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Learning Disabilities


Cerina
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I have very mild dyslexia (which I'm sure everyone here has assumed thanks to my rad tpying.

 

My kid has some form of ADHD, but I'm not fully sure that definition is really precise yet. He has a hard time focusing, sometimes he is bouncing off the walls. When he was younger he had speech issues, which corrected itself as he got bigger.

 

I'd ask your doctor. Any specialist we've ever taken him to we asked his pediatrician for a reference. There's so many outside educational institutions like Kumon, Sylvan, tutors, etc that there should be somebody you can go to.

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We home school, but I'm looking at his test scores from last year and I don't see how the school didn't see it as a giant red flag then. I'm sure it has to do with his age.

 

I need to schedule a pediatrician appointment after the new year anyway, so I guess I'll bring it up then.


my rad tpying.

 

You did that on purpose.

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Does anybody have any? Or have a kid with an LD?

 

Where do I go to have my son tested for this since we don't have a school counselor to refer him to?

Look at your district home school and contact their SPED coordinator. Laws vary state to state. In some states, even if a student is home schooled, the district/ home school is legally obligated to provide direct, indirect, or consultative services to students that are home schooled in their boundaries. Some states see home schooling as a private school and are not legally obligated to offer their services.

 

You do not have to take your kid to a doctor. A doctor can write a recommendation that a child be placed on an IEP and you can have your child tested by a psychologist. However, in order to qualify for IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) services through your district, they will likely want to do their own testing. Even then, it is a team decision as to whether or not to qualify your child.

 

If it is just a learning disability the following tests would likely be done: WISC (IQ) and Woodcock Johnson (current academic ability). Additionally, they would probably want to have observational reports completed, work samples, etc. If you want to PM me specifics I can better help you.

 

Edit: I just looked up Texas home schooling laws. Texas views home schooling as a private school so you are on your own unless you enroll your child in a public school. If you give me your specifics I can advise you on your next steps.

 

I would look at ldonline.com for a good place to start.

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What Ender said. I would still try and call the district. They maybe able to point you in some direction as you still pay school taxes when you pay your property tax. Failing that your pediatrician will be able to point you in some direction. My sister had hand eye coordination issues as well as being slightly behind but a lot of her issues were from being in the hospital frequently.

 

Texas actually has a little known law that school districts are required to test for dyslexia and help.

 

I think you are in Region 4 so you can also check with your Region 4 to see what services they offer to you or someone who maybe able to help you. However, they really just support school districts and charter schools so you may get some home school snobbery.

 

http://www.esc4.net/default.aspx?name=dyslexia.home

 

That link has a hotline number for dyslexia.

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You're the 2nd person this week to suggest the WISC. I didn't realize it can also be used to identify LDs. Earlier this year the school district have him the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability and CogAT nonverbal, verbal, and quantitative assessments. But they never gave me the full results, just the raw scores and index. There's a significant difference in his nonverbal and verbal scores.

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Reece, you took some of these tests when you were in school. A lot of them are done in first or second grade. The brain is still developing so the difference in verbal and non-verbal could just be either the way his test was worded or set for measurement for either verbal or non-verbal or just part of Noah's brain still getting the other one down. The tests are set for testing a larger pool of children on a kind of statewide mean so its comparing to riff raff, er, kids throughout your school district and area.

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You're the 2nd person this week to suggest the WISC. I didn't realize it can also be used to identify LDs. Earlier this year the school district have him the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability and CogAT nonverbal, verbal, and quantitative assessments. But they never gave me the full results, just the raw scores and index. There's a significant difference in his nonverbal and verbal scores.

Yes, what you look for in the WISC are the raw scores of each subtest. Most people will have fairly consistent scores in each subtest. There will be some variation, but it is unlikely that it will be +/- 10 points or so from the mean score. A sign of a learning disability might have an overall iq of 100, but has a subtest score of 65. A common idea is that students with learning differences are dumb. This isn't true at all. I have had a kid that had an overall iq of 130 but a working memory in the 2nd %tile (his mother was a drug addict and he was born with a cocaine addiction). Students with overall IQ's below 70 have a cognitive disability, which is quite different than a learning disability.

 

The tests you mentioned do not test for IQ. Furthermore, the determination of a learning disability is not just one test. It is a determination that is done through a comprehensive review of many points of data.

 

One final thought, even though someone may have a learning disability, that does not mean they qualify for SPED or IDEA. Students must demonstrate a significant gap between overall cognitive functioning and school performance. Once a student learns skills and strategies to cope with the learning disability, academic performance will go up and they are usually tested out of SPED. Just because a student has a learning disability does not mean they will qualify for SPED.

 

I want to give you mega props for saying a student with an LD rather than an LD student. ALWAYS use student first language.

I have no additional advice, but I have to point out my favorite test from Ender's post. The thing is called wood.**** johnson. Is anyone not laughing? We call it dick dick dick at work.

I saw a team of teachers in special education that was doing a run for the Special Olympics. The team name was the Woodcock-Johnsons.
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Reece, you took some of these tests when you were in school. A lot of them are done in first or second grade. The brain is still developing so the difference in verbal and non-verbal could just be either the way his test was worded or set for measurement for either verbal or non-verbal or just part of Noah's brain still getting the other one down. The tests are set for testing a larger pool of children on a kind of statewide mean so its comparing to riff raff, er, kids throughout your school district and area.

As long as the test has been normed for the age of the student it should be reliable. The tests mentioned are normed well outside her area. With that said, yes, non-verbal is difficult to assess at a younger age and will likely have a lower confidence level than older students. This is why it is currently difficult to diagnose mild autism at a younger age because it could just be a common developmental delay.

