My son, who is about to start kindergarten, has speech and language delays. He has an IEP and will be receiving speech therapy. His preschool teacher has warned us that he may have to repeat kindergarten because his skills are low. I know he has a difficult time recalling and remembering basic concepts such as letters and numbers, and he has hard time sequencing. How can I find out what kind of disability he has?
Re: disability identification
Do you have health insurance? If so, call your medical insurance company and say you have been advised to get a neuro-psychological evaluation for your son. More and more companies are covering these evals. Sometimes they will say you have to pay for the eval but afterwards, if a diagnosis is made, they will cover it. (Be aware that this is not a sure thing. There is risk involved, and neuro-psych evals tend to run about $2,000.)
Have you gotten a private speech evaluation? If not, ask around to find a good speech pathologist in your area, then call that office to ask about insurance coverage for an evaluation. Often medical insurance will cover a full speech and language evaluation with a properly-worded or coded referral from your GP. Speech clinics deal with insurance companies a lot, so usually they can tell you specifically what you need to make sure your medical insurance will cover the eval. Sometimes insurance will also cover a certain number of private therapy visits.
Also try the same methodology to get a private occupational therapy eval.
You may also want to invest in Audiblox (http://www.audiblox2000.com ). This is a set of progressive daily exercises you can do with your son to work on visual and auditory memory, sequencing, etc.
Nancy
A thorough evaluation may be needed to determine specific LDs. This could include getting testing done by several professionals - Neuropsychologist, Audiologist, Speech/Language Pathologist and OT/PT specialist.