coping with ld

Many parents of children with CAPD have reported good progress and improvement using AIT. Although the schools hear are bucking it (why spend money helping these kids?), some districts in Canada have used it for several years as an integrated part of their offering for kids with CAPD.

Please keep us posted on how things go for you.

I know how you feel - it is so hard to watch them struggle.
And we can’t fix it. Or make it go away.

Three really important things you can do -

1) Be an advocate for your child, be her teacher’s partner and
support the school staff. (Assuming you are have the wonderful
gift of a caring and supportive school environment.) Every back to
school night I find the SE staff alone in their classroom - nobody comes
to visit. I have made it a point to include them in all ‘teacher’ activities -
the small gifts, flowers and cards that usually go to ‘regular’ teachers
also go to them. We have a book gifting fair and I try and fill up as
much of their gift list as I can afford. Just to let them know you appreciate
everything they do means a lot.
(this coming from a woman who started getting all teary eyed picking
out cards yesterday for my son’s three teachers - we are leaving for middle
school now and the card for his SE teacher started me bawling in the
middle of Barnes and Noble…)

2) Make home a safe harbor. A place to return everyday and lay down
her weary head. I do work with my son on his work at home but my
first goal is to keep the help as stressfree as possible - he has enough
stress at school. And I try to really listen when we do work together - he
knows what he needs.
For expample - when I help him along with his reading he often stops me
to ask me to reread the sentence, paragraph. While he can work away at
decoding he knows he is not comprehending what he reads.
I really watch his body language, listen to his voice and watch for stress during
homework sessions.
I have also cut out all night time activities for me so that I am always there.
Seems that the night of the PTO mtg. would fall on a homework from heck
night so I resigned from everything that had an evening mtg.

3) Find areas where she shines. My son shines in art. He has real supplies
and a space to use them. He is taking art classes during the summer.
He participates in scouts and his Dad is always with him and works with him
to memorize and pass certain requirements.
And he does the Destination Imagination program, which we coach or our good
friend coaches - who knows our son well.
http://www.dini.org/.
Some schools have Odyssey of the Mind programs and there are other creative problem solving programs. These kid oriented programs are great. Some of my most innovative kids were the Special
Ed kids. We have had instances where the program has turned kids around from deep despair to finding enthusiasm for themselves and life again. I can’t tell you how that makes up for all the glue, paint and glitter strewn around my family room for seven months out of the year ;-)

Kathy

I just wrote you a long message and then lost it trying to find websites for the therapies I mention. But the short end of it, is do not despair. My child has a similar profile and we have made great progress in the past year through private therapies. The school has been no help but you might be luckier than we were.

This is what we have done.

1. Fast Forward last summer to improve decoding and auditory memory. This works best it seems for a specific type of CAPD. Check with the audiologist who tested your child for information about her specific problems.

2. Vision therapy. I would take her to a developmental optometrist, if you haven’t already, to make sure that there aren’t vision efficiency problems in addition to visual processing ones. This would include problems like the eyes not working together, trouble switching focus, tracking.

3. Neuronet therapy. http://www.neuroacoustics.com This is not widely available but for us it
has been wonderful. We found out last fall our son also had sensory integration problems (common with CAPD and VPD) which centered on the vestibular system. He also has a subtype of CAPD that deals with auditory integration. We did some sound therapy with NN and basically are rebuilding the sensory motor system with very good results.

Other options are Balametrics (which NN incorporates), sound therapy (there are a number of different types), Interactive Metronome, and Sensory integration therapy.

4. Phono-graphix intensive. She needs to learn to read in a very structured sequential way. For us, PG has taught him to read but hasn’t alone solved his reading problems. You can buy
Reading Reflex, the parent version, at a book store.

5. PACE-this is a cognitive development program. We are doing this now and it builds nicely on the other work we have done. It is expensive (about 2,000). Another, much cheaper option, is Audioblox.

I just spoke last week to my son’s resource teacher. He is being moved out of resource room math to a regular third grade class next year. We have done nothing at home for math directly and he has done no homework this semester (long story). But he made more progress than any other time because of the other work we have done. He does not have a true math handicap but was in resource room because of the ways his other problems impacted his math.

Beth

Every night before she goes to bed let her know that she is loved, that she is special, and that she can do what ever she sets her mind to do and that you will help her….And as you lay in bed at night, let yourself know that for today, you have done all that is in your power to help her and let it be okay….

PS –- ;-)

Another thing we tell our son is that we KNOW that he can learn,
in his own way and pace, and that we have absolutely no fears about
his future. Everything is going to be okay.

