I am new to understanding my son’s, 11 years old, LD. The neuropsychologist wasn’t much help and neither was the school district, so we are trying to figure this out on our own. Two questions -
1. My son plays chess daily, but will go from beating a chess master to forgetting if a certain piece can take a pawn. This kind of forgetting happens in all subjects for him. Is this normal? Do I review the things he forgets?
2. My son is usually cooperative but he gets these outbursts when he is uncontrollable. It is generally when he gets excited. He doesn’t know limits. He yells rather than talks, hugs so tight it hurts. This is difficult with our younger children who often bear the brunt of his hyperactivity. If I ask him to stop it is like he doesn’t understand that he was actually being too rough. Is there anyway to counteract this behavior without telling him to stop or punishing him - doing this has not helped.
Re: forgetting/not knowing limits
In terms of #2, this could be a symptom of sensory integration disorder. Have you had him evaluated by an occupational therapist trained to assess SID? If it’s SID, therapy usually helps a lot, and the home protocols are mostly pretty easy to implement.
Mary
Re: forgetting/not knowing limits
What home protocols did you get for SI. We are doing it now with OT and the only home protocol is Neuronet?
I really don’t know why but inconsistency is one of the hallmark of LD kids. My theory is that it takes more than the average amount of energy for them to do things. We all have bad days but their bad days are worse. I have spoken to several specialists about this with my son and they have concurred with this. Their solution is to reduce the underlying deficits so that life doesn’t take so much energy. I also know from watching my son’s therapy that on bad days he can do the things that are automatic while he can’t do anything that is stretching him. So getting knowledge/skills to be automatic is another part of this scenario.