Looking for parents of child with speech/language problems

I’ve been on this board on and off for 8 years now, since my dd was 5. Nothing ‘irks’ me more than when I hear that learning disabled kids needed to learn to ‘live with it’ - compensate and accomodate for her disabilies.

If you work hard at it, I firmly believe you can overcome. I worked VERY hard with my dd with alot of various programs between K and 3rd grade(some more effective than others). I don’t think she has grown out of her CAPD, and she still has minor issues, but she is not handicapped anymore. Matter of fact, most people would not even know she had any of the problems she had 8 yrs ago, including my dd!

You are doing the right things. She will improve. Don’t give up! I can’t tell you not to worry because that is not in a mothers nature. You need to worry to keep your drive and motivation. But know that the hard work will show improvement.

Thank you for your kind words.

I know she’s going to be fine. I just feel like people are feeling sorry for her, as if she has some devastating disability. I see how far she has come because I am her mother and have been by her side for her entire life. Other people see her as compared to other kids her own age. They only see a snapshot of what is reality right not. I see the potential based on her history. If you don’t know the history you don’t see the potential like I do.

I guess it’s not so much “worry” as a lack of patience. Like “When is this going to be over?” and I shouldn’t worry about that. I am so proud of Michelle and how hard she works. Like you said, I need to have faith that she will overcome this obstacle.

The other thing is that when I look up information on the internet about speech and language problems or language disorder, there seems to be a lack of information. Most articles are very vague saying “They really don’t know what causes this disorder” and I suppose since everyone is affected differently they can’t give a specific recommended treatment or prognosis. All they can really do is describe the problem. the prognosis is something like “some people outgrow their disability while others do not”, but I’m not sure why some do and others do not. Maybe those who do not are very severe to start with or maybe they do not have any extra help like our kids have or maybe it’s just the way it is. Some overcome a language disorder and others do not! and they don’t really know why. Again, it’s all very vague. Even looking to other parents for hope is hard because you cannot compare your child to another.

Thanks again for sharing. I really appreciate it.
Kathryn

I personally believe the speech/language issues are a symptom or manisfestation from the auditory processing or CAPD.

No one really knows what causes CAPD for certain other than its how your brain is wired/mis-wired. Evidence points to a number of possible causes - genetic ‘wiring’, childhood ear infections, head injury are all the most common. I can’t remember the statistic off the top of my head, but it’s something like 40-60% of kids who have CAPD will grow out of by the time they are 9. But they don’t know why.

My dd’s CAPD caused several major issues that led to her expressive language delays. 1) word retrieval issue - she had (still has) a very severe problem in retrieving names of anything (people, places, things) and it’s like her brain is working faster than she can get the words out. This was very frustrating for her as she has a very hard time in describing or just communicating. The words get mixed up in her head. This has made everything tough for her. Reading (because she could not remember sound/symbol) and history/science because you have to remember so many names and vocabulary.

2) auditory memory and digit span - because her digit span was so low (that of a 3yr old at age 5), she could not take in very much information at one time and process it

3) Visualization of auditory information - this was a tough one to figure out. She was 100% a conceptualizer. If she had visual ques, great, but most people don’t use visual pictures when they speak to her.

By working/improving #2 and #3, her issues with #1 have greatly improved. Issue #3 has been interesting, because we have seen growth in other unexpected areas -like logic/reasoning and she is now in the gifted math program. (At 7 she was below age level on logic/reasoning on the Gibson Cognitive test. In 6th grade, she scored a 150 on the DAS IQ test in the logic and reasoning section!)

Although the schools SCAN said that she does not have any competing noise problems anymore(and they would never give me the test results- so I don’t really believe them), I can still tell she has issues with background noise. She will listen to something and repeat the information back to me completely wrong. Doesn’t happen all the time, but it makes me wonder how much she misses in school.

I think she was lucky in that most of her problems were auditory based vs. visual. Alot of kids have both. Her visual processing is very strong and I think that has helped her compensate some.

Building your dd’s self-esteem is critical. Find her strengths, CELEBRATE her successes, and avoid negative feedback as much as possible.

Thanks again for sharing your story about your daughter. I have been on a cloud this week because listening to her read has been amazing. Her goal for next fall (Oct 07 - beginning 3rd grade) was a reading level 16, which is end of 1st grade. I was a little disappointed when I saw that goal, thinking that’s all they thought she was capable of, but she is reading 16s now and some higher books like some of the Dr. Seuss books. Again, these are all #s and the real important thing is that I see success and growth all the time, but the #s sort of cement my opinion a little bit better. Like I might be a little biased, but #s are not.

