Help -- 16 year old with LD

In my experience, the public schools appear to give more help than they actually do. This is especially true once kids reach middle school and high school. The best programs tend to be in elementary school (although ours wasn’t very good and we had to get private help).

So don’t beat yourself up.

One book you might find useful is Mel Levine’s A Mind at a Time. He is very optimistic and provides detailed information on all sorts of disabilities. He tries to show how different kinds of minds can suceed.
He includes social issues in one of the chapters so you might find that helpful too.

I would also recommend you get books on tape for her. It will keep her exposed to language which will help her vocabulary. I have some degree of word retrieval issues and knowing lots of words is one of your best defenses.

Beth

((Hugs))

Another good book is “It’s So Much Work to Be You Friend” by Rick Lavoie. That may give you some help on the social issues.

You might want to try Text to Speech programs for reading. A lot of them include visual tracking aids (highlighting the word as its read) which can help some people process the information better.

For word choice issues when writing, a word prediction program may be helpful.

Don’t be too hard on yourself, I agree with the previous post. Students with special needs in the public high schools receive far less services than the elementary schools. By the time they get to high school, they start to accommodate/modify the material rather than try to remediate the disability. I speak from experience with twins, now 18, but rather similar to your daughter’s problems. Acutally, the one mirrors exactly the same problems. Some of the things that helped her: first of all, what is your daughters strength. Find one, two, three, whatever and build on those. Whether it is art, sports, horsebackriding, something. Find something she likes and is good at and expose her to that. That will help build her self-confidence and self-esteem. For my daughter, it was gymnastics. She related poorly to other girls, still does, but she was an awesome gymnast, so she was respected by her fellow teammates in that regard. That boosted her self-esteem tremendously over the years while trying to tackle the academics. A sport like gymnastics also builds discipline and organization that are also crucial skills that need to be learned by children like this. As far as the academics, I would suggest a tutor that can teach study skills and also someone that could teach her a direct reading program like SRA CORRECTIVE READING. If you want more info - I can consult with you on it. My email is [email protected]. My daughter was in 6th grade and had a 3rd grade reading level. I had the program instituted and she gained 2 years in one. After suffering from all the same problems you mention for several years, her life turned around and she could start to read and comprehend. Bottom line, she graduated with honors and is now on dean’s list first year of college. There is hope. Contact me if you would like to more info. All the best,
~Sherry

Many of the things you describe are common place in students who have speech and language disorders. I would ask the SLP to do a speech eval looking at her vocabulary, expressive and receptive, the Comprehsnive Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-4) or the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL) and the TOPL test of Pragmatic Language to look at her pragmatics or social skills and the Adolescent Test of Problem solving to see how she reads situation and applies her problem solving skills.

Are you in California by chance? But don’t beat yourself up about this…you are going forward and that is the main thing!! :-)

Like others have said, please, please do NOT assume she would have gotten “THE RIGHT HELP” in a public high school. That would truly (sadly, tragically) be the exception to the rule. I say this from my experience teaching there.
Adolescence, being sixteen… well, in the current vernacular, it can really suck. Tell her this is a tough time but it will get better. SHe can do her part by basically figuring out how she can be a friend and make friends ((**without** making compromises of her own personality and integrity)) … but time will also help because her peers will mature and be easier to deal with; being 16 is tough partly because the other sixteen year olds are also having sucky times and are acting like 16 year olds and taking it out on each other.
Your guilt is pretty useless, let it go :-) Right now a lot of things are out of your control, which is scary (and normal - she’s 16). I agree w/ ldteachermom… help her find a success outlet - tho’ depending on what flavor of 16 year old she is, you may want to do that indirectly.

Thanks to everyone who replied to my message. We had the same strategy that some of you mentioned, i.e., find her strength and develop it, so that she gets confidence from that. Her strengths were soccer and basketball, and singing. She was very good at the two sports up till about 7th grade, and then somehow they became a source of frustration and anxiety. I think some if it is that she has poor communication skills, and misinterprets what coaches tell her. She’s very literal-minded, and has played best for coaches who spell everything out for her. She doesn’t do well with vagueness or gray areas. She has a beautiful voice, but can’t read music (we gave her piano lessons, but she struggled with learning to read music), and that hampers her when she auditions for singing parts.

What baffles me is the friend thing. She is a joyful, happy, exuberant girl, and I don’t understand why she has such trouble holding on to friends. She must be saying or doing something that gets them mad at her. Honestly, my wife is almost ready to call up another Mom and ask what the problem is. Every year she starts out with friends and then they do things like not invite her to parties, or make plans and not tell her about them. Parents love my daughter, but apparently her peers don’t. I don’t know how to advise her (if she’d take my advice), because I don’t know what she’s doing wrong.

