problems stem from all those developing years with muffled hearing?

She really does enjoy when I read to her out of books, so right now, that is what I am doing for her as far as reading goes. I bought her a couple of little workbooks on reading for over the summer, but she hates to do the work so much that I just haven’t forced her. We live in a VERY small town with a very small school district. The school is K-12 and I don’t think there are even a lot of good tutoring options in town! This is overwhelming to me…reading was never a problem for me so now I just don’t know how to go about helping a very unwilling child learn this extremely necessary skill!

Thanks again for all replies!

You may have more than one thing going on. That is the case with my son. He has language based disabilities as well as nonverbal disabilities. He also has been diagnosed with SID and ADD-inattentive. The consensus on the language issues is that undiagnosed intermittent ear infection (high tolerance for pain too) played havac with his auditory development but that genetics played a role too. There are certain distinctive auditory weaknesses that my side of the family has—but there is noone with learning disabiliies. My son has APD and I have been told that intermittent hearing losses like my son had cause the most difficulties developmentally.

Our pediatrician referred him to a neurologist because he was concerned about Asberger’s. Neurologist said no evidence of Asberger’s.

Beth

but she has too many other quirky symptoms to ignore. Please try and get the CD I mentioned. It has the rote songs and clarity which can help her with language processing in a fun way. You can also do some stuff with earphones on, she can listen to a story on a CD/tape, kind of like the Disney story books or you can invest in Read Naturally and do it that way. Read Naturally has lots of short stories of high interest and they are by grade level.

You can work on the decoding but if she is shutting down then leave that to a tutor and just read to her and have fun with just being her mom.

“Sounds Like Fun”…that was the name of the CD, correct? I think you mentioned music and “clarity” which would be good for my daughter because she doesn’t say letter sounds correctly all the time…I think she hears them wrong. She doesn’t have a “speech” problem that I know of, she just repeats words she hears wrong on occasion, like “Plankton” from SpongeBob Squarepants comes out “Flankton”. But, all of her “P” words don’t come out sounding like an “F”, just that one. Peacock, is Peahock. Culver’s restaurant is Clovers, etc. I think her hearing, though it tests OK, is not exactly right. Anyhow…the clarity that you mentioned in the CD would be a good thing for her. Are there other Book/CD’s that I can get her where she can put on headphones and hear the story and “read” the book at the same time? That simple activity sounds like a great idea! Can I get these things at Walmart? She loves music. She has her own personal CD player with headphones, too. She likes quick moving, happy songs. Thanks for all of the wonderful advice, everyone! I hadn’t even thought of Books and Tapes (CD)!!

Have you thought about visual stress as pert of your daughters problems? My son is now 16 years old, and up until 2 years ago, although we knew there was a problem, there was no diagnosis or support. We are in England, and our educational system is different to yours, but an optometrist diagnosed Visual Stress in Sam using a coloured overlay test after an eye exam. He now has coloured lenses as these enable him to see what he is reading and writing…previously, he could only see a big blurry blob on the page and if he tried very hard, which gave him terrible headaches he would have to sleep off sometimes, he could focus about the size, I would think, of a 10p piece, (a dollar coin?) on the page. He was 14 years old when he was diagnosed and has made a huge improvement over the past two years. His school though, gave him no support specifically. He will start 6th form college here in September when he has received his GCSE exam results. We HOPE he gets the 33 points he needs to study Forensic Science which is his passion along side Archaeology. The 6th Form College has told us they will arrange for him to see a psychologist, but we’ve been here before with his High School and nothing came of it. Sam is also dyslexic and has an auditory processing disorder based in speech, also diagnosed by an English audiologist I found through an American doctor called Dr Robert Keith in Cincinnatti (sorry for the spelling!). A book I would recommend to dip in and out of, is Roadblocks to Learning by Lawrence J Greene available on Amazon. Good Luck to you and your daughter. Janet.

Hi JanetM,

Thanks for the reply. I just took my daughter to the optometrist last week and he prescribed glasses for her because of astigmatism and farsightedness. He said her problems weren’t bad but since she was having trouble learning to read he wanted to give her every possible support. She was very mad at the idea of glasses and would barely let me try frames on her…she doesn’t want them at all.

I have not heard of the colored lenses? Interesting! Best wishes for your son and his studies!

on-line to get the books on tape from Toy’s R Us, Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Read Naturally. I am not sure what they have at Wal-Mart however.