Anyway, she is also very low in math, and again, they set her math goal as something extremely simple. They said that she is able to add 1 column of #s without regrouping, so they set her goal to add 2 columns of #s without regrouping. To me, that’s just teaching her to do it again. I got a set of those cuisenaire cubes or base 10 cubes on E-bay and she’s been having a blast with them. We figured out as long as she has some manipulatives she can add and subtract. It takes longer than if she could remember her math facts, but hey, 1 step at a time. She is also adding 3 columns with regrouping. Trading in those 1s for a 10 and totally getting the concepts. I think the mechanics of math will be fine, but the logic and reasoning part will take a lot longer. She tried adding some numbers without cubes yesterday and came up with 15+7=15 and did not see that that was not logical. She has also insisted that 18+0=0. Again, not using logic. Word problems are tricky, but shes memorizing those cue phrases like “How many” or “How many more” to determine if the math is addition or subtraction. Only thing is, you have to use logic and reasoning and not rely on memorization of cues because you cannot possibly predict every word problem they will see. It’s all about learning the language.

Oh, and the school psychologist and speech/language pathologist insist that CAPD is different than APD and that Michelle has some sort of auditory processing disorder, but not CENTRAL auditory processing disorder. I have read on the net that there are different schools of thought and that some people interchance CAPD with APD and others insist they are not interchangeable. Our audiologist report seemed to interchange the 2. So, I’m not sure if they are denying her APD or just saying it’s different or maybe they are trying to tell me that APD is not the problem. It’s hard to get a straight answer out of these people. I might have mentioned that my biggest concern is that they would like to put her in the self contained classroom with more severely disabled children. The K & 1st teacher that she had insists that Michelle should not go there because she does not have those kinds of problems, while the school psychologist (who barely knows my child) has been hinting at it, but not saying it directly.

So, in summary (sorry to be so long winded) I feel that they are setting her goals extremely low and are setting her up to be with the more severely handicapped kids. The 2nd grade teacher we have now gets very serious when we talk about Michelle and never has anything positive to say about her. She also said to me at the beginning of the year (while patting me on the back) “I know it’s hard”. She’s only been teaching for 5 years and has never had a learning disabled child in her classroom. She has also made comments like “The older she gets the less help she will get” as if she is trying to prepare me for some difficult times ahead. Michelle is on an IEP and gets more than enough help.

Oh, and just one more thing, I mentioned before that those who have seen her growth and improvement seem more optimistic than those who are just meeting her now. The speech teacher has seen Michelle since she was 3 1/2 and has a big fat folder on her. She always is amazed at how far Michelle has come and is always smiling at our IEP meetings. The newer people seem to be filled with doom and gloom.

To hear from you that your daughter has improved so much through hard work gives me hope. Oh, Michelle is very visual too. I often use visual cues when talking to her myself. Trying to tell her that something is in the drawer and she looks confused, I use my hands and act like I am opening a drawer, and then she knows exactly what I am talking about. Also, she is doing so well with her spelling because she is visualizing those words. It’s also why she blew us away being able to read almost all the Dolch sight words before her last evaluation. Those high frequency sight words have been easy.

Thanks again for your post. I appreciate it.
Kathryn

My dd’s K teacher told me that she had never had a student like my daughter (and not from a positive perspective). Go prove them wrong!

For Logic and Reasoning, my dd loved a computer game called ‘The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis’ by Broderbund.

Have you thought of getting an auditory trainer put into your dd’s IEP? It sounds like she is really having a hard time with discrimination when there is background noise (or competing noise). My dd has a problem with that as well. She could only understand 53% of what was being said if there was any kind of background noise present. (80% is normal and she could hear 100% in soundproof) I tried getting an auditory trainer for my dd, but our school was not very cooperative.