This is a great page about dyslexics who have gone on to be just fine.
http://www.bda-dyslexia.org.uk/d07xtra/x07fame.htm

K

We just lived through two years of dealing with LD. The pain & stress etc was devistating. However it all worked out. Our son just finished 3rd grade and is doing well after extensive interventions. My advise is to focus on the programs that deal with the direct auditory need and also those that improve cognitive processing. We did the following interventions and my son just tested a strong average in all areas of TOPS, CELF, Kaufman and COS. That was hugh improvement from where we started. The stuff works and is worth the investment. Tutors, IEP etc will not fix it without these types of remediations in place.

Fast For Word - Auditory
Vision Therapy - Convergence issues and vision
Lindamood Bell - phonics based reading/decoding
Interactive Metronome - attention, focus
PACE - Cognitive processing and speed
PREP - J P Das - cognitive development
and successive processing

Glad to hear of your success!! We’re about a year into interventions of the same sort.

Am not familiar with
PREP - J P Das - cognitive development
and successive processing

We are doing PACE right now. Is this something you did before or after PACE?

Beth

Hi,
It is the schools responsibility to provide a free appropriate education for your daughter and if they dont have the facilities for her they must provide help for her else where. See if the school or the school district is willing to provide a tutor for your daughter. Go to the head of the special education coordinator of the school and start asking a lot of questions. It is also the school districts responsibility to test every child in the district for disabilities and to place them in the appropriate programs. Your daughter might need special education. The Individual education plan is the key to making sure she gets the services and attention she needs. If she is already in special education classes request an Iep meeting to go over the services and help she needs to succeed in school. Make sure that all her special educational needs and services for her are listed on the IEP. If they arent or if you dont agree with what is on the IEP dont sign it. You are entitled to a appeal if you dont agree with the IEP and you are also entitled to see her school records and to have the IEP ammended as needed under proceedural safeguards. Make sure you keep all communications with the person(s) involved. Keep a record of who you spoke to about your daughter the date and time of the communication with this person, what was said and agreed upon , keep copies of all letters you wrote to the school official and make sure they have the date on them.
Also read up on her learning disability as much as you can . The more you know about it the better you can explain your daughters special educational needs and bea good advocate for her until she is old enough to speak for herself.
Have heart I have a learning disability too and the schools I attended told my parents that I had very low reading comprehension while at the same time I was reading Shakespeare. I was provided with books from a very young age and it took time for me to come into my own but I did. Be patient. Time can be your daughters best friend and strongest allie as long as her strengths are nutured while her weaknesses are being compensated forandhelped. Enrich your daughters environment with plenty of opportunities for developing her intellect and artistic abilities. Michealangelo and Leonardo Di Vinci both had learning disabilities along with Rodin and these were outstanding artists whose work is still loved and admired today.:)

There are some interesting computer software activities and stories, such as Bailey’s Book House and Millie’s Math House, both published by EDMARK that you may find to be useful for your child. You can order these programs from many educational catalogs, or some websites that may help you locate these programs is www.taalliance.org or www.fape.org. These are websites for the Technical Assistance for Parent Centers-The Alliance. These computer programs have been beneficial for former students of mine in both reading and math. The programs allow for interactions and they will “talk” to your child through synthesized speech. I hope you and your child find this information useful.

My son has just completed FFW. Our next step is to see the audiologist so she can assess him again to determine if improvements have been made.

My question: Is there any way, we as parents, can get access to assessments tests like CLEF, Raven, Kaufman, etc…? From what I know only psychologist have the authority to administer these test. Is this true?

I got Woodcock-Johnson as part of my PACE package. I think the package cost is about $300 retail. I would guess there is a way to buy it off the net without having to provide a lot of credentials, but I’m not sure. It’s pretty easy to administer after reading the manual.

A lot of homeschoolers are required to test annually using standardized, normed tests. This probably isn’t what you are looking for, but it’s easy to get a copy of the Iowa test, for example, to administer at home — and a number of others. There are homeschooling companies that “lend” tests to homeschooling families for a fee. You administer the test, then return the test packet for grading. These are tests of academic performance in all areas, however, and not really diagnostic tools for reading.

You might try doing a net search for the tests you are interested in. (I usually use http://www.metacrawler.com) When I did this some time ago, I came up with quite a few websites that sell testing materials. They were very expensive, however, and many required credential of some sort. I can look up some of the companies that rent tests to homeschoolers, if you’re interested.

Mary

Thank Mary, The test I’m looking for are the ones that were given to my son during his psych-ed assessment (or academic assessment), that determined he had an auditory processing problem and visual spacial issues.