I appreciate any thoughts or advice you have.

I do think a complete speech and language evaluation would be very helpful. A speech pathologist may be able to provide therapy to help with communication skills.

PACE (Processing and Cognitive Enhancement) could be a helpful program. It works on developing a wide range of cognitive skills — attention, auditory and visual sequencing, short-term memory, etc. Teens tend to do well with the program. Website for PACE is http://www.processingskills.com

WordSmart CDs can be a relatively easy way to improve vocabulary. These are expensive if purchased from the company (and the company is pushy over the phone), but you may be able to find them at a reasonable price on eBay. There are 4 CDs that are specifically aimed at SAT prep. These are volumes C, D, E, F. (Start with C and make sure the approach is useful before investing in more.) Website is http://www.wordsmart.com

If your daughter will work with you, try the Rewards reading program at home (original version, now called secondary level). It is entirely scripted and takes about 20 hours working one-on-one. Website for this program is http://www.rewardsreading.com

My dyslexic son took the SAT’s but wouln’t take advantage of the fact that they had to make provisions for the conditions on his IEP so he bombed it. He goes to a fine private college because we were assertive (we worked our way up to the president of the University) aruing that with the latest learning aids ( reading and writing software) he would be successful. The college must follow the IEP and have support staff who help him do well. There are more and more colleges that don’t require thw SAT’s or the ACT’s. Be your daughter’s advocate and don’t take no for an answer. You’ll be fine.

I will look into the Web sites that were mentioned. Also, to the person who said they fought to get their son in a prestigious private university: we are used to being an advocate, because that’s what we did to get our daughter in the private high school she wanted to go to. She bombed the entrance exam and was placed very low on the waiting list, but we got letters of recommendation from teachers and coaches, and we called the school many times and lobbied for her, and even got others to call and put in a good word. The school did not understand her LD, and we finally realized they thought she would need more help than they could provide. When we assured them she wouldn’t, they admitted her. Looking back, though, I wish they could have provided more help. It was her decision to go there, but I think another school might have had more resources for her.

I did not say “prestigeous” college, I said “private” college. Pardon me if I misrepresented the implication. My point was that it is small enough (under 1000 students) for each of my son’s professors to know his situation and make the necessary adaptations. He has a notetaker, takes tests using a reader, has books on tape and even has an advocate who contacts the professors berfore each semester begins. He tries to stay in touch, and offers to work on skills development (my son doesn’ take advantage) such as organization & time management.As I stated, I really wanted to relate that these type of services are easier to privide at a smaller school so research and don’t walk away until you’ve exhausted every channel.Of course, be realistic. Just a note-we had to walk away from one.It hurts.

I mixed up “prestigious” and “private”. In any case, I thank you for the valuable input. I didn’t realize there were so many services available. Is this the case in all colleges? Are they required to provide these services, or is it up to each individual school? I’m just starting the college research process with my daughter, and this is another consideration.

Could I ask you another question? Who do you talk to at a college to find out what services they provide to LD students? Is there a specific person, or just anyone in the Admissions Dept.? I haven’t seen any info like this on the college Web sites I’ve visited.

Thanks!

Does your daughter have an IEP?

She does not have an IEP. She goes to a small private school, and they don’t have any programs for her. She wanted desperately to go to this school, but she did poorly on the entrance exam. The school put her on a waiting list, and it took months of us advocating for her to get them to admit her. What they finally told us was that they thought she’d need special programs and teachers, and they didn’t have the budget or facilities for that. We had to verbally assure them that she didn’t need anything extra, and that’s the only way they’d admit her. I realize now it was not the best situation for her, but she wanted to go to that school. We didn’t know what an IEP was at the time, but I’m sure the school would not have agreed to one, because, as I said, they only admitted her when we said she wouldn’t need extra help. The only thing they agreed to was 50 percent extra time on her tests. And there were a few teachers who didn’t seem to understand that — in freshman year, she had several experiences with teachers who rushed her through tests, before we cleared that up.

From my experiences, each college website has a specific section that details the services available to all students needing help. (ex. writing centers, reading labs…) I don’t want to be too specicific because each school is different but they all had aome.My son has an IEP so we wern’t too concerned about what was already provided.

Colleges with IEPs are very rare (even ones with lots of good services).

Colleges abiding by high school IEPs-I don’t know if it’s a law or not, but coincidentally every school we looked into in Ohio followed a current high school IEP.

Then there may be an Ohio policy -good deal! - colleges generally are bound by ADA laws, so that students have *access* to an education; it is not the school’s responsibility to make sure they are educated.

So, by “follow” - that would probably mean accommodations. If an IEP indicated a special class, a college doesn’t have to do that (though some are starting to).