 

 

 

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He scored a 137 on the CogAT nonverbal and a 140 on the Naglieri Nonverbal, but a 98 on the CogAT verbal and 115 on the CogAT quantitative. I should have asked his school counselor about it last year when we had a meeting with her, but I actually was more interested in what she was telling me about their gifted program. Yes, he's gifted. He's never had an IQ test, but I'm pretty sure he's not profoundly or even highly gifted, but gifted nonetheless. So, because of that, any LD he might have is more than likely going to be hard to see for someone who isn't specially trained, highly aware, or with him constantly. I know 2e kids fall through the cracks often.

 

Let me see if I can explain what I've observed. First off, he has a serious aversion to reading and writing. At the end of the school year, he was tested at about an ending second/beginning third grade level. But it's a huge ordeal to get him to sit down and read anything. And when he does, it's like he needs to concentrate on each individual word while blocking out all the others. I've even seen him use his hand to cover up the rest of the sentence while reading, but he quickly stopped once he noticed that I was watching this. It's like he doesn't want me to know he has to do this. He is also not a fan of writing anything, and the technicality of his writing was the only problems he had in kindergarten. He still writes everything with a combination of upper and lowercase letters, but he knows which words need to be capitalized. He still writes his name "NoaH" capitalizing both the N and H. And he doesn't write with consistency in size or placement all the time. Mostly, I've let a lot of it go because of his age.

 

Lately though, he's been very interested in math. So we've been doing a lot of work with his base 10 blocks and an abacus. We've covered place value to 1,000,000, adding and subtracting 2 and 3 digit numbers, adding up to five 2 digit numbers at once, and even dipped into negative numbers a bit. As long as it's oral with the manipulatives or in his head, he's perfectly fine. He hasn't rote memorized his addition or subtraction facts, but he can calculate them in his head. However, the moment any of this is presented to him on paper, it's like asking the cats to do it. He just completely shuts down. Even when I rewind a bit and present the more basic stuff, his eyes glaze over and he forgets how to say anything other than "I don't know." And I can see the confusion and hurt in him. He comes very close to tears even. It's like he knows that he knows how to do this stuff, but his brain just won't process what he's seeing on the page. At that point, I've lost him and he won't do anything else for the rest of the day.

 

He also says numbers wrong. For example, he was trying to figure out what half of 102 was the other day. I don't remember why, but it wasn't a part of the lesson, just a part of the day. Every single time he would look at the number, 102, and say it he would say "two hundred". Every time. But when we stopped him to ask what number was in the hundreds place, he knew it was 1, and when he pulled out the base 10 blocks, he only grabbed one of the hundreds. He also told us that he knew the answer was "probably going to be about fifty since that's half of 100", but still verbally he would say "two hundred". He knew what the value really was and was working with the correct value, just saying it wrong.

 

I'm not panicking or anything. I'm just now really curious if he might have a combination of dyslexia and dysgraphia. Then we can learn some coping skills, and he can perform at his true ability level.

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Does anybody have any? Or have a kid with an LD?

 

Where do I go to have my son tested for this since we don't have a school counselor to refer him to?

Why are you concerned about this?

 

Aren't you claiming he's a kid genius or whatever?

 

Having a learning disability does not disqualify you from a genius level IQ. There are many students that receive both GT and SPED services (in education circles this is called double or twice exceptional). Furthermore, people with the highest and lowest 2% of IQ's are most likely to have a learning disability.

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I know nothing about this except my younger brother was/is pretty badly dyslexic and had a real tough time with written words and letters (and penmanship) in spite of a decent IQ. Hard to read when d, b, and p look identical so calling 102 something like 201 raised a flag for me there.

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Hmmm. The lowest grade I've taught is 4th. I do have students who do have LDs but my school focuses on language arts and writing and the kids have to test into my charter school because we do a lot of writing as that's our schools charter.I do have visual learners though. Once something medical is ruled out (eyes tested and what not) and you've gotten the state to test for dyslexia to rule it out or to see if he has some form of it I think you get a better idea of where to go from there.

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Yeah I would (with no training or real insight at all) it sounds like he could be dyslexic.

 

It also sounds like he is smart enough to know he has a problem, hence the panic when asked to transcribe things rather than verbally or mentally work them out. He may well be embarrassed and not want his mum to know he is finding it difficult, hence not doing it at all.

 

Definitely try to contact a specialist to see what they say, but also be prepared for the fact that you may have to take a step back a bit when they are dealing with the problem. Otherwise he may try to hide it so that you can't see it. We don't want to let people who care about us the most see us at our most vulnerable and given how proactive you are in his education as well as his every day life you might need to let a specialist deal with any possible problem in one to one sessions and let it develop like that.

 

Carrie - this is an obviously sensitive topic about community members child. Choose your words more carefully or don't use them at all

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  • 3 weeks later...

We had a crazy meltdown this week. I set Noah up on Khan Academy to practice math while I work on my government reading. This did NOT go well. I started him on the basic math track. They go through and do an eval to see what they need to work on first. So I figured he would kinda zoom through some of the basic stuff (addition within 5, addition within 10, subtraction within 5, etc.). I was so wrong. He made it through 11 problems in half an hour, and then completely lost it on me. He kept typing in numbers backwards, or doing them backwards. (31+22 = 35, for example) Then it would get worse, because he was upset. He kept insisting that they wrote the problems down wrong. There's a serious disconnect between what he sees written down and what his brain interprets.

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Oh, hugs. I know this is scary and frustrating on top of stuff you're already doing.

 

Texas is required to test for free for dyslexia. They are also supposed to provide you some kind of help through the school district. It does not matter where your kid goes to school. Your area may have a support group too that specializes that can help.

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