When I was doing aural reab/reading therapy with a young man yersterday I used Read Naturally. The audiologist told me that when she used Read Naturally with one of her other patients he did so much better with Read Naturally rather than just regular speech because of the enunciation and the clarity of the speech in the Read Naturally tape.

Sometimes the audio tapes you find with songs like wee sing move too fast for kids with auditory processing problems. I think your ticket with your daughter will be lots of repetition and with stories she enjoys.

Thanks Patti, we are fairly close to both Borders and Barnes and Noble, so I will give them a try and see what I can find! You are very right…Wee Sing, etc. moves too fast for my girl…she gets the lyrics wrong all the time! I really appreciate all the help. I may start a new topic one of these days for Asperger’s and Reading, because I know that is what she has (dx’d PDD-NOS at age 4 by a developmental pediatrician in Chicago and Asperger’s at age 6 by a Pediatric Psychiatrist…just wanted to make sure they weren’t “wrong” and she really just had Dyslexia) and I guess it makes a difference in how she learns. Everyone is so knowledgeable here…thanks so much.

Well I think you might question the PDD dx if there are NOT other factors than language. Here are some typical Autism spectrum characteristics:
sensory sensitivity (to light/visual stimuli; noise, touch, usually light touch, seeking of pressure, taste- dislike of many foods); social problems (significant problems forming relationships, avoidance of eye contact, doesn’t understand gestures, plays with younger children or doesnt’ play too well with any children); extremely strong interest in one or a couple areas (these aren’t always very strange, but tends to be expert in an area esp. factually- some typical autistic spectrum interests (space, Star trek, geography or cartography, animals— usually one specifically, trains, computers etc.)Younger kids tend to go for that train cartoon, mechanical objects, etc.; clumsiness; tends not to see himself in others shoes.

All kids won’t have all these, so you look for patterns. Language difficulties
tend to be pragmatic language problems (what to say, when, saying embarassing things), some have mild articulation problems.

Dysgraphia is more common than dyslexia, but dyslexia does occur. Whether it’s a separate thing that’s another question.

Kids on the autistic spectrum CAN do well later, provided they get support, understanding, and maybe a bit of luck.

HTH,

—des


im coming in late here, but I can identify totally with Debras situation

I always find it interesting that so many of these kids have things in common. I had not know Beths son had been checked for Aspergers but, again, it just seems like one more of those similarities

My now 11 yr old son had an undiagnosed hearing loss until almost 4. My understanding was it was the way his tubes were shaped(never drained from say a quick production of fluid from walking in a room with dust) but I also know he has a high pain tolerance so perhaps he was having infections(I had not made that connection till today)

I believe it has a major impact. I think these kids somehow go to a different part of their brain to compensate and that impacts their learning later on.

“Right brained children in a left brained world” is one of my favorites. the author draws a line which represents left brain to right brain progression. Extreme right brain is autism(its the end of the line) and dyslexia and aspergers are on that same side of the middle, just not as far down the path. Extreme left brain is, I think, schizophrenia(but I could be wrong-it was irrelevant to my son)

That model has always impressed me. Its just another way of thinking of “the spectrum” , but it actually puts dyslexia ON the spectrum

He also mentions how ear problems can cause a child to become right brained(Im putting it simplY here)

My son has been dx’d ADDinattentive; both Aspergers and CAPD have been suggested by professionals who work with him. He is VERY empathetic so I doubt the Aspergers but I certainly have seen enough characteristics to understand where this possibility came from. The CAPD? Very possible IMO. When I read about dyslexia, it is very much like my son as well.

We are doing Sound REading and had done some Phonographix last summer. We are homeschooling for the first time Aug 27 and will go back to review multisyllables in Phonographix and do some workbooks with multisyllables as well(megawords).

But, I continue to see the same things regardless of which approach we use. His reading tutor used many approaches inclduing LIPS. Sound Reading incorporates many of these methods briefly as well. He can learn to decode in context-he has actually had so mcuh decoding he now tests quite well in that area. But he will NOT apply it to his reading. Its race and guess

Of course this was allowed in school(who had the time to look over his shoulder?)and I hope its a habit i can break this fall. But I do sometimes wonder if many kids who think in pictures just arent going to ‘get it’.

Your little one is far younger, though, and I would certainly give decoding a good hard try

I have heard wonderful things about books on tape. After all, these kids have missed so much over the years. First they couldnt hear and then they perhaps retreat into themselves(because they couldnt hear or comprehend)and they miss even more. It can become an immersion into language for them

My problem? I worry my son will simply zone out. He admits he cant enjoy music because he cant stay focused on it. He cannot sing even the simplest of songs at age 11. So, whats to stop him from walking around(or sitting around) with headphones on but thinking about legos?