Hi there,

She doesn’t seem to have as much trouble with background noise as I had originally thought. On the test she scored normal when there was background noise (the doctor called it cafeteria noise). It’s when she was given 2 competing words, she blended them together. Honestly, I know that she does have a little bit of trouble when there is background noise, but only because that is normal. the audiologist said that she herself has to close her office door when she talks on the phone because of the distractions. For my dd, she likes to do her homework in a quiet room. She even told me once that my son (who was in the other room playing with my husband and was being loud) was distracting her. It was distracting me too. I think to some degree it is a distraction for everyone, but for someone who has some kind of an auditory processing problem, it has to be worse. And she has a language problem, so I think she was suffering on that test because she did not understand the directions, which were given orally. I’m not sure if you’re talking about the FM system when you say auditory trainer, or if you mean something different. If the background noise is not as much of a problem then that probably wouldn’t help. I know they wont do any kind of auditory processing therapy with her at school. They have already told me that much. I tried to get them to do Earobics, but they wont because they say it’s a phonics program and they can’t use something other than what the district approves. We have it at home and will use it here. I’m hoping to use it over the summer because right now it’s all we can do to keep up with the regular homework and other activities.

Thanks again for your input.
Kathryn

You are right, an FM system is an auditory trainer and helps improve signal to noise ratio in the classroom. If signal to noise is not an issue, then it might not help much.

I’m going back and looking up alot of the early reseach I had done when we discovered this diagnosis for my dd. I’m having an ‘ah-ha’ moment.

There are 5 skill areas of CAPD: auditory memory, auditory discrimination, auditory figure ground, auditory cohesion and auditory attention. Auditory memory is the ability to recall the sequence of sounds in words or a sequence of numbers. Auditory discrimination is the ability to discriminate the difference between phonemes and the sound symbol relationship. Auditory figure ground is the ability to separate speech from background noise. Auditory cohesion is the ability to organize language to comprehend and make inferences and use of critical thinking skills to comprehend and understand language. Auditory attention is the ability to maintain auditory attention over a period of time.

Unfortunately, the SCAN is really only a screening test, its not a whole CAPD battery(ex. our CAPD test included Competing Sentence Test, Filtered Speech test, Binaural Fusion Test, Rapidly Alternating Speech, Ipsilateral/Contralateral Competing Sentence, Masking Level Differences). To fully put the pieces together, you also need to have an APD evaluation by an SLP(these are receptive and expressive language tests and Auditory Processing tests, such as Peabody, TOLD, CELF, Goldman Fristoe Auditory Discrimination, Auditory Memory test, etc etc - there are tons of different tests.)

I don’t know a whole lot about the 3 tests of the SCAN. But I’m assuming the Competing Sentence/Competing Words would point more to an auditory discrimination problem.

There’s a really good article about Language Acquistion in the Journal of the National Academy for Child Development. It’s written for parents of down syndrome, but very applicable to our kiddos who have poor language skills.

http://www.nacd.org/more_information/journal/article13.html

The article discusses in depth that Language Acquistion skills rely on Auditory Tonal Processing- how well can you hear and process ‘tones’. Auditory Sequential Processing - ability to take in bits or pieces of auditory input and process these in a sequence. Last, Quality Auditory Input.

I’m assuming that your dd has very poor Auditory Tonal Processing (Auditory Discrimination). How is her Auditory Sequential Processing (or Auditory Memory/Digit span?)? How well does she do in Earobics Karloon’s Balloons?

According to NACD, the best therapy for Auditory Tonal Processing is sound therapy. (NACD is huge on this and what drove them to develop The Listening Program). We did the full blown Tomatis Program prior to her getting CAPD testing. Her APD testing(from SLP) prior to doing Tomatis and showed VERY POOR Auditory Discrimination. Interestingly in her CAPD testing (which was 7mo. after doing Tomatis), on the Competing Sentence Test she scored normal. However, the Tomatis did not help her background noise/figure ground issues. From a sequential processing, it did not by itself ‘fix’ this, but it seemed to break down a wall such that cognitive development programs were much easier for her to master(ex. Brain Builder, PACE).

Earobics will touch on some of those 5 CAPD skills I mentioned above, but it doesn’t intensely remediate them. FastForword really does more intense remediation. It’s primary focus is figure-ground/background noise. It does do some auditory tonal/discrimination and auditory memory. For auditory tonal/discrimination it doesn’t hit the frequencies that TLP (or Tomatis) will hit. For auditory memory, I recall that it only goes to like a 5 digit span vs. 7-9.

My ah-ha moment I mentioned above is that I had always wondered if I should have done FastForword after doing Tomatis. I didn’t do it because my dd was able to fly through Earobics (pre-Tomatis - it was very painful) and chose not to spend the $$ on it. I’m thinking now I probably should have tried it to see if the background noise/figure ground would have improved any. Although I do think she grew out of some of this. I don’t think she is handicapped anymore, but probably in the low average.

