What programs would be beneficial for an 8 year old NVLD chi

Can’t tell you about school based programs, since our “school remediation” has been keeping our now 11.5 6th grade NLD daughter in small private school with very with it teachers who are all on the same page with us.

Our daughter was diagnosed mid-second grade, and you are very wise to begin as much intensive intervention at this early point as you can afford and your son can tolerate (you cannot do everything you need to at once — so every 6-12 months you really need to evaluate the changing needs and what particular therapies you may want to phase in or out).

Our daughter has benefitted GREATLY from: 3 years of OT, 3+ years of individual speech therapy (focussing on language pragmatics, reading comprehension, Lindamood-Bell Visualising and Verbalizing; working on inferences , hidden meaning etc.); 3+ years of various “social skills groups” for girls (one with social worker, one with psychologist, current with psychiatrist); tutoring in writing; individual therapy and meds for ADD (adderall) and anxiety/depression (prozac).

Hope that helps.

Some professional help is more helpful than others. I’d only suggest to invest some time into asking around with as many people as you can, your family doctor, friends, teachers. I like the recommendations of my family doctor as a place to find my way to good help.

Also, because even some of the best professionals in the various fields aren’t that familiar with NLD, it is really worth “interviewing” a clinician/practioner before you set your kid up to work with one.

It is also worth the time/money, in my experience, to get copies of all relevant reports — as well as general NLD info — to the people who will work with your son. It will really help them to read the stuff!

Also, when we originally had all our evaluations (at the recommendation of the pediatrician we had OT, speech, psycho-educational, neurology — and neurologist then added the full neuropsycho eval which pinpointed the NLD) — all the reports listed recommended interventions. So we weren’t just fishing around in the dark.

Hopefully you have some good reports and recommendations from evaluations that can point you in the right directions.

Barb, could you explain in more detail the interventions your professionals recommended. I am off to my childs IEP and the team is proposing pulling OT and social work because my child has done so well. Some how I am concerned we haven’t covered all the area’s possible. I’d like your input on this. thank you.

Terese

Hi, My name is Valerie I am a Special Education Major at Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, Georgia. I am also the mother of a 11 and 12 year old and have worked with children for the past 16 years. My instuctor has asked us to help a person on this website and give them advice and resources to help them with their particular problems. I know as a parent how heartbreaking it can be to see your child so frustrated and feel you can not help him. Don’t let your child shut down, you seem very concerned about Travis and I can tell you are a loving parent. I think you and his teacher need to keep the lines of communication open and work together to help Travis feel accepted at school. Have modifications been made in Travis’ schoolwork to help him with his learning differences? Speech and OT therapy could be a plus in helping Travis with Learning differences. Every child’s self-esteem is very important in a child’s success. Encourage, praise and encourage again. This is very healthly. www.ldanatl.org Gives many ideas on how to help with self-esteem ,social/emotional, self-help and academic issues with learning difference children. You can also get helpful info on SchwbLearning.org.(there is alot of parents on this site going through the same problem) Does Travis have a current IEP at school?? Is it helping or does it need adustments. Talk with his teachers, it is very important for youe child’s success. If I can help in any way feel feel to email me. I will try to get you the info. needed. I hope I have helped . Have a great day.
Valerie

Thank-you very much Valerie. Unfortunately, I am in the process of fighting for an IEP, his needs have been well identified, but the services are not forth-coming. Our SPED feels that OT services are not educationally relevant and that extensive accomodations is the way-to-go. Teachers are supportive, but he is really badly misplaced. We need to move to another school or perhaps district.

Terese - I’ve been out of town and just checking back on the board. See my first post above for more info on interventions recommended to us and pursued for our daughter.

Hope you got through your IEP.

I am both the parent of a child with NVLD and a school social worker. When my own son started getting really angry at home, it was because the accommodations he was getting at school weren’t sufficient—and because I needed to accommodate his homework at home. I started letting him dictate his work at home, and that helped a great deal. Also the more I learned about NVLD, the better I was able to understand his frustration and how to intervene.
As a social worker, I would caution you about using most of the social skill programs. These programs assume that the child has the pragmatic skills and nonverbal communication skills that our children do not have. What is sticky is that the people trained in teaching social pragmatics are Speech and Language teachers (or at least sometimes trained), but students with only pragmatic delays are not put on their caseloads. Social workers are really not trained to teach nonverbal communication or social pragmatics. I have learned, and others could too—if they want to. Having said that, I would suggest that you buy the book “helping the Child Who Doesn’t Fit in” by Steve Nowicki. It gives many exercises that you can do yourself, or that a social worker could do with a child. He is coauther of a second book called TEaching the Language of Social Success that is geared towards the classroom or a group. There are also several useful tapes by Sue Diamond on teaching social pragmatics to NVLD kids (see NLDline.com) and there is a good book by Michelle Garcia Winner on teaching social problem solving—although it is geared towards older children. Hope this gives you a starting point.