I found a site that asks 6-10 comprehension questions about over 5000 books. Part of our homeschooling day is going to be listening to books on tape and then answering the questions(ideally Id let him read the questions first but as soon as you log off and come back, the questions change)

bookadventure.org

Good luck

Thanks for the replies…I am overwhelmed and I am sure to really look into all suggestions! Marycas…my daughter never could and still can’t remember and repeat even simple little nursury rhymes and songs completely! That always amazed me and was one of the things that clued me in to problems…you know, can’t sing all the words to Mary Had a little Lamb or even her nighttime prayer even though it was repeated every night. She can get SOME of the lyrics to well known songs…but not all of them. I don’t believe she has ever sung (sang?) a complete song to me yet! I think she has short term memory problems.

Here, I missed the perfect opportunity over this summer to really help her because she commutes with me 3 days a week, 45 mins each way and we could have gotten some CD/read along books for the car rides! I just hadn’t thought of that…I don’t know why…so simple and such a good idea. In the car she listens to music and hums…she doesn’t converse much with me unless she is answering a direct question. When I ask her questions, she gets upset anyway. Questions like “Did you go to the library (during day camp) before or after lunch?”….she will say “I don’t know!”. If I say “Do you know what before means?”…she will say “I don’t know!!! I don’t want to talk about it!!!”. That’s how our conversations usually go, unless she is telling me something she wants to tell me…an THAT is usually jumbled up and I have to use a lot of “detective work” to figure out the whole story!

Sorry to ramble…my daughter is an enigma to me. Thanks for all of the help everyone!

Here’s a couple useful webpages. Might help.
This one on Aspergers but has related disorder page:
http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/

That’s the OASIS page. Really good page, imo.

I don’t know much about this one but you might look at a CAPD page as well. I don’t know how this ranks as a page:
http://pages.cthome.net/cbristol/capd.html

HTH,

—des

Thanks for the links!

Debbie,

Couldn’t help but relate to songs and nursery rhymes. My daughter is the same way. Also hypersensitivity to light and sound and very sensitive nerve endings in her fingers. NOT AS, has great social skills, etc.

She can’t remember words to songs - but does better in a group. Always has told me, “Well that’s the way YOUR song goes, but MY song goes like this”.

BTW, she has APD, VPD SI dysfunction, dyslexia and ADD. You name it, we got it - except she has great self esteem and great social skills. Of, I forgot, also fine and gross motor skill problems (dysgraphia and motor planning problems.

They all overlap. Find out the problems and just try to help him with each particular need.

I agree with Leah, real kids are not necessarily going to fit neatly in the diagnoses as they are more constructs to explain a group of common characteristics and behaviors.

For myself, I have a bit better social skills than the average AS person, very neat handwriting (though I tend to print), and no amt of hyperactivity. But you can figure out what the deficits are and work on/accommodate those. Or live with/ understand them as the case may be. Few people will fit in everything neatly, but it helps to understand some common characteristics, imo.

As I think a no. of us said in a CAPD thread, there are no blood tests. And I doubt there ever will be.

—des

Like I said before…all of the replies and support are so wonderful and helpful to me…thank you all!

My daughter has so-so social skills…she likes to play with her 1 friend, but only horses or dogs…animal play or searching for nature or climbing trees…never, ever dolls (no Barbies or baby dolls) or organized games. Also, there was a group of neighbor kids riding their bikes around a circular drive, just having a ball, and I told my daughter “Why don’t you ride your bike with the other kids?” and she said (this is so typical of a response from her!) anyway, she said “I don’t want to ride my bike with that HERD of kids!!!!!”. Also, leaving daycamp a few days ago, a little girl said “Good bye, R” and my daughter didn’t reply, so I said “Did you hear that girl say goodbye?” and R said “Yeah…I wanna show you how I can do the monkey bars” I said “That was nice of that little girl to say BYE to you…what’s her name?” and R said “I don’t know.” I said ” You don’t know her name? Is she your friend?” and R said ” I don’t know I think it’s Aubrey or Clarissa or something…I wanna show you the monkey bars.” Of course, whoever this other little girl was, she spends ALL day with my daughter at day camp and still my daughter doesn’t know her name or care to know her name! So, that is kinda how her social skills go…not horrible, but not normal either.