Thanks for your response. I read the book “When the Brain Can’t Hear” so the 5 skills you mentioned were familiar. One thing I have figured out is that her biggest problem is the auditory memory. Karloon’s Balloons makes her cry. She doesn’t seem to have a problem with discrimination that I can tell, but I cannot remember now why I thought that when I read about it in the book. Everyone we talk to keeps going back to “This is a language problem” and they don’t say outright that she does not have an auditory processing problem, but they seem to dismiss it. They did a lot of testing in kindergarten and when I went back and reread the report, the psychologist said that there were auditory processing weaknesses, but that’s all she said. She’s also the one saying that Michelle does not have CAPD and who insists that APD and CAPD are not one and the same. The audiologist kept asking me about the language disorder as well, so I’m not sure what to think at this point. I feel like there are so many things that we can be doing to help her, but then the school homework itself takes up so much time that we do not have the time or energy or patience to do much else beyond that because we have a few other after school activities. Her after school activities are tap dance and choir. Both musical, which she loves. She has always been very musical. The funny thing is that when she sings a song, I can tell what she is singing because the melody is right even though I cannot understand the words. I’m not sure if that means anything, but I remember thinking she did not have a deficiency in that skill area when I was reading the book I mentioned above. Like she can remember the sounds or musical notes of a song and she has always had great rythm, bopping her head up and down exactly on beat of a song we were listening to in the car. Another thing she is good at is spelling. She spells words correctly when she has seen them because of the visual strength. If it’s not a word that she has seen much she spells it phonetically, like spelling the word “walk” and “talk” as “wok” and “tok”.

I think the weakness is the auditory memory, which could be causing the language problems. When my 4 1/2 yr old son says something like “I goed to school today” I correct him and say “I went to school today”, he repeats it “I went to school today” and he may or not make the mistake again, but by 2 or 3 times he learns to say it right. With Michelle, I would say it correctly and she could only repeat 2-3 words at a time and now she can repeat more, but not usually a whole sentence. Which is why I think she would fail part 4 of the SCAN because she would have to remember a whole sentence in the presence of a competing sentence. So, if we can manage to get through Earobics that would be a miracle. I have thought about trying brainbuilder. Isn’t that what you said helped your daughter to get through Earobics? Or did you do Tomitas as well before going back to Earobics? Is brainbuilder ok for an 8 year old? Is it boring or is it interesting enough to keep their attention at that age? She will automatically want to throw in the towel if it is too challenging or boring for her. If it is something that can adjust up or down to their level like Earobics does then maybe we can get through it. I hesitate with Tomitas because I’m not sure of the time committment. If I knew for sure it would help then I would totally be on board. Isn’t it something that we can get and do at home? I know the program in the clinic is different, but I wonder if it would still work at home or if it would even be beneficial for Michelle for the auditory memory problems if she does not have a discrimination problem.

Anyway, sorry to ramble here. I so appreciate your story because it inspires me that there is hope for my daughter. Better sign off now. Thanks again,
Kathryn

Kathleen, (sorry, LONG post - Sunday morning, drinking my coffee- :-)

Here is a short explanation on the SCAN w/Competing Words/Competing sentences:

http://www.capdtest.com/scan_c.cfm

It states:

Subtest 3 Competing Words

Purpose
The Competing Words subtest enables the examiner to assess the child’s ability to understand competing speech signals (sometimes called binaural separation). The Competing Words subtest is a dichotic task that is used to assess function of neurologic pathways of the auditory system. Poor overall performance may indicate a developmental delay in maturation or underlying neurological disorganization or damage to auditory pathways. The Competing Words subtest also enables you to assess ear advantage. Left-ear advantages for all test conditions indicate the possibility of damage to the auditory reception areas of the left hemisphere, or failure to develop left hemisphere dominance for language. Abnormalities shown by dichotic words test results are related to a wide range of specific disabilities, including central auditory processing disorder (CAPD), language disabilities, learning disabilities, and reading disorders.

You state:

‘With Michelle, I would say it correctly and she could only repeat 2-3 words at a time and now she can repeat more, but not usually a whole sentence.’

and you’ve indicated in earlier post that Michelle understands you verbally if you use visual cues.

