TLC-E, Test of Lang. Competence - Interpreting Scores?

It isn’t fishy…I would think that she is a TALKER for starters…She has no problem expressing herelf as long as it is about what she wants to talk about….but when figurative langauge is used…she has some difficulty but still within NORMAL limits…..but it is just because she probably hasn’t been exposed to it.

She can make inferences right in the mean of NORMAL…she has some weakness in sentences that aren’t precise in usage, ambiguious in other words…but again she is within NORMAL limits.

If she is a chatterbox… does she stay on topic, does she get the gestalt when she is listening to people and can she relay it back to her conversational partners? Is she ADD-Inattentive by chance?

Hi, Patti -

THANKS for your opinion on this!

Due to time constraints placed on the SLP at the time these scores were presented to us, we really weren’t given much commentary on them. The two things I remember her making a point about were that: 1) She seldom sees a 14 on oral expression; and 2) My daughter appeared to be doing her best work throughout testing, but her processing time was noted to be unusually long (to the extreme, it sounded like).

For me, having no experience with “typical” results on these subtests, the range from 16th to 91st percentile scores does seem huge! But I don’t know the test as you do, so I’ll defer to your expertise on that issue! :) Even w/ all being w/in normal limits, is this large a variation something you typically encounter? I just don’t want to miss a red flag along the way, if there’s one waving in my face.

As for her being a “chatterbox,” that’s tricky. She can be, but she isn’t often. She does use it as an avoidance tactic occasionally, or gets that way once in awhile when she’s especially pumped up about something. She does get into some trouble @ school for “hypersocializing” @ inappropriate times. But frequently, family & “authority figures” have commented that it’s like pulling teeth to get her to talk.

When she’s talking to avoid a task, she doesn’t stay on topic - she jabbers about anything she can come up with! When it’s an issue she’s interested in, she focuses, although she isn’t immune to the occasional tangent. (True for many of us, I suppose.)

As for whether she gets the gist of things when listening to others talk, she usually does, and yes, she can relay it back to someone else. Although, sometimes (when in the listening role) it seems like she’s effectively “checked out” for a period of time. (Teachers complain alot of this.) I’ve actually found myself looking up petit mal or “absence seizures” before. I’ve also wondered about the secondary subprofiles of auditory processing disorders, after reading about them recently, because many of her difficulties parallel those that are described. I’m admittedly *way* out of my league on that, though. (Probably shouldn’t even have brought it up, & sorry if I’m just sounding ignorant, here….only trying to learn.)

She hasn’t been dx’d as ADD-Inattentive, but she fits that profile awfully well, in alot of ways… Any particular reason that came to mind?

