Hi. My daughter is 5 1/2 years old and is in Kindergarten. She is a former 25 wk premature baby and has been a healthy little girl since her discharge in August of 1998. She was in a early intervetion program until she was 3 yrs old. The Ei program she was involved in, told me that she wouldn’t qualify for services through the SD, since she was at or above her age level. I have always had concerns about her speech but was always told she was fine. We took her in for a private hearing and speech and language assessment. She passed both and at the time she was bearly 4 years old.
Fast forward to this fall. She begins school and my friend mentions her speech. She tells me that Janae(dd) was having such a hard time speaking one day that she just stopped talking and said she was done. My dd is pretty outgoing and loves to talk, so this really concerned me. I called the school and requested a speech evaluation. The above senario doesn’t happen often, and we understand her 95% of the time. Still, I know she has some articulation problems.
I’ve done some research on CAPD and she seems to fit the profile. She has problem paying attention in class, she has problem staying on task and often needs things to be repeated to her. Once things are repeated to her a few times, she usually gets it. She is having trouble with letter sounds. If I ask her to tell me what say the letter “M” says, she will say “ehh, ehh”, b/c when she hears the letter “M” she hears how “m” is spoken, not how the letter sounds. However, if I POINT to the letter “M” and say, “What does this letter say?” she will say “mmmmmmm” for “M”. I’ve noticed she knows the sounds of letters that actually “say” the sound they are(ie: the letter J or A or I or O, ect.) She does mix up some of those letters, but she really does get most of those and some others.
She has trouble remembering directions, she has a hard time telling us about her day unless I have a cue for her. She often responds with a “huh?” or “what?” when called or asked a question. However, she also amazes me with the things she remembers from a long time ago. She will talk about the swim lessons she took with her daddy when she was 2.5! Anyway, I am just basically grasping at straws here. She has had her S/L eval and we are meeting with her teacher, the SLP and a district rep(actually her school’s Pshycologist ). We are possibly going to discuss setting up a IEP. I have no idea what exactly the SLP found, all I know is Janae qualifies for services. My main concern is that my precious daughter doesn’t fall through the cracks. Right now she adores school. I would like her to keep that enthusiasim.
Angie
Re: Question about processing disorders
What I would probably do is arrange for a CAPD (central auditory processing disorder, now actually called auditory processing disorder) evaluation. This is usually covered by medical insurance. Speech pathologists can conduct a screening for auditory processing disorder, and you may want to ask for that, but it sometimes gives a false negative. The definitive evaluation is by an audiologist with specialized training in auditory processing. (Be aware that regular audiologists do not have the specialized training.) Age 7 is usually considered the ideal age for this evaluation. Results before that age are not definitive, although can be useful for very severe APD.
There are advantages to getting a CAPD eval. If it doesn’t show anything, you can rule out many sound therapies that are not going to help. If it finds one or more areas of deficit, you then have a good idea of which types of sound therapy might be helpful (TLP, Samonas, FastForWord, etc.).
It sounds also as if your daughter may have lags in development of phonological awareness. You may want to request testing for this from the school. Typically, though, schools will wait until a child is in 3rd grade and not reading at all before they do this kind of testing. This is a shame, because the earlier you start working on phonological awareness skills, the faster remediation goes.
I would also suggest that you get the book “Reading Reflex” by McGuiness (check your library or local bookstore) and read the first three chapters. This will give you a really good handle on the subskills necessary for reading, plus a synthetic phonics approach (sound-to-sight) that tends to work *much* better for children than the standard phonics approach (sight-to-sound, which is the approach you used in your post).
Nancy
Thanks Nancy
I will definately check that book out! Janae is reading a few words, but they are sight words and not what I would consider “true” reading. She is proud of herself when she does this, but I would really like to see her truly reading words the summer before she enters 1st grade. I plan to work with her as much as I can prior to 1st grade. She is my middle child and I taught my oldest to read, but he doesn’t have any LD’s that we are aware of and this came to him easy.
I think it is crazy that a school will wait so long to test a child for phonological lags. This is exactly why I am trying so hard to get this all in motion now rather then later. I don’t want her to be terribly behind in her reading or any other development. I will have to look into the synthetic phonics you are talking about too. Do you know of any computer programs I can use with her to help her with phonics? I am willing to try many different things with her.
I really think she has CAPD/APD. She seems to exhibit many of the signs and symptoms of it. I have also read some stories of other children with this disorder and she sure does seem to fit the profile pretty well. I am going to go to the meeting at her school Wednesday and see what the testing results are. After that, I have been planning to schedule her for CAPD/APD testing. I don’t want to leave any stone left unturned. It is too important to me that we hit this head on NOW rather then later.
It is also possible she has ADD/ADHD(tho she is definately NOT hyper). She is able to hold her attention to one activity, just not while she is at school. Still, I haven’t researched ADD/ADHD enough to know if I am just assuming she doesn’t have it. There really could be many variables that factor in to her problems. Anyway, I will definately check out that book you suggested. I hope to help her in anyway I can!
Angie
Jen
Thanks for your reply! I am happy to hear your daughter seems to be showing signs of improvement! I hope it continues and before long she is reading you dozens of books! :-)
I definately have not ruled out ADD/ADHD. It it intersting how it can affect so many areas in the brain! I never knew that either.
I am planning on having my daughter privately tested again. Some of my decision about what tests I am going to request will depend on what the results of her testing from the school is on Wednesday. I sure am anxious to see what is in that report!
My daughter’s K teacher is very interested in doing what she can to help my daughter along. I am hoping the school can also give me ideas on things I can do to help her more at home. I really want to see how we can help her to read more. She knows a few sight words, but that is it.
Thanks again!
Angie
My daughter (6, 1st grade) has/had many of the symptoms you listed above plus some more. We just got a diagnoses of AD/HD inattentive with her primary concern being how it affects her temporal/sequential working memory. Previous to this my daughter tested at 1% for visual memory for visual processing skills. Actually all of the areas of visual processing were extremely low. We just started my daughter on meds (concerta) and in four days have noticed a dramatic improvement in all areas including memory and her ability to express herself. Previous to this she would often tell me that she didn’t want to talk about something or get very frustrated because she couldn’t “find” the words. The teacher told me today that she did not have to repeat directions at all—usually it would take a few repetitions. Also, the SLP did want to give her services mostly for memory and minor articulation. My daughter also has trouble with matching letters and sounds. On Saturday night she was reading “Go Dog Go” and I felt for the first time really reading it. I heard her mutter under her breathe “this is easy to do” and I thought I was going to cry.
Anyway, some of the things you are noticing sound familiar and ad/hd might be another thing to investigate. I personally did not know that ad/hd could have such an effect on so many different parts of learning although in retrospect it seems like common sense.