To me, this indicates that she is having GREAT difficulty in processing auditory input (or receptive language). Aside from the cause of this, I would worry about how she is even able to function in a classroom if the teacher is not using visual ques? School is very much an auditory means of education. What kind of accomodations do you have in her IEP for this? It would be like us going to class with the teacher lecturing in very broken English trying to understand what the heck she is talking about based on visual clues in her lecturing.

If you go back to the NACD website I had posted earlier re: Language Acquisition, there are several other articles on left/right brain dominance. Language is in your left brain and is suppose to be your dominant hemisphere. The right brain is creativity- art, music, balance, coordination, visual etc. Michelle is probably compensating and has developed a strong right brain where you are seeing her musical and visual capabilities. (this is what my dd has developed too)

One’s Central Auditory Nervous System (CANS) and many experts pinpoint this to our vestibular system, are very key in brain development. Your brain develops in a ‘cross-pattern’. The NACD believes that one must be completely right dominant (hand, eye, ears, foot) to develop proper cross lateralization such that your left hemisphere becomes your dominant hemisphere. Alfred Tomatis stressed/focused on the right ear being dominant to develop language. There are different philosophies on dominance - some programs will attempt to change dominance and others try to integrate left/right brain to just function better together.(Tomatis will work your right ear so it becomes stronger more dominant). My dd is right hand and foot, mixed/neutral on ear and left eyed. I personally feel the eye is important because I strongly believe this is why my dd has a more difficult time decoding words left to right (she wants to decode right to left), but it also is the reason she has such a high visual-spatial ability.

Re: Auditory Memory. Unfortunately, there are alot of different aspects of Auditory Memory - digit span,and working memory are the ones most focused on in various programs. Brainbuilder only works on digit span. But digit span is critically important (how much info. can you take in at one time and process). Brainbuilder is VERY boring. It does work on a level basis. You set a baseline (my dd’s baseline was a 3) and then you just practice expanding the # of numbers you can remember, forward, backword, visually and auditorily. We did Brainbuilder when my dd had just turned 6 (so yes, you can easily do with 8yr old) they just need to know their #s. My dd was able to get to a level 5 (which I think Karloon’s Balloons maxes at) in about a 3 week period. But then we plateaued for several months each at level 5, then 6 then 7(7 is normal, but 9 is recommended- we never made it to 9). We did Brainbuilder fairly regularly for 9mo. In looking back, I have no idea how we were ever able to do BB for 9mo.!! I had to be very creative with incentives/rewards to keep dd motivated and TLP boosters helped her alot.

Once you develop the ‘slots’ you need to ‘work’ them. Linguisystems (you can google them) has some manuals you can order with exercises you can do for working memory. Or you can make up your own. Do x step directions or stories. ex. touch your head, jump on one leg, bring me a bottle of ketchup, and give your mom a hug. If you do this today, how many steps can she do? Keep adding more directions until she can master. Another good activity is to try to get her hooked on books on tape. Get headphones w/ walkman and some kind of story she may be intereted in. Have her listen ALL the time. Work her auditory input.

If she has great difficulty and frustration with above, I would suspect that she has something more than just auditory memory issues. Worst case, you may be dealing with ‘damage to the receptive areas of the brain’ as explained by the SCAN above. But don’t get freaked on that, because the brain has plasticity, so you CAN develop new neuropathways with the right stimulation. And if Michelle does not have any visual issues or visual/auditory integration issues, you only have this one piece to focus on.

What sound therapy does is exercise the vestibular system and this creates new neurpathways and Tomatis (and TLP) have a focus on the language center of the brain. The full sound therapy program (like Tomatis) is very expensive and does require a big time committment. There are home versions you can do - TLP (The Listening Program) and Sonomas are good ones and they are much less expensive than going to a center. You may consider doing over summer break. Our center has patients that fly in from all over the world. The Center Director (who is an MD Neurologist vs. SLP) trys to accomodate their schedules and has done intensives over shorter periods of time. Most centers will do a listening test to understand which components of your listening are out of whack and develop a program that focuses on improving this listening curve. A ‘responsible’ center will be able to tell you if they can help or not. The brain is very complicated and the tests give them a guideline to follow. But it’s not down to an exact science, such that what works for a general population is going to work for every person. They are still having to guess based on their experience. It’s no doubt a risk. If your child had cancer and there was no proven drug or option availalbe, but you were given an option to try a new unproven drug that had shown improvement in some people with similar profile - would you try the drug or not?