Thanks so much for all the support!

Hi Debra,

I just read this thread for the first time. My son is 10 (almost 11) and has diagnoses of auditory processing disorder (APD), visual processing disorder (VPD), inattentive ADHD, anxiety, and non-verbal learning disorder NLD). It is written (and sometimes disputed) that NLD is on the autism spectrum - sort of a first or second cousin to Asperger’s. He takes Methylin (Ritalin type drug) for his ADHD, and Wellbutrin for the anxiety.

I have been through everything with my son that most parents here have been through - sensory integration problems, poor fine and gross motor skills, poor social skills, good rote memory but poor understanding, etc. Most kids with NLD are good readers/spellers, but with my son’s comorbid APD, he has a lot of trouble with that. He has an excellent sight vocabulary, but is an extremely poor decoder. He truly can’t hear the differences between some sounds in the English language and that has hampered his decoding skills greatly. He is also a terrible speller - not even close to phonetic. He also has a lot of meltdowns when asked to read. I’ve kind of let that go over this summer, and am just letting him chill out. He has become extremely resistant to my “interference” in his life and has asked me to “Butt Out!” Not that I will, mind you. :-) But we are taking a break.

I used Phono-Graphix (Reading Reflex) with him last summer, and am taking him to their clinic for a one week intensive this summer. He did Earobics at school to help train his brain to listen better. I have seen some positive points from that. We are doing Home Vision Therapy this summer, and I’m not sure I’ve seen too many improvements from that, but I think he needs more time with it.

There are a couple of points to all this.

If you are unsure about the Asperger’s diagnosis, you might look into NLD. Try NLDontheWeb.org and NLDLine.com for a couple of places to start reading.

If your daughter had ear infections for so long, with hearing loss in one ear, she more than likely will be diagnosed with APD. I did see benefit from my son doing Earobics (earobics.com), and it can be done at home, with a computer, for $59. He did it twice a day, for 20 minutes a time, five days a week. That is more intensive than the Earobics minimum, but I think that’s why it possibly worked so well. There are also classroom interventions that can be tried to help your daughter cope with the APD - preferential seating, appropriate classroom acoustics, the teacher always faces your daughter when speaking, perhaps even an FM system. Some people will recommend FastForWord, but it is extremely expensive and intensive and I wanted to try Earobics, and then move to FastForWord if I thought my son needed it.

My son has a rough time remembering names, too (as does my husband). I think that is the APD kicking in. She hasn’t heard it clearly and it is too much work to remember it. Only when my son sees a classmates name in print and has heard it several times will he remember it. He also plays well with one child, but put him in a group, and he seperates himself after about 20 minutes. The noise is just too much for him, and with lots of kids talking at once he can’t keep up. Then he gets anxious which translates to anger, and then he blows inappropriately (to his peers) and they think he’s strange. It’s a real vicious circle.

Ah well, I’ve certainly gone on long enough. Phono-Graphix is great as Janis said. Try to find someone to use it with your daughter. It is a very easy program to learn to use. Look at the Earobics and see what you think. I hope the glasses do what you want them to do. My son had glasses for a while but refused to wear them, so now we are doing the vision therapy.

It’s never easy. But it is all worth it in the long run.

Lil

Thanks for the reply and info Lil!

Just curious…where does one get a child tested for these other disorders, for example NLD or APD. Does insurance pay for these tests or are they out of pocket expenses for the parents? The doctors have only been concerned with PDD/Asperger’s/ADD and the like.

Hi again,

I had my son tested by an audiologist for the APD. Our health insurance company paid for it. The NLD was harder. I paid myself for a full range of psycho-social-medical-educational testing at one clinic supported by the state - so it wasn’t too expensive. They used the WISC-III for IQ, the BASC for emotional, the Bender Visual-Gestalt for eye-hand (all psychological) and then the Woodcock Johnson-III for the educational.

In their report, they gave me very specific things my son needs to work on. It was only nine months and tons of research later that I realized my son fit the NLD profile (visual processing, anxiety, poor social skills, good rote memorization - but some trouble with understanding; among other things). I found an assessment at the NLD on the Web site, and my son fit 100% of the profile. (I was resistant to that diagnosis because almost everything I read said there had to be a large split between Verbal IQ and Performance IQ on the WISC-III test, and my son didn’t have that. I have since discovered that only about 41% of people diagnosed with NLD actually have that large split.)