Thanks again!
~~~ Lei

and…also ADD-Inattentive adults… I have been working with a boy who is dimes to donuts ADHD-he can’t focus…we can be in the middle of a song for phonemic awareness or Brain Gym or doing LMB LiPS interactively and he just tunes out…What I have done is to if I am singing a song I stop until he realizes I am trying to get him to refocus..He looks at me…as if to say..”You caught me… :oops: I said…”Where’d you go buddy?” We can be doing a clapping game and he can only focus for about 1 minute on the rhythm and he loses it…

Today I did some gratis tutoring for about 5 hours withgraduate studies… I tutored her last year. She called me in a panic because she had a 10 page lit review due on Monday and she hadn’t a clue on how to organize her papers, make an outline or how to write it. So while we were working together she was talking to me about everything under the sun but she couldn’t focus on what I was there to help her with. She would play with her dog, and the darndest thing happened when I was talking with her…she would look at me and I swear she checked out right before my eyes…Her brain just went elsewhere…it wasn’t a seizure it was her attention taking a trip. When I called her on it…

She said..”I don’t know what happens, I just go off…somewhere..” :lol: She showed me her notes from class…remember…..this is a grown woman in her 50’s they were covered with drawings……I looked at her and said…do you do this all the time…She said…”oh, my teachers in elementary and high school would get mad at me because I would draw”…She told me about being in a math class and watching the clock trying to make the time go by faster every 2 minutes….She is ADD and it is interferring in her life…she is battles depression because the ADD is out of control and she feels in her words stupid.. :cry:

Been there seen that and please do something to help her master her focus before it is too late… :wink:

About “checking out” — I see this frequently as a tutor, to say the least.

Recently I’ve been noticing a pattern that used to be common in pre-teen boys is moving down to even Grade 2 and little girls; the kid “checks out” the minute I start to *teach* something. The attention is all there when the kid is colouring or writing something they’re willing to write or when we are telling stories or when I and the caregiver are talking about adult things that are none of the kid’s business; but I actually try to *explain* something to do with schoolwork and BANG in two seconds the eyes are up on the ceiling and the humming under the breath and finger-fidgeting start. I know it’s deliberate because it is so specific — the message is very clearly “I refuse to listen to any *lessons*; you have to entertain me.”

Personally, I refuse to accept this. It is a very damaging habit to build. And the tutor being the hired entertainer for the hour would just feed the problem more.
As soon as I see the eyes on the ceiling or hear the humming or see the finger fidgets, I stop. When the kid looks to see what is going on, I point at the paper and start again. If necessary I say “ahem!” or whistle or run a hand in front of the eyes and get the focus down again. After a few weeks we usually get focus most of the time.

Since I am seeing this moving down to ages where it was very rare before, I’m thinking it has to do with teaching (or non-teaching) strategies being used in the schools.

It is an internal motivational timing thing…When I was first tutoring this 50+ year old woman last year and saw her check out in class, she would fall asleep right in front of the professor when she was lecturing…and when I was ONE-on-One with her helping her with her lessons she would tune out…I would get so MAD inside because I thought…this behavior is RUDE :roll: But then over time and during sessions, I realized she couldn’t stop herself from checking out…It was her way of protecting herself when she got overloaded…but the bad thing was she checked out more than she tuned in and when assignments were due she hadn’t a clue. Not to mention she she did this when she was a child…It is a really hard thing to control when you don’t realize your tuning out isn’t what other people do on a day to day basis…

It is really hard to explain this “tuning out” to parents about their kids until you actually go through it. The child or adult for that matter can’t keep their monitor turned on to focus on things, they end up tuning out into their own mind for entertainment to endure whatever is overloading them at the moment.

Perhaps it would benefit parents who are in denial about their kids attentional issues to see a video tape of a typical tutoring session and see the “tuning out phenomenon” The tuning out behavior is so blatant and I too refuse to be an expensive babysitter for an hour but I want to help the child and help the parents meet their child’s needs and not make the same mistakes I made….

What really cracks me up is to see my daughter who used to tune out 24/7 and was one of those talkative dreamy girls 5 years ago…Now she has been on meds for 4 and she tells high school students…”You need to focus, put away the Japanese cartoons you’ve been drawing and reading in math class and learn from the teacher.”

I want to be productive and help the child learn to read and focus and I am not boring by a long shot. If I can’t get them to focus through activities which entail learning to focus, then I can’t teach them to read or master the subjects that are most difficult for them. In that case, I refer the parent and child to seek the counsel of a medical doctor regarding proper diet, and medications to help them develop internal motivation and master their executive functioning skills so I can remediate.

Patti & Victoria -

Thank you both for your perspectives on this.

I’ve also questioned the “entertainment” factor, Victoria, because I notice that my daughter remembers *some* things quite easily - like the store at which to buy a certain type of flip-flops, which day to wear her costume for the class’s celebration, or the personal stories her teachers occasionally toss in! However, when it comes time to bring the right textbook home, remember which day an assignment is due, or recollect factual information presented in a lecture, it’s another story! :x (Grr!)

Is this simply a matter of the “fun stuff” not overloading her? I don’t know… But the pattern is aggravating to me as a parent, trying to understand why it’s so easy for her to remember what she apparently *wants* to remember, with the rest of it going out the window.

Whether it has to do w/ teaching (or non-teaching) strategies the schools are using, I have no clue. I personally suspect some of it may have to do w/ the way in which kids in our culture are catered to! If you go thru a fast-food drive-thru, they’re shoving toys through your window. You go to a restaurant, and the kids are placated with their own placemat, crayons, and a balloon. Some restaurants have play areas or elaborate systems of child-entertainment (fun centers). I’m sure this does nothing to harm the average kid, but I have to wonder if, given a certain personality or predisposition, it takes a kid who might otherwise have considered plain ol’ LEARNING to be fun, and turns them into a little cater-to-me monster? :twisted: Aaaaaahhhh!!

I like some of the strategies you use during tutoring. I have had to do similar things during homework sessions here at home, and it can be trying.

As for ADD, we haven’t ruled out the idea entirely, but there are some complicating family history factors and previous reactions to med. trials that need to be taken into account. There is also more testing needed before we can feel sure that this is the problem we’re looking at. It seems that so many things present w/ a set of similar symptoms…it’s a wonder anyone ever sorts out what is really going on w/ themselves or their child!