Before you decide on anything, find a good SLP who has experience with receptive language issues and also have them do a full Auditory Processing Eval, so you know what all you are dealing with.

Yes, I feel like we have a success story. But it was not a cake walk. From K through 3rd grade, we worked VERY hard and spent alot of money. Intensive program this and that, which required exercise of some sort 5x per week. So glad those days are behind us.

Wow, lots to take in. I had to wait for a quiet moment in the house to respond to you. Now I have my cup of coffee and can think.

I like your analogy about us going to a class where the person is hard to understand. What I always say is that if someone were to ask me what time it is, in Portaguese, I would not be able to answer. Not because I cannot tell time, but because I didn’t understand the question. So here is my thinking on the test results. First, let me also tell you what happened when we first got there. Actually, we had been to the audiologist a month prior for the regular hearing test to rule out a hearing problem. We went in the booth. Michelle sat down on a chair and I sat down on another chair in the booth. I was in the booth with her. When we went back for the AP testing, we walked into the booth again, only this time the doctor told me I could have a seat outside the booth and relax because the testing would take a little while. I was a little concerned because Michelle is VERY attached to me and I had told her I would be with her at the doctor’s office. I never thought I would be outside the booth, but then I figured she would be able to see me through the window or something. So, the doctor puts on her headphones and then shuts the door. There was no window where she could see me so I was not sure how this would go over. After about 2 minutes I heard the doctor ask Michelle “What’s wrong, Michelle?” Then she said “You want your mom?” So the doctor came around and opened the door and had me go in with her. By that point she was upset and crying. She struggled with understanding the directions, but we told her (& I helped explain) when you hear a word, you say the word. She kept crying on and off because of the incident that had happened earlier, but when she cries about stuff like that she doesn’t cry loud like sobbing, it’s more like she’s wiping tears trying to be brave. And she had a kleenex that she was using to wipe her tears, but it was getting shredded. But no loud sobbing or anything, just a little crying. Then she’d smile at me to show she was brave. Anyway, this went on for the entire test. Before I knew it she started crying a little harder. The doctor said they were already on part 3. They gave oral instructions for this part of the test. Part 1 and 2 had the same instructions of “Say the word that you hear”. Part 3 was different instructions and I don’t think she understood that the test was changing. Now you will hear 2 words. Say the word you hear in your left ear, etc… She was still following the directions of the first 2 parts. Say the word and it got harder because she did not recognize what that word was or maybe didn’t understand why she should say 1 word when she was hearing 2. So, I guess I am left wondering if she did not follow the right directions, which is why she was blending the 2 words together or if she really could not hear that there were 2 different words at the same time. Like hearing big and dog and saying “bog”. OR, maybe this is truly an AP problem. It’s just hard to know for sure. Either way, we know she has a problem with receptive language and like you said, aside from the cause, how is she to function in an auditory environment like school. My issue with the school is that for her first 2 years she had a teacher that would use different teaching methods for Michelle, understanding her learning style. She used a program called Zoo phonics for everyone, so that was ok. Michelle learned her letter sounds very quickly because of the kinestetic movement involved and because of the association with animals. Like the letter “a” had an alligator curled up inside. Eventually the animals are dropped, but they still associate the sound with the movement and animal name that goes with the letters. So, in 2nd grade we get a new teacher. When I suggested she use the zoophonics program with Michelle, her reaction was “Well, they need to stop using that at this age”. When I mentioned a math program they had been using with her she said it can be a crutch. I don’t think the teacher fully understood that Michelle had the ability to learn this stuff if she could be creative and add some visuals to her teaching. Later with math I asked if Michelle was using cubes (we use them at home and I know every classroom is required to have manipulatives) she said “All the kids know they can use cubes if they want. They are available.” These kinds of things bugged me. When we had our IEP meeting in October I asked about the math program and said at the meeting that the teacher had told me that it was a crutch. The resource and psychologist said “NO, it’s not a crutch. She can use it.” So, I think it took a while, but the teacher is now up to speed. We had a conference the other day and the teacher had some creative ideas for various things, so I left feeling optimistic. She’s a fairly new teacher, only teaching for 5 years, but she’s learning through experience now, which will hopefully benefit someone else in the future. As to her visual abilities, it is amazing. I decided that she is ready to start memorizing her math facts because she now has the concepts down. She didn’t know for a long time to take cubes away when it was a subtraction problem and to add cubes to the pile when it was addition. Now she gets it. She has even demonstrated to me that she understands regrouping, which is what the rest of the class is learning. When we did a subtraction problem and did not have enough ones I said “Oh no, what are you going to do now?” She said “I know, we can trade in a 10 for some 1s!” and she turned in her 10 and took out 10 ones. PHEW! So, I started working with her on memorizing math facts and we did it all visually and she learned all her doubles within a few days. I made some flash cards on regular paper on the computer and then we decorated them with colorful designs. Because I knew that for her, looking at 7+7=14 and coloring it and putting hearts all over it like she did, she would take a picture of it in her mind. Then I actually was able to test her orally and just say “Michelle, 7+7” and she wold say “14”. I know for her, using visuals is a great way to learn, but she does not need the visual after she learns it. Like she can recall it without a visual in front of her. Now we’ll just learn the rest one at a time!