So I called the center who did the testing, and spoke with the psychologist who did it. He said my son DID have NLD, but that diagnosis was obviously less specific than his recommendations. And it is. However, there are many good websites and books on the subject that helped me understand my son better, and work with him more appropriately. So getting the “label” was a good thing for him.

I’ve run it by the school (with a letter from the psychologist) and they really don’t know how to deal with it. But, I bought extra copies of the books and provided the school with those. I’m not sure if anyone read them, but if they did the information was good and surely helped them help my son. Those books and websites have also helped me understand what needs to be written into my son’s IEP.

Lil

Debra,

I am new to these boards but I thought I would post. I have two children who have been on the Autism Spectrum and a niece on the spectrum. I have taught all of them to read phonetically. As I have other children on the spectrum.

A very high proportion of children on the Autism spectrum have some form of ADP/CAPD, SI, auditory and or short term memory, vision, cognitive sequencing problems along with various language delays. All of these issues can and do lead to some form of dyslexia.

Many children on the spectrum acquire language in a gestalt manner called delayed echolalia. Delayed Echolalia is a sort of Berlitz type of second language method used to acquire ones mother tongue with visual being the child’s first language. A child who uses delayed echolalia will not be able to break down a poem, nursery rhyme, phrase, sentence, ect…. by it parts. They may learn with ease songs, poems, nursery rhymes, ect… Just like I can learn phrases in German from a tape to use when I visit Germany.

Some children will have what seems like wonderful language skills but will unknown to their parents be acquiring those skills in the above manner. If a child is using delayed echolalia they will not be able to break words down by their phonemes unless they are taught or had therapy to help them do so. Reading phonetically can not happen until this skills is developed.

They only way to tell if you daughter has used or is using delayed echolalia to gain language is to have a SLP who is an expert in autism and delayed echolalia do an assessment with your child. I had no idea that one of my sons was using this method until our SLP trained me on what to look for.

FastForWord is a program that has helped many children on the spectrum develop the ability to hear phonemes. I know that my sons and my niece would not have learned to read phonetically with out FFW therapy. In the Chicago area there is a good audiologist named Dr.Jeanne Farre who works with kids on the spectrum and can test for the forms of CAPD that can be remediated by FFW.

I am trained in PG and will later this year take LIPS and V/V training too. I have not found another program that works as well as PG when teaching reading to children on the Autism spectrum. All of the kids I work with tho have need more AP work than what PG has built into the program and there have been a few moderate to low functioning children with Autism that after assessing I had not taken on as clients do to the severity of their AP hence my desire to get LIPS training. Right now I create my own AP tracking lessons to use once a child has worked through all of the AP activities that PG contains. So far all of my students are either children on the spectrum or family member of those children.

My advice would be to have a FastForWord work up done. After that I would recommend reading the book Reading Reflex. If you do not think you can work with your child look for a PG therapist near you. I know that there are a few in the Chicago area.

Hope this helps and made sense :?

Rebecca

Hi Rebecca,

Thanks for your reply! I think some of what you said made very good sense! Some of it, I must confess, I didn’t understand! :oops: What is LIPS? I’ve read that many times here, but I don’t know what it means.

When my daughter learned to talk she copied everything I said, verbatim. For example…one time she came to me with her empty cup and I said “Looks like it’s empty.” and then I took her into the kitchen to pour her a drink. After that, everytime she wanted a drink she would bring me her cup and say “Looks like it’s empty.”. That is the way she learned to talk…in “copied” phrases. The more phrases she learned the more she could converse until, finally, she passed for “normal” in a conversation (not very fluent, though). Does this describe the type of learning pattern that you mentioned, Rebecca?
Very interesting reply…thanks again!

Rebecca, now you make ME wonder if my daughter is on th spectrum. (Not htat it matters, she’s now reading above grade level, writes well, and is in the process of overcoming her disabilities)

It sounds like you are saying that kids who have all these characteristics are on the Autism Spectrum which LEADS to dyslexia? Is that what I’m understanding you are saying?

I believe(d) AS and Dyslexia are/were completely different. Though in the Out of Sync Child, Carol Kranowitz discusses how SI can lead to LDs.

My daughter has “global LDs” High performance, lower verbal, but has great social skills (a little bossyas a 5-7 year old) and NO anxiety. She is a puzzle. Has all the deficits of VLD and NVLD.

As for bike riding, she had all the girls in the neighborhood convinced “Bikes are a ‘boy thing’.” b/c she couldn’t ride. :0)