~~~ Leizanne (login difficulties, sorry!)

and she needs to take responsiblity for monitoring her motivation/attention internally. :shock: Educators are telling you she is tuning out…to them….She just checks in when things are novel…and she finds interesting…and she chooses to tune out when she is bored.. :cry:

The problem I see in all people dealing with ADD at ANY AGE is making them realize that when they tune out it makes things worse for themselves… :shock: and in your daughter’s case someone needs to make her realize that she can’t continue this behavior… :oops: it is just exasperating the problems in her grades… she is missing out on instruction that will be crucial to her future success in academics and eventually college. Things won’t change for her no matter what you do…SHE NEEDS to change her behavior and take ownership of it herself.

How that will be faciliated??? :? Hopefully sooner than later… :lol: it’s your call….in the meantime things will remain as they are… :cry:

Happy Mothers day by the way… :lol:

Patti wrote:

>> Things won’t change for her no matter what you do…
>> SHE NEEDS to change her behavior and take ownership
>> of it herself.

>> How that will be faciliated??? Hopefully sooner than later…
>> it’s your call….in the meantime things will remain as they are…

Hi, Patti -

Hope you had a Happy Mother’s Day, too. Thanks for your additional comments.

In reading them, I am not sure I understand what you’re thinking. On the one hand, you stated that someone needed to make her realize that she was exacerbating her own problems by her failure to attend properly. I agree! However, I wish I had the magic answer for getting it through to her. (Suggestions are welcome!)

She definitely has her own agenda & sense of priorities. (Agenda = fun; priorities = self, in the here & now!) I think the main reason we get the cooperation we do out of her is merely because we’ve learned not to let her participate in her agenda if she doesn’t cooperate w/ ours. However, there’s only so far it seems we can push this philosophy before she maxes out & sort of self-destructs. (We’ve been told that part of this is due to her slow processing speed, despite having the ability.)

You went on to say that *she* needs to take ownership of her attentional issues, and that things for her “won’t change…no matter what [we] do”. However, at the same time, you added “it’s [our] call” and “in the meantime, things will remain as they are”.

The ending part of that statement makes it sound as if you feel we’re failing to do something for her. But if things for her won’t change no matter what we do - (until she takes ownership) - it sounds like I’m missing something.

She’s currently seeing a pdoc related to these issues, but as I stated, it’s difficult to sift out one thing from another, and due to complicating factors, we are hoping to avoid stepping in the “wrong” direction w/ this and landing her in a worse place than where we began. This is a potentiality when you combine some of the meds. in question with some of the factors at issue.