So, we talked at her conference about reading. Again, the language problem comes into play. She is doing much better with decoding. Now that she has hit a certain level, they are more concerned with comprehension. She struggles if she does not know a word because she does not think about what word might fit. So, we’re going to do some activities with fill in the blanks. The word problem she was reading on Thursday was something like “Maizie made 3 cakes. She put 7 candles on each cake.” She could not read the word “candles”. So, I covered it up and she read the sentence again saying the word “blank” where candles was and she then blurted out “candles” because it made sense. So, this is what we will work on for a little while.

Ok, now I’m rambling. I know a few people who have studied music and are very involved with music. They are the choir directors at our church. I have sent them some links on TLP and have asked their opinion. I am just curious to see what they say, but I think we will do TLP over the summer. I’m not putting Michelle in summer school because I don’t think she would fully benefit. The classes are very large and are at a different school where she is unfamiliar. Also I think I can do more with her at home. So, we’ll start with TLP. Do you think we should complete that before starting something like brainbuilder? I would go right into earobics, but last time we tried it she struggled so much with Karloon that I hesitate because of that one game. I guess we could give it a try and see how she does. We do a lot of activities together over the summer so our summer will be busy, but we can find the time for TLP and some other things. I am putting my 5 yr old in the summer program at his preschool (he goes to kindergarten next year, but is still invited at the preschool over the summer) so the house should be quiet for 3 mornings/week.

Oh, one more thing, about special accomodations, I believe all the teachers are supposed to be teaching using visual and auditory methods for everything they teach. I’m not sure if that is a requirement for elementary schools or for all schools. I am also on the School Site Council at our school and I know that is one thing that the council does. They evaluate the classrooms for things like proper manipulatives. I’m going to ask about that at our next meeting. The principal will tell me who makes sure that they are using both visual and auditory teaching. I know my older daughters teacher well and she teaches a 4th/5th combination class right now and has told me that they are required to use both. Michelle’s special accomodations will include the testing they do in May. She will be able to go to the resource room for testing instead of in the classroom. She will be allowed more time and will have more things read to her and will probably be with the other kids who go to resource with her.

Thanks again and sorry to be so lengthy.

Talk to you later,
Kathryn

Kathryn said:

I’ve been on these boards off and on for about 10 years. I have a 16 year old in 10th grade who came home from a third world country at age 3 with chronic untreated ear infections and kwashiorkor (protein-deficiency malnutrition.) She had CAPD with secondary language disorder, visual processing issues, (convergence spasm with secondary poor visual memory) and attentional and executive control issues. They did their best to give her a diagnosis of MR, but I aborted the test halfway through, because I could see what the numbers would lead to and I didn’t want to hear it.

I can’t say that things are all hunky dory at this point, but she is currently in precalculus and is maintaining a B in it without any assistance. (Just as well. I had no trigonometry at all, and my own calculus course was EXTREMELY weak.) She isn’t having any trouble with word problems any more, either. She is in Honors English 10; mind you I am still heavily correcting all written work because her writing is still very poor, but she is handling the heavy reading load, including the AR reading without my supervision. Initially I wrote her study guides for every book and story she read, but now I don’t write study guides for the AR books any more, although I still do for the more difficult pieces. She is in American History and in Chemistry and is handling both reasonably well, although I do make her review for tests with me, and I still heavily supervise all written work. (I made her drop Spanish III because she got into a thing with the teacher; kid is very good at Spanish, teacher is not; kid started publically correcting teacher’s pronunciation for the amusement of the peanut gallery. Sigh.) She’s going to take Spanish 101a at the local university this summer and the second semester next summer, and I hope to have her take Spanish 201a/b during her senior year of high school as dual credit on the grounds that her school does not have an equivalent course. She will take AP Calculus AB, Honors English 11, World History, and AP Physics next year, against, I might add, the strongly worded advice of the school, who has never had any student take two AP courses in 11th grade. Fortunately, the school doesn’t know her history; I buried the academic and medical records a long time ago, and from their point of view she is just an average, normal kid with uptight, typically Asian professional, parents who have unreal expectations for high school coursework. She gets no accomodations at school, but on the other hand they don’t know how much help she’s getting at home.

