info on specialists or who to talk too?

Ask your pediatrician for referrals. Medical insurance will usually cover an evaluation by a speech pathologist (complete speech/language evaluation) and by an occupational therapist. If possible, choose the speech pathologist and OT first and call their offices. Since they handle insurance every day they can usually tell you exactly how the referral should be worded or coded to ensure medical coverage. Usually your pediatrician will be happy to give you the referrals. If not, I would shop around and find another doctor.

The children I have seen who tested with low IQs have had other issues that probably contributed to the low IQ score. Tops among these has been sensory integration disorder (SID), which seems to interfere with many different types of learning. A good OT should be able to assess sensory integration. IQ scores can also be lowered by language processing disorders (especially receptive language problems), which is why you want the eval by the speech pathologist.

If your child is reading on less than a mid-third grade level, I would advise getting the Sound Reading CD from http://www.soundreading.com . I have seen this CD help advanced reading skills even severely challenged, low IQ children.

Nancy

Nancy,

My son has sever receptive / expressive delays. When he was 3 yrs old he started speech therapy and has been going since. He was diagnosed with DVD (Developement Verbal Dypraxia). He had a private slp for the last 6 months, but I want to do remedial tutoring for the second half of the year.

My son will be 9 in April and the school says they want him reading at a grade 1 level by the end of the year. Confusing seeing as how his IEP stated last year that “he was reading at the end of a grade 1 level”

Thanks for your message. I will look up soundreading

Terese — the verbal difficulties definitely make his IQ look lower than it should. He may be able to progress faster IF his verbal problems are helped. Can you get any additional speech therapy in any way, school, public, hospital, university, private? At this point, it looks to me that this issue is even more important than the reading.

Victoria, I am searching out more Speech therapy for him, but it is so expensive. Do you really think that it is more important to work on his speech first before actual reading therapy/ tutoring? My son loves going to the Reading Foundation (I think I told you about this clinic before), but speech therapy I have to drag him there and his private slp had a hard time with getting his attention. I know he needs speech, but I thought I would give him a break and put him back into the reading foundation. He still gets speech at school, but mind you it is only once a week in a “group setting”.
I am not giving up on the speech, I guess i just wanted to give my little guy a break.

I have seen some positive posts about the Leap Frog - Talking Words and related DVDs (available from Amazon, among other places). These could be helpful for learning basic sounds. I will try to link to the Amazon site below. (Sorry, I know this is off your posted topic, but thought this might be appropriate for your son.)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000INU6I

Nancy

Terese — it is a *very* good sign that he likes the Reading Foundation lessons and wants to go there.
Unfortunately, the fact that he doesn’t like speech therapy may be because it is hard work for him, because he needs so much.

As far as staying in the reading lessons or not, I’d ask how much progress he is making. I seem to remember from your previous post that he had stalled and was not moving forward much. Has this changed? If he is moving forward — measured on a long-term basis, over a couple of months, not day to day moods — then of course hang in there, wonderful! If he is stalled and doesnlt make noticeable progress over a month or two, well, the language is probably holding him back.

When he did the intense sessions in the summer at the Reading Foundation he did not make the gains I really was hoping for, but then again, I guess I was credulous and hoping for a little “miracle”. He did make about a grade level jump in 80 hours.

Right now he is only going 3 hours a week, as we live so far the clinic, plus working full time and school, it is hard to get him there.

His speech is so delayed that for him it is hard to get words and his thoughts out verbally. I definitely know he needs more speech. I guess it all comes down to time and money really. I know at the reading foundation they are really working on his decoding abilities. Making sure he realizes all the sounds in the word. I have watched them do some of the same things that his SLP was doing with him. I will look into more speech therapy and also talk to the school to see if he can qualify for more.

Thanks for the link to the leap frog, I will also look into that. My son has ton’s of leap frog stuff.

Thanks again for the response.

Terese

The reason poor readers remain poor readers is that they never hear themselves read properly therefore are never able to lay down speech patterns in their brain.

Deaf people can’t speak properly, despite having normal vocal chords, because they can’t hear themselves speak therefore there is no speech patterning in their brain i.e. they can’t moderate their tone of voice.

You or I could read perfectly to a child every day but it would take years, if ever for that child to lay down the correct patterns in its brain. Our brain only responds to our own voice.

The Repeat Reading Technique, found at: www.edinburghtechniques.co.uk is based on how we learn to speak. It’s stress free, simple and allows the child to hear itself speak properly, possibly for the first time and therefore able to lay down these all important speech patterns which are then used to make the correct sound when the same sylables appear next time.

Thus I am afraid, speech therapy is necessary if your son is not making the correct sounds….he can’t do it because parts of his left brain are under developed, which could cause all sorts of problems with telling the time, tying shoe laces, understanding numbers, spellings etc…all of which are covered by the Edinburgh Techniques I might add. It’s a site all mums and teachers should check out asap.

Brian Hill

I am a speech pathologist. I have seen kids like your son who have low verbal IQ’s, ADD and severe speech issues. You have to treat ALL the impairments in order to make the most gains. If the ADD remains untreated he will only go so far. Case in point…I have had kids who had speech since they were little guys and now they are in high school, two of these kids had ADD and it was NEVER treated, when I did their Triennials they were testing out Mentally retarded…well they aren’t mentally retarded they have ADD first and their speech impairment is secondary.. What I find so exasperating…is the fact that doors are closed in their future because they never learned how to focus to learn and make the most of the speech remediation that was provided to them since they were young.

I would strongly recommend getting him help for the ADD and asking for more speech services. Keep up with the Reading Foundation too.

Second what Patti says.

And treat Brian’s claims with a huge grain of salt; his theories are at best controversial.