Can dylsexia be diagnosed at 6yrs?

Dyslexia absolutely CAN be diagnosed at age 6, and good for you for getting your daughter evaluated so early. This is one of the biggest misconceptions out there and lots of very well-meaning people believe it. It is an extremely dangererous misconception, in my view, because the earlier you remediate, the better the prognosis for the child. My own child was diagnosed in first grade when he had just turned 7. Be wary of advice that suggests a child will grow out of learning difficulties. Trust your own judgment on whether there is something really wrong. It is true that the range of what is normal is broader in younger children, but it is possible to distinguish between “normal” and LD through the use of proper testing. If there is something that all the other kids can do and yours can’t, and you’ve tried all the ordinary things that usually help, that is the time to get the child tested. In your daughter’s case, that might include testing to determine if she has a problem with auditory processing.

Andrea

My son is almost six and in kindergarten. We have a family history of learning disabilities. I mentioned this to his teacher in the beginning of the year and around February she came to me and said that she was seeing that he was having some difficulties, like not recocgnizing the letter C even though it was in his own name.

I had him evaluated by the public school system, he is in a private school, and had the test evaluated by a neuropsychologist. She said that he has auditory processing issues, she really couldn’t say disorder because he can’t be evaluated by the audiologist until September.

She said that no matter what the school says he will not grow out of it. If the test show there are issues they will not go away with age. She recommended getting him as comfortable as possible on the computer. She also recommended purchasing Earobics, too start, and have him use it over the summer. There are other programs similar to Earobics, and not everyone agrees with using this program, but it was her recommendation. She said it would help him and using the computer is a good tool because the computer can’t get frustrated with him, or push him too fast.

At any rate, she was very reassuring that I was doing the right thing and she said that the younger you get and evaluation and results the better you can help the student.

K.

Thanks for your reply. My daughter had screening in the sound proof booth for auditory processing, and the audiologist said that seh passed all areas with flying colors. She said that she is certain that my daughters difficulty is NOT APD. The neuropsychologist said that not all dylsexics have APD. I have a feeling that the school will fight the dyslexia thing, I just want to get my daughter the appropriate program to help her learn to read and the numbers. I beleive she has the math concepts, but cannot recall the names of the numbers. I feel so resopnsible to make sure she gets an approriate educatoin, it is hard to make all these decisions.

You also should consider having her evaluated by a speech and language therapist as well. She may have word retrieval problems as well (not being able to “find” the label for things easily).

Beth

Well, at least you know what it is not. I wish that my son could have had the screening now, I didn’t know that he couldn’t have the 2 1/2 hour auditory processing screen if he had the Scan at the public school. Turns out the right scores were not even reported in the test results anyway.

The school probably will fight you on just the dyslexia. I remember them fighting about it on my brother. It wasn’t until we got the CAPD diagnosis that they starting doing concrete things. He has always been receiving services, he has been on an IEP since kindergarten but they kept saying he had ADD. He is an example of getting the diagnosis way late!!

I can understand wanting to make sure your child gets the appropriate education. That is why I put my son in private school because I think the public system where I live is terrible. However, now I have to try and get some kind of summer services from them. It is all very frustrating. That is why I went to the psychologist.

K.

I have been searching for info on “retrieval disorders” on the web for days and days and this is the first place I have found it! My almost 6 year old daughter is just finishing her second year of Pre K-repeated at the suggestion of her very competitive and expensive private school. The school administered the Woodcock Johnson level III assessment to her at 4 1/2 years. The results showed extremely high perfomance for comprehension and vocabulary (grade equiv= 5th and 6th respectively) yet letter recognition at substantially below (3 1/2 year age equiv. After working with a tutor on and off for a year-the school has insisted that “she is making great progress” and it will soon “click” for her. The tutor is saying she has Retrieval Disorder and absolutely needs extra help and by all means do not stop working on this over the summer. Although she has made some progress she is no where near where her friends are in terms of reading and letter recognition. I can tell that she memorizes things which gives the appearance of her reading but if I prod her and ask her to tell me what each of the letters are she has great difficulty recalling the names of letters and number. Oddly, she has little trouble writing them. If I ask her to write a letter she has no trouble writing the letter. She is extremely frustrated by this and very aware that her friends are beginning to read. We are putting her into K in the public school as they have a great reputation for LD assistance but my question is where can I find more information about the very narrow LD called “retrieval disorder”? Is it an official designation? Any other suggestions for intervention that I can do would be most appreciated.

Hi Jackie,

When my son was little I thought he would sail right through school when the time came. He spoke extremely early, sentences at 12 months. He always seemed to understand everything.
He had tremendous difficulty learning to recognize letters. The term dyslexia I guess could fit him but he really has a visual learning deficit. .
He also is very bright. There is a term for that. It is called twice exceptional or gifted with learning disabilities. There is a some great research about this on the web.
Having your child tested to get a more specific diagnosis seems in order. Your school is required to do this for free.
Also make sure you push for special services. My child was not offered occupational therapy. I had to push for it. It has definitely helped to remediate his deficit and allow his gifts to shine through.
The earlier the better. He didn’t receive OT until 2nd grade. I wish he was in it earlier. If your child is found to have an auditory deficit speech therapy can help even if his speech is perfectly clear. It is more about the processing of the sounds and information.
My friend who’s child had similar problems has had her child in OT since preschool. He is getting de classified in the first grade because he is now at a sixth grade reading level because of all the extra help.
I have another friend who had a memory deficit. She struggled throughout school and finally got help in college. She was taught various strategies to trick her mind into moving information from short term into long term memory.
She went on to receive her masters and has done very well. She regrets not getting the help earlier.
So there is help out there just be persistant. Work to understand your childs deficits and push the school to provide every possible special service that is available. It can make a big difference.