Her first pass ACT scores were poor (17 composite; 17 in English, a high of 24 in math, and lows of 13 and 12 in science and reading.) However, I do know she developed a migraine during the reading portion of the test, and ended up guessing during that and the science part of the test, which was after the reading. (The average ACT score has a composite of 18; that puts her on the 25th percentile for the U.S.). Testing by Sylvan showed a major vocabulary hole affecting reading comprehension, so she is going through their progra now. (Well, she’s been reading for pleasure for only one year, so that’s not surprising.) She is also doing PACE for visual processing, as that is still something of a hole, and her optometrist thinks that will help. I can’t report on that yet. She’ll take the ACT’s multiple times until she gets a 21 composite with a 28 math and a 21 in English, as she needs those scores for her planned major.

What has worked so far?

For CAPD & language disorder:

Fast Forword 1&2 and SLP based language therapy were both extremely helpful. She did do a summer of lindamood-bell, but they get in their trainees during the summer, and I thought they did a really crummy job. We did some at-home Visualizing and Verbalizing, which was more helpful. Although she did do Earobics, (which helped some) she couldn’t handle Karloon’s balloons until after Fast Forward II, because her ability to distinguish sounds in words was lower than the start point in Earobics. We didn’t do either TLP or Tomatis, because she didn’t have audiotary hypersensitivity, but if your kiddo has pain with intensive listening - and it sure sounds it from the description - then I’d desensitise her first with TLP before trying to do either Earobics or Fast Forword. It’s not normal to weep through Earobics, but these programs are painful for hyperacusics. She did need an acoustic trainer before she did Fast Forword, but she did Fast Forword very early, so she was wearing headphones for only about a year.

For Visual Processing:

In-clinic vision therapy. This really, really, really helped. If you have double hits in auditory and visual processing, then you are going to get dumb labels like MR.

For Attention:

She did get 6 months of _Vitamin A_, but after she did Interactive Metronome (which I can heartily recommend) we were able to discontinue it. She is not on any meds for that now, although she is taking Inderal for migraine headaches, and I plan to do some biofeedback work to help her with relaxation this summer. Also, I might point out that this kind of workload done one-on-one is going to improve attention.

For Executive Functioning:

Maturation, a variety of wilderness camp experiences (which seem to calm and focus her) and a little life experience has helped us out there, but her executive function is still subpar. About a 12 year old level I’d say. She will attend college from home; I don’t trust her in a dorm. And while she has her learners, she is NOT getting a license until she can stay on top of her homework schedule without my supervision.

For Reading:

After phonemic awareness was established with Fast Forword, a combination of Writing Road to Reading, (at home) with Dolch list memorization, and Read Naturally fluency drills.

For Math:

Combo of Saxon math at school (very good program) and parent-driven Singapore math at home with cuisinaire rods to help explain things, Calculadders, Keys to Math, and Math WrapUps for drillwork.

For Science/History:

Private tutoring by parents.

Addendum:

I can also recommend Brainbuilder for attention; I had forgotten about that one. _Vitamin A_ is Adderall. She did do PACE when she was about nine, with benefit to auditory and visual memory (came up into the normal range), but she does not seem to have made much progress in terms of auditory memory since then, which is why she’s going to do it again at a higher level. Also, the wilderness camps were not therapeutic camps; just things like Outward Bound and Alpengirl. I believe in kids getting a lot of vigorous outdoor exercise in the healthy sleet, on somebody else’s watch during the summer. For one thing, it allows both of us some respite from each other.

For other issues:

I can recommend gymnastics (can’t have fine motor coordination without a gross motor base), karate (also good for focus), and Handwriting Without Tears.