I am not opposed to the ADD-Inattentive diagnosis, I just want to get the “right” answer re: what the source of her problems really is, so we can formulate the best coping strategies & so forth! I got a bang out of hearing your description of your own daughter (telling the kids to put their Japanese cartoon drawings away and listen to the teacher! ) ;) … I’d like to think my own daughter will be able to get past her difficulties and reach this level of competence @ something one day!! :) You give me hope!

Thanks again,
~~~ Lei

There can also be a straight sensory part to it. Could be she remembers where those flipflops are because when she gets that informatoin she imagines getting them. That little brain scenario means she’s ten times as likely to remember it — she’s done some internal processing with it and meshed it with stuff that’s already in her brain.
She’s got to want to do this, but if she’s frustrated with her forgetfulness, when she gets an assignment, she can imagine herself doing it — figuring out the “where” and “when.” (This does *not* mean she’ll remember it… she still needs to write it down… but she’s more likely to remember that she wrote it down!) If she’s a visual thinker, suggest she “visualize” it — but those of us who don’t think in pictures just imagine our brain doing it…

Well just the day I want to sleep in….My ADD-Inattentive kids leave for school they go up to the electronic gate…the 15 year old daughter starts freaking out because just like the Raffi song…there’s a spider on the floor on the floor….there was a spider in the car, in the car…oh, it’s really really big…this old spider in the car, there’s a spider in the car in the car…And guess what…

My son doesn’t want her to kill the spider..so he tries to get it out while keeping his foot on the brake and she refuses to take the spider on the paper to put out the window and he rolls into the pilaster of the electronic gate…Well the airbags don’t go off but the SUV has a big boo boo owie…enough that it has to be towed into the autobody shop over $7400 in damages in one inattentive moment….. The pilaster…it is fine…it needs a couple of facia bricks replaced but the SUV…Oh my land…

I guess what I see is your daughter isn’t doing that well in school the way things are going. Behavior modification may change things but the paradox here is what one needs her to do is to change inside and take ownership…I still don’t have that magic pill. All I know is I work really hard with all different age groups with varying degrees of cognition and attention abilities. I can usually make a dent with the kids when the light goes on inside their brain… when they realize what it feels like to focus.

Guess what slow processing speed is an indicator of??? That was what really showed up on my daughter…in first grade her processing speed was 122 by 5th grade her processing speed was in the 70’s…That was the flag that showed it wasn’t just CAPD we were dealing with it was ADD.

Sorry if I came off too strong…your experience with your DD just rings too close to home for me… :oops:

Gee, Patti, my whole car cost me $1000 (Canadian dollars yet) and another $800 to make it run, and it’s still doing well four months later, knock on wood …

Years ago I was in Boston when it was the highest car-theft area in the nation. I met a guy who had a very very old Austin, a weird colour of red faded to a sort of raspberry pink. He left it unlocked in the middle of the city and when I queried the wisdom of this, he pointed to a sign he had posted on the dashboard: “CAUTION - this car is not worth stealing.”

There are advantages!
You might want to think about a vehicle specifically for teenagers who can’t manage a new SUV?

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About the attention thing and zoning out: well, I draw the line where there is clearly a deliberate game being played.
It isn’t boredom when the eyes snap up to the ceiling three words into the sentence; there hasn’t been any time to become bored (no, I talk very fast). It isn’t inability to follow when something fun is read correctly and then something considered to be work is immediately botched every which way. It isn’t overload when the information hasn’t even been presented yet.
There may have been — most likely were — *previous* problems of boredom or confusion or overload, and they probably contributed to the habit, but what I am talking about is habit.
This is *quite* different from the two kids I have worked with who had a definite disability; one in particular, if you threw a ball to him, his eyes swivelled away from the ball instead of towards it. The differences are subtle but absolutely real and you can see them once you know what you are looking for.
When inattention has become an ingrained habit and a preferred coping skill for school, you have to work on that before you can do much with anything else.
This is where the student has to take ownership — not to be perfect and always to pay attention, an impossibility for any normal human; not to try to overcome a real disability by sheer force of will — but to change learned habits and to invest something of themselves in their education.