Hope this helps

Jackie wrote:
>
> Hello, I have a child in kindergarten who is learing
> disabled. She is currently being evaluated by a
> neuropsychologists who has a lot of experience with all sorts
> of LD’s. She is convinced my daughter is dylslexic. I don’t
> dispute this from what I see in my child and based on what I
> have read about dyslexia, but there are many who say she is
> too young to be diagnosed as dyslexic. Any feedback from
> anyone out there? Despite a superior IQ, she has great
> difficulties learning the letters, numbers, shapes, sounds
> with the letters. She has difficulty naming things that she
> knows..(her middle name, until recently her age, our town,
> ect.) She puts sounds in word wrong..(arade for parade, begot
> for forgot..crinkle for twinkle). This is just some of what
> I see. Any feedback?

How are children diagnosed gifted and ld? The psychologist said my son had above average intelligence but can’t seem to remember a letter name that you gave him two seconds ago?

I am frustrated because no on can actually say, do this it will work!! Should I look into a Wilson program or something similar or does the child have to read in order to do that?

I am confused. I have information on how to help my son over the summer with using Earobics but not much else!

K.

http://www.wordfinding.com/characteristics.html#top

neuroacoustics.com

These are two websites that might help. The first is a speech and language website that is pretty comprehensive. The second is a therapy which we have done that works on “fast naming”—quickly being able to name what you see. My son has difficulties both with word retrieval in speech and fast naming. This therapy has helped, although we have done it because my son has a variety of problems. Also games like Outburst can be useful.

Word retrieval is something that my son has had IEP goals for speech.

Beth

Thanks for your reply. Thw word retrieval difficulties have always been the biggest thing I see with my daughter. She is classsified and goes tot he resource room, she also gets speech/lan 2-3x week. When the school tested her a year ago, they found nothing. I had an indep eval done. This showed the dicrepancy in her intelligence and her performance, stating memory weakness and below average reading skills. A neurologist said she has aphasia. We are going to a neuropsychologist to try to pull things together to see how she will best learn. That is where the dyslexia came in. Word retrieval is a symptom of this. My daughter is very strong visually, she cannot write the numbers or the letters that she can not name. You can say “Write K”. She can’t. Say “write the kangaroo letter.” She writes K. Numbers are even harder for her to name. My understanding is that for a word to be retireved from the brain, it must hear the sounds in the word and make sense of it, file it in a place in the brain so it can be called up when needed. We are working with this neuropsychologist to see where in her learning process things break down. Hope we can find an answer, so we can see how best to tach her. YIKES.

Try a lindamood bell center. they have programs that address this type of deficit. www.Lindamoodbell.com. There programs really go to the heart of LD issues.

Take a look at Brain Buiilder a software package. If your child scored low in the digit span subtest of the WISC then it sounds like a short-term memory problem. Brain Builder works on inceasing the amount of information that can be held in memory. The site is:

http://www.advancedbrain.com/bb_intro.html

Helen

You dd sounds VERY much like my dd at age 5. Go find a private SLP and have them do an auditory processing battery of tests. Passing a hearing test in a sound proof booth does not eliminate APD! My dd passes the sound proof booth with flying colors too. Her problem was (is) with background noise. Background noise in a normal classroom environment, she can only ‘hear’ 56% of what is being said - in sound proof, it’s 100%!

My dd cannot remember names of ‘things’ - letters, numbers, people, places, items etc. I found it interesting that you mentioned your dd has aphasia - I have always felt my dd has some form aphasia, but could not get anyone to diagnose it.

We have done alot of remediation for auditory discrimination and memory - which has done wonders and dd has made ALOT of progress. The naming thing tho still plagues her. She also still has her CAPD and I always wonder how much she really is understanding what she is being taught in the classroom.

By all means, start remediation as young as possible and don’t listen to the school if they tell you that she is not ‘bad’ enough, or too young to diagnose.

Poor word retrieval, dysnomia, are very commonly found in children with learning disabilities, including dyslexia. Difficluty with rote memorization, such as learning the alphabet, numbers, days of the week are also common. I see the dysnomic aphasia that my daughter has as a manifestation of the dyslexia. Dyslexics have trouble with phonological processing, they don’t hear the sounds in words as they should, and thus cannot store the information correctly and therefore cannot retirive it. The severe phonological processing difficulties, the difficulty hearing the sounds in words can be considered auditory processing? How if she has had the testing in a soundproof booth can it still be possible that she has APD? She passed this test with flying colors. The audiologists said there was no question that APD was NOT an issue with my child. Please explain this, I don’t understand. I thought this test was difinitive.

Poor word retrieval, dysnomia, are very commonly found in children with learning disabilities, including dyslexia. Difficluty with rote memorization, such as learning the alphabet, numbers, days of the week are also common. I see the dysnomic aphasia that my daughter has as a manifestation of the dyslexia. Dyslexics have trouble with phonological processing, they don’t hear the sounds in words as they should, and thus cannot store the information correctly and therefore cannot retirive it. The severe phonological processing difficulties, the difficulty hearing the sounds in words can be considered auditory processing? How if she has had the testing in a soundproof booth can it still be possible that she has APD? She passed this test with flying colors. The audiologists said there was no question that APD was NOT an issue with my child. Please explain this, I don’t understand. I thought this test was difinitive.