Help Diagnose This student

Well, nobody can actually diagnose online. We can just all throw out some brainstorming ideas and see if it gives you any leads.

My first thought on this is that not everything is an LD. This could be emotional or habitual — something developed out of a vicious circle of poor socialization.

I second Victoria’s statement on dxing online. Poor social skills can be seen in some cases of ADHD/ADD, as well as nonverbal learning disabilities, speech and language disorders, kids in the autism spectrum, emotional conflicts, family issues like child abuse, a very messy divorce, etc. Poor verbal skills can be related to hearing impairments, speech and language disorders, etc. As Victoria says, not everything is a learning disability. (But in some cases, ADHD is more debilitating than you might think.)

I would caution you that schizophrenia is an extremely serious dx, mostly lifelong with a poor prognosis. Aspergers is related to other issues like high interest/obsession in a single area, sensory problems (intolerance of sounds or touch), difficulty reading facial expressions, etc. Neither is related to each other in any respect, but schizophrenia is not usually found in children under age 16 (older theories held out the idea of childhood schizophrenia, but such a child, if they exist at all, would be severely effected and unable to participate in any kind of regular curriculum at any level and could not switch it on or off for a game).

I think you should talk with the parents, but first I think you should be able to describe the problem in neutral terms, ie this child has problems in these areas that you are concerned about. The first step would be to get the child evaluated for special ed. services by teh school district. But the parent, I think, needs to consent to it. You should not be telling the paretn you think there child is schizophrenic! (or even Aspergers). You need to convince them that you are on the same side, and not make them defensive or angry. In all prob. they are aware fo the issue and may not know what to do.

—des

I know you can’t diagnose someone over the internet. I guess I shouldn’t have used that word. I guess what I just need are opinions. Thanks!

Hi Julianna,
I found it curious, your statement: .if she is pretending to be someone else, you can understand everything she is saying.
Where it seems that taking on a ‘character’, provides a terms of reference to modulate her expression?
Perhaps she is lacking a sense of ‘self identity’?
Where possibly she could ‘pretend’ to be ‘I’ ?
Just a thought?

WHen I’ve seen things like that (once or twice) there have been ongoing significant psych issues (one was the child of one of the hostages from the Carter administration). The utterly practical side of me woudl suggest inventing a character for her to be for classroom purposes.

Psychological issues would be my guess as well. If you want a guess. Of course, what the issues are is quite another thing. The ability to “become someone” else and lose the speech problem makes it less likely this is a true speech disability (though some with speech problems and even brain damage can SING better than they speak). To me, this would also mean it is not something like AS (usually intact speech) or something as severe as childhood schizophrenia (keep in mind this is not the usual explanation of a “split personality” but a severe disorder with some types of hallucinations, delusions, paucity of thoughts, etc.). It used to be that autistic children were misdxed as schizophrenic, but these were severely involved kids.

I think Sue’s idea is brilliant.

—des