Questions about more testing......

Hi,

Have you read “The Out-of-Sync” child? It describes sensory integration dysfunction.

You may want to have a full OT evaluation for your child to rule this in/out.

Kim

She was (age 6) quite young for the standard WISC III and WJII battery for LD testing; you might want to go back to the original evaluator with your specific concerns about attention, coodination and r/l discrimination. Many 6-7 year olds can’t ride a two wheeler well; practice, practice for those types of motor skills.

My son had the left right issue. I do believe that it is related to his SI issues because he has bilateral motor integration issues. It may be a slightly different issue with your daughter. Sensory integration is not one syndrome but has many sub types. This could effect bike riding. My son was a little late in bike riding but it mostly effected him with swimming.

We dealt with this issue through a vision therapist that dealt with his vision and SI issues and he his much better with physical coordination as well as left right issues. It did effect his handwriting but it seems to effect every kid differently. I would look into getting an eval from an OT who is certified in sensory integration.

Don’t just let it go. I did that because my son had some strengths that fed my denial. I wish I got him more intensive help sooner. He is really together now on alot of levels. Academics and sports are just less of a struggle all around. He is happier too, less frustration.

Suzi,
Your daughter’s difficulty differentiating between left and right is also indicative of her diagnosis of dyslexia. Often times children with this disorder have this difficulty. Remember, dyslexia is a neurobiological disorder and the problems that you are observing all relate to that. Sally Shaywitz has done some facinating work in this area. An OT evaluation is worth looking into. In the mean time one strategy that I use with my students is using color dots in their shoes to let them know which is left and which is right. I also will place a small dot, using the same colors as in their shoes, on their paper to let them know which side is which.

Many kids with language/APD and ADD deficits have problems wtih right and left . Isn’t she getting speech and language services? Can you post hermost recent language testing scores so I can give you a good idea of what is going on with her language issues..

I’ve always chalked my daughters right/left issues up to her dyslexia. Along with her inability to tie shoes, ride a bike, motion sickness, etc.

Did find out the bike riding was also a motor problem so an OT evaluation might be very helpful, though in order to “qualify” in public school you have to be pretty low. (BTW, my daughter “qualified” and I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad). :-)

Leah…

My daughter also has motion sickness while riding in the car. Nothing more than it makes her tummy hurt. I have read that all of that can be caused by dyslexia. There is an excellent OT who visits my daughter’s new school. The school is taking a wait a see approach. If they see that she may need an OT evaluation, then they will refer her to the OT who comes to the school. I think the school is very good at making appropriate referrals. They definitely have qualified teachers to spot problems and make recommendations. I guess I should just hang back and bring it up at our first parent/teacher conference.

Suzi

Patti-

These are her most recent tests scores:

Slosson Intelligence Test 112 (above average)
Draw A Person Test 83 (below average)
WASI Full Score 119
WASI Verbal 111
WASI Performance 123

Academic Skills:

Gates Oral Subtests: Caps 25 LC 26 Snds 25 Bl 12
Gilmore Reading w/ comprehension 2.1 (above average)
Gates Oral Spelling 2.0 (above average)
WRAT 1 (average)
Alphabet Sample printing 15 (below average)
Number Sample 13 out 29 (below average)

Perceptual Ability

GFW Auditory Discrimination Test-Quiet 47 (average)
GFW Auditory Discrimination Test-w/ noise 4 (below average)
Lindamood Auditory Concepualization Test 48 (average)
Quick Neurological Screen 25 (average)
Berea Gestalt timed 27 (below average)
Berea Gestalt untimed 23 (below average)
Infromal R/L Dir A (average)

These scores qualified her for articulation therapy as well as oral language therapy:

Language CELF-3

Receptive Language Sub tests:

Sentence Structure 12 75% Above Average
Concepts & Directions 8 25% Average
Word Classes 8 25% Average

Receptive Language Total 96 39% Average

Expressive Language Sub Tests

Word Structure 13 84% Above Average
Formulating Sentences 11 63% Average
Recalling Sentences 16 98% above average

Expressive Language Total 120 91% Above Average

Total Language Score 108 70% Average

Articulation below average
Voice average
Fluency average

I have tons of other testing as well. These are the scores for admission tests for placement. She also went through 6 hours of diagnostic testing about 1 month prior to this placement testing. Let me know if there is anything missing here that you would like to take a look at. I’m sure we have it!

