LBM's VV program helpful to children w/language deficits?

It depends on the deficits. If her deficits have to do with the lack of visualization then it would help. If she is unable to organize her language due to other reasons, then it would not. She needs LANGUAGE therapy and someone who likes and is trained to do this. I say “likes” because some speech pathologists aren’t really into this, don’t want to do it and so aren’t so good at it. SPEECH therapy concentrating on speech sounds is not going to help here.

You might look up a book: “Language Facilitation: A complete cognitive therapy program”. This is an awesome book— not sure how easy it would be for someone with no background in the area. This book really deals with delayed language. Some of the books on autism (I know that’s not the problem) have a LOT of discussion about language. I don’t really know a lay book on language development but you may want to see if a good search on amazon would yield something.

—des

Instead of 160 hours of LMB, why not try IdeaChain (http://www.mindprime.com ) at home yourself? It would be a lot less expensive.

Nancy

I am an SLP and I work with children who have exceptional needs. Your daughter is the type of child I would work with. I am also trained in LMB and I have a feeling that VV wouldn’t be enough for your child just based on the information that you have posted. I would need more information in order to help you further.

VV is not the definitive answer for children who have exceptional challenges such as your daughter. I have a child with special needs myself and vocabulary and reading comprehension have always been a problem even with all my expereince and training in LMB programs.
Your daughter is able to “decode” and read but is she doing more word calling? Again I need specifics in order to help you more.

Patti, you might help her if you could clone yourself and work with her kid!! :-) I also don’t think Idea Chain would help much. It is $200 so cheaper than LMB clinic. But presupposes that the problem is visualization. With the problems with verbal language (some kids with poor visualization have verbal language problems, usually more in the sense of organizing their thoughts— some are actually quite verbal), I am guessing it will not be and be a waste of time and money.

V/V is not for all comprehension and language problems (nor is Idea Chain). It is for a specific type of comprehension problem which is basically the inability to visualize what they read, since they don’t visualize it, they can’t recall it either.

Problems like poor language development (language has stopped developing at a certain point— say she is not building complex sentences, has less developed sentence structure, uses a lot of pointing or gets what she wants or has tantrums vs talking, etc.); dysnomia (can’t think of the right words); etc are alll things that are not poor visualization. Even some organizing of speech is not poor visualization but something else— like very poor vocabulary, less complex language development, etc.

I think that a good book might help define what the problem is. I did a little amazon search. Don’t know what book is good and really havent’ looked at my search, but here it is:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/104-9549725-7221516

Or else just go grab up patti.

—des

Well, I think V/V is a lot more than teaching visualization. I think it is super for developing oral language in certain children. I am trying to get my child’s SLP to do it with her and she has a language delay and auditory processing problems (above average cognitive skills, though). I took the training and plan to use it with my HI children who have language delays and comprehension problems. But in this case, as Patti says, there appear to be broad delays and without seeing all the test results, it would be hard to know exactly what would be appropriate. I have not seen Idea Chain, but if it is as good as V/V, then trying it at home would be reasonable (about 3 or 4 hours of LMB!).

Janis

I’d say in certain kids, true enough. Not that I have seen those kids, but Nanci Bell does talk about them in the V/V book as kid’s with scattered language, not being able to get to a point or make one (sort of like my posts :-)), However , if there is actual language *delay*, not sure how beneficial it would be.

OTOH, trying the Idea Chain wouldn’t be a terrible idea, it is $200. I think you would figure out soon enough if you were wasting your time or not. I haven’t actually seen it. There are some similarities to V/V as gathered from the webpage. It is not identical. Idea Chain uses photos at the earliest stage— might actually be good for a kid with poor language development.

—des

Thanks so much for all of your replies. We have had a death in the family, so I have not been able to spend time digesting your comments. I will follow up later in the week. Patti, I would love to fill you in a little more on my daughter’s challenges and hear your thoughts. Many thanks.

My father recently died two months ago, My heart goes out to you…If I can help you in anyway let me know..

sincerely

patti

Hi

My now 11 year old son was quite delayed in his expressive language. (It wasn’t until late 3rd grade that he was able to make himselft readily understood by people outside the family) (His background was foreign orphanage for birth to age 3 years; IQ is average to slightly above average; receptive language was age appropriate).

During the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade, we did a complete summer (several hours a day) of LMB V&V. We never addressed any reading…it was just verbalizing, responding to questions about the pictures and practicing talking.

It did wonders for him. It brought tears to my eyes when I would sit in and hear my beautiful son verbalizing and talking with the tutor. He made significant gains in expressive language and, I think, felt more confident in conitinuing to speak. Money well spent in our case.

Kathleen

Hi Kathleen,

That is very encouraging to hear! I have taken the V/V training as a special ed. teacher and I am now getting my child’s speech therapist to use it with her. She was adopted from China as an infant but still has auditory and language issues.

Janis

I’m not sure (and I mean that — this is pure speculation) but V/V may do *more* good for a child with many low language skills because it makes it so concrete and breaks down that whole talking process into focusing on one thing at a time.

Although we haven’t done V/V (my son’s doing Seeing Stars right now), I’m very impressed with the LMB clinic. They didn’t recommend V/V for my son, but if we had the time I’d have him go through the program. Unfortunately, I don’t know a lot about language, but my personal feeling is anything I can do to help improve my son’s overall language skills, may also help build up areas of specific weakness (for my son this would be word retrieval). Good luck with your decision!

Truthfully, I think V/V would enhance everyone’s comprehension. As a matter of fact, the strategy of using the structure word would greatly enhance almost any child’s writing, too.

Janis