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    #137497 09/08/12 12:50 PM
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    My DS8 has Expressive and Receptive language processing disorder in addition to ADHD combined type. He tests in the 0.5th percentile for receptive language and the 12th percentile for expressive.

    This is where it gets interesting. He's in French Immersion at school (against the advice of the school team... this is my decision). What's interesting is that he's actually learning the second language, but the specific issues he is having occur in both languages.

    His grade one teacher (brilliant lady, I miss her) made a comment - this was before his diagnoses - "he might just have a problem with language in general." BINGO.

    For example, he still confuses gender specific pronouns, again in both languages. He refers to his male friends as "she" sometimes, and to his sister and her friends as "he." Not always, but by eight all of that should be gone.

    He also can't remember the order of the days of the week and the months of the year, in either language. He's eight! He understands the concept of "before" and "after" but he can't remember the sequence the days and months are in. Not true with numbers or letters individually (he gets quite insulted when you ask about those).

    He still struggles with word pronunciation (both languages again, although somewhat less so in French because a) they do phonics drills and b) the vocab is not as advanced). For example the other day he was trying to say the word "management" and he kept saying "ma-je-ment." His sister (9) was trying to correct him and they were both getting so frustrated. I finally spelled it for him and had him read it and then he said it fine, but the minute I took the paper away and he lost his visual reference, he reverted to saying "ma-je-ment." I have a list of words he can't pronounce that is much longer than it should be for someone his age. Btw, CAPD has been ruled out.

    He has a lot of trouble articulating what's on his mind. This I think is made worse by the fact that he's clever and his imagination is so vivid, and the gap between what he's thinking and seeing in his head Vs. what he can articulate verbally is so wide that he just gives up: "Oh, never mind! It's too hard to explain."

    Anyway, I'm just wondering if there is anyone else whose child has similar issues and what you've done that's been successful. Originally I thought that removing him from French could be my last resort, "at least we can do that" type of strategy, but now I'm seeing that specific processing issues are persisting and I don't think an English only environment will make a difference. Fyi he's also had speech therapy through the school.

    Any thoughts? Thanks in advance for your help smile




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    What sort of testing has been done? Any actual diagnosis?
    Seems like a situation where a full eval might be in order, outside the school if they have nothing else to offer.

    At 8, this sounds rather unusual, to me anyway.

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    He's had a full psycho-ed assessment, done independently, with an licensed psychologist. She spent about 6 1/2 hours with him, and wrote a 16(17? forget, have to check) page report. His official diagnoses are the ADHD and the language processing disorder (expressive and receptive).

    She admitted he was hard to assess, and told us she could get only :45 per 2 hour session of compliance from him, because he was restless and inattentive. She advised us to medicate his ADHD and retest in two years.

    (It's kind of a long, long story but no one has been able to figure him out).

    Our pediatrician was very impressed with the psychologist's report, saying she "was very thorough" ...but then saying she didn't think medication would help because she's certain he doesn't have ADHD (she said she'd give us a prescription if we wanted but she doesn't know where to start). This is a very experienced pediatrician who sees lots of ADHD kids, and insists that our DS is not one of them.

    Meanwhile she didn't really question the language processing disorder, and neither to I.

    DS is very odd. Certain things he learns at the speed of light (math, English reading, to name a couple). English reading?? Yup, it's really strong... but in other areas (like the gender specific pronouns and the order of the days and months) he's totally stuck. It's like there are holes in his brain! I try repetition with him but that's a disaster and extremely stressful (none of us, DS8, DD9 & myself) can handle repetition.

    Sometimes I think we need to see another psychologist (the one we used was well versed in giftedness, but not 2e), but then I think no, the language processing makes sense and he's just clever enough to compensate part of the time. The question is, how do I help him fill these "holes" that he has?

    Oh... pffft. He just walked past me with his shorts on backwards. I said "your shorts are on backwards" and he looked at his shirt. sigh. And on it goes.

    (Oh, and he's had FIVE normal hearing tests... 2 done at the local health unit, one done by an ENT surgeon's audiologist, and 2 done at our local hospital by audiologists). His ears are fine... he just has parts of his brain that are stuck, and other parts that scramble language.

    Last edited by CCN; 09/08/12 02:27 PM.
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    In a hurry so can't reply at the moment, but fwiw our ds12 has alanguage disorder. In his case, his receptive language is ok but expressive is the challenge. I'll come back later and let you know what we've done. FWIW, the "holes in parts of the brain" sounds like a great way to describe what our ds experiences!

    polarbear

    ps - has your ds had any kind of speech therapy / worked with a speech language pathologist?

    Last edited by polarbear; 09/08/12 02:35 PM.
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    Originