i really could use some help!!

I am sorry to hear of your daughters problems and wish I could help. She might have been misdiagnosed that is the only thing I can think of. Is she on medication of any kind? The OCD ADD and anxiety disorders are very treatable through medication. So is Bipolar. Unfortunately the medications for some disorders are not compatible and can even be dangerous when taken with other medications. You need to get a second or even a third opinion about your daughters condition and from there you can really decide better what she needs. It sounds like there is a lot of confusion going on about her diagnosis. Once the confusion is cleared and you know for sure what her condition really is you can seek help for her until then just support her, be there for her and let her know you are doing everything you can for her and that yoju love and believe in her. If she cant learn past the kidnergarten level she might also be mildly mentally retared too I hate to say. But there may be no real way of knowing until she is properly diagnosed.
Tascha LD

thank you for your imput and advice. She is medicated and has been for some time she takes prozac and tenex. her behavior and controll has greatly improved since she has been in therapy for six years now, and she is stable now for the first time. My hope at this point is to give her more help with her education. They have said that there may be no way to teach her more. She is verbally very articulate and understands verbally most things like math and common knowlege, but you give her paper and a pencil and something gets stuck. she can’t rember what the letters are to spell words. she forgets that 6 is six. but if i said six plus two she says eight. i know it is trapped in her head somewhere and if i could teach her how to get it out she would be unstopable. she is going into fifth grade special ed next year and we retested her. All they really seem to know is it is an overall learning disablity which effects all her subject and recall of information. She also had siezures as a small child and they think it might have caused brain damage. I as her mother of course think she is brilliant but seems to have some big rock in her way that all i want is to move for her. We all know children can be cruel but they seem to make a new sense of the word when they deal with cjildren that are different.

Given her history with seizures, I would think about having her evaluated by a neuropsychologist who has experience with traumatic brain injury. Brain injury can be very complex with after effects that are hard to predict without accurate assesment. A good neuropsych will help to determine what is going on and where her specific weaknesses are and the interrelationship of the medication. They will also work with the school to develop appropriate programming. Programming for TBI is substantially different from programming for an LD or a Learning Impairment in several important ways, and needs to be carefully designed.

Robin

Hi Denise: There is some really good advice from Robin, and I know nothing compared to her so I won’t attempt to add to it.

I just wanted to suggest a method that works for many dyslexics. This is to use clay to model the letter and number symbols. Not sure if it would work for your daughter, but it might be worth a try. I realize the cause of her learning difficulties may be TBI related as mentioned, but modeling the clay really helped my son to “internalize” the symbols. Perhaps it will help your daughter also? Above all, if your gut and mother-knowledge tell you that something CAN be done, follow that intuition! If you can’t go through it…go around, under, over…there WILL be a way.

Clay modeling to improve reading and writing as I describe it comes from the book “The Gift of Dyslexia” by Ron Davis with Eldon Braun. I realize your daughter might not fit the pattern of dyslexia described in the book, but the methods he describes for “symbol mastery” are useful for anyone having trouble with reading and writing. And the “mindset” of focusing on her gifts instead of her weaknesses can only be helpful, though it seems you are doing this well already.

Ron Davis was once diagnosed as “ineducably mentally retarded”, did not learn to speak until age 12 or read(at all) until age 17. In retrospect, he is thought to have been autistic and dyslexic. His IQ as an adult in his 30’s was tested at 160. Many people told HIS mother that HE COULDN’T…but they were wrong!
Best wishes,
Elizabeth

I did have Tabbitha( my duaghter ) evaluated and they said they believed the seizeures to be self induced. Tabbitha’s OCD syptoms even from the age of 1 was so severe that they said she subconciously shut her brain off during stress of any kind ie i moved her crib, different blanket, anything that was differrent and until she was four and a half and went in for therapy with breathing tech and such for stress she had about three a year even with trying very hard to not change anything.Tabbitha also had two complete work ups from the hasbro childrens hospital and they also included neuro test that showed she had a very low iq and limited ability. The hard thing for me is that even at 10 she understands the news on tv. She also recalls lots of tv shows about animals in perfect detail. Tabbitha trys so hard at school it is hard to watch her not succeed for such long periods of time. Most of her success was will be haomschooled but her social skills and anxiety about inteacting with other people was affected so much that they adviced us to put her back at school. I feel most of the time she focuses so much on containing herself will in social situations that she has no energy left to learn. Things that she had down really well last year this year she can’t do. I am trying to decide if i should pull her home again and just fovus on education at this point and smaller amounts of social interaction and see if she improves again. Again thank you for your time and any further advice would be appreciated.

I had not heard of that program before but it sounds very interesting. My husband and i read you e post and agreed to try it over the summer if nothing else she loves to creat and clay is a very soothing activitie for her. Any further advice or information would be greatly appreciated. Again thank you for taking the time to write with your ideas. Rob & dee

I think that you are very perceptive about your daughter- and are quite correct- the stress of maintaining appropriate behavior certainly would take up any resources she has available for learning. Resuming homeschooling would likely help with the academic stuff, but if you are correct, then the OCD- or whatever the combination of issues is- and I think it goes beyond OCD from what you describe- IS an educational issue and IS having an adverse effect on her ability to learn. You say she is ten? How long ago was her last assessment? You should have current- within the last two years at least- information about her functioning- cognitive, receptive and expressive language, achievement, and probably projective testing. My heart goes out to you- she sounds like a very challenging child whom you love very much.

Robin