Suzi

I am seeing things which are indicative of ADD, there are little discrepancies in certain areas. She is smart, but she is doing better expressively than receptively, which I have seen in kids with ADD. They are great talkers, as long as it is on stuff they want to talk about, but taking the time to pay attention is difficult. She also did well with oral reading comprehension, and spelling, her LAC was decent too.

However, kids with ADD who are really bright often have messy handwriting as they don’t take the time to do it correctly, they just want to get it over with. She didn’t do so hot with the receptive tests which require a significant amount of attention.

I have a feeling that she has motor issues in planning and sequencing but she is also a YOUNG child which this is normal and developmental…but if she is having problems with articulation this could be from oral motor issues. What type of problems did she have with articulation. Were they more developmental. In other words what words does she mispronounce…

Please let me know what her processing speed is. Also, one other thing I have noticed is that kids with ADD do well sometimes with the novelty of one on one psych testing but if you throw them in a distracting classroom, they lose it… Also APD and ADD are often co-morbid.

Patti

She has the following sound substitutions which negatively affect her intelligibility. This is also after she has been in ST since she was age 3 1/2. At that time, she had 41 errors in her speech. At the end of K, I think it is now down to 20 errors. One thesor of the SLP is related to her APD in that she probably didn’t hear the sounds correctly as a young child and now the errors are just habit . She *can* say them correctly when asked in ST, she just does not follow through or police herself to say them correctly in every day language.

w/r (bwush/bruch)
distorted “er” (fedo/feather)
frequent omission of “r” in blends (fog/frog, fee/three)
w/l in blends or inconsistent omission of “l” in blends (pwane/plane, boo/blue)
inconsistent f,d/th
inconsistent blend reduction (beansock/beanstock)

Visual Processing using the Berea-Gestalt Motor Test: timed 27/untimed 23. Many of her errors were failure in internal detail, a common problem seen in youngsters with dyslexic tendencies. Also, they did make anote that this test is not a norm-referenced test for under age 7. She was about 6y7m when the test was given.

Auditory Processing: Scaled score 11, 66% Stanine 6 Language age 7y2m.

I also have the following test scores: TERA, Reading Readiness, GFW, TAPS-R

So, it does sound like she needs to go ahead and be evaluated for ADD as well. Thanks for taking a look!

Suzi

Jumping in here - You’re the first person who I’ve heard mention that ADDers can do well 1:1 on psych testing - but put them in the classroom. THAT is my daughter exactly. The evaluator said she was NOT ADD. However after 1-1/2 years of LMB and OT, we put her on meds. What a difference! And her handwriting improved as well. She still has the speech/language difficulties, but we’re not doing anything because they were not really low enough and it wasn’t an in depth evaluation.

PattM,

My 7 year old ADD/In is being evaluated by a Neuropsych right now, and the Pysch himself told me that some ADDers do well on a one on one basis but have major problems in the school setting when it is one teacher to so many students. My son is that way too.

I want to know who plagerized my words. I did post as patti because I neglected to log in as pattim but someone did post as pattm and used a portion of another post I did a LONG time ago and changed the ending. Whoever you are…it isn’t funny…

some of the remaining articulation issues are developmental, the where she is simplifying the blends and gliding of r, w, and l. those are the ones that take a while to get. You will note that many of the blends have r and l in them which would pose a problem for her.

What I would do is to do a lot of sound therapy with her in the form of nursery rhymes, the CD I recommended Sounds like fun by Discovery Toys would be good for her but you may need to do it acapella with her at first to help her develop the auditory memory for what she hears.

One other thing…my daughter has dyslexia with CAPD/ADD together. For years we didn’t realize that ADD was a major piece of her problem because we were concentrating on the CAPD with an auditory trainer which hid the ADD until 5th grade. That was when she couldn’t keep it up anymore and she was getting overwhelmed. My daughter had a very fast processing speed of 122 when she was in 1st grade by 5th grade it had dropped to 70 and that was what clued us into the ADD. On meds her processing speed is back up again… She is a talker but receptively she still has problems.

IF I “plagerized” I didn’t mean to - looks like when I answered the post that begins with “Jumping In here”, I accidentally put your name in as the “user” because I was asking you the question. Didn’t copy any old posts or anything, tho.

Is that what you mean?

I used to do this alot on the old BB until I got used to it.

Sorry if I offended you - if I’m the “guilty party”

I think everyone’s a little “touchy” these days because of the BB’s past history.

Hi Leah,

Great Minds Think Alike (GMTA). :lol: When I first read the post, I should have clued into the “Jumping in here” :wink: That is your style now that I think about it.

When I read your post as pattm it was almost deja vu regarding what I had said a while back and what I had gone through with my daughter. However, her speech and language deficits were more impacted by ADD and she didn’t have OT.

Thanks for clearing the air, I am sorry that I came down so hard on you.

:oops:

patti

Oh good, I feel better!

I know I have a “tendency” :oops: to “jump in” and I have confused you a couple of time so I try to always say that now. And, b/c the question was directed to you, I had you on my mind, so I put you down as the author. (Sometimes my LD daugher is standing over me saying, “C’mon, I want MY turn on the computer”, so I’m in a hurry.)

I would LOVE to go to an audiologist and a S&L therapist, but we are spending so much $$ on reading tutoring, that I really can’t afford it and I’m really not sure it would change things much.

We had a “basic” S&L test (she never even gave me a written report). I told her all about her articulation problems, etc., and all she gave me was

Listening comp. 88
oral expression 96
written expression 107

Said she wouldn’t qualify at school for S&L and I am too tired to fight for language only. She compensates pretty good. If she mispronounces something she’ll just say “Well that’s how YOU say it, I say it like _____”
It works for her.

Again, sorry for the confusion. The old bb problems still haunt us, don’t they?

Has she had a lot of ear infections? If she is about 8 or 9 some of her mispronunciations could be developmental as with the blends, clusters etc…When I was a kid I would mispronounce words because of how I heard them incorrectly.

I would misunderstand things I heard, for years I thought the old Beatle Song “Paperback writer” was “Take the back right turn,” But my brain said, “that is what it sounds like but it doesn’t make sense?!”. Finally one day, my son who was a Beatles nut told me, the name of the song and what it was about. I thought…”now, that makes sense” and I can hear and see the words now…

Closed Captioning (CC) is the BEST thing SINCE SLICED BREAD!!! Wouldn’t be caught home, or school without it…My daughter and I hooked our whole family on Closed Captioning, however, my husband turns it off when he is watching by himself, but he is really good about making sure we have our CC!!

She had a her fair share of ear infections, but nothing like my non-LD son!

She’s dyslexic so the close captioning wouldn’t help - she can’t read it fast enough.

She compensates well. I don’t worry .. (too much) :0).

And what the closed captioning does it to actually help her with the reading and sound symbol recognition. We have been doing this for 5 years now and she is doing much better.

Jami starts reading it and then it changes before she can finish the line - it frustrates her. Same with street signs.

I hope GPS is “standard” on cars by the time she’s 16. Otherwise, she’ll never find her way back home

You may want to have more testing done assessing her visual motor integration, and spatial/perceptual testing. Her OT can do this.

Believe it or not, we’ve had SI OT for VPD. It’s GOOD now :roll:

She’s a “slow processer”.

She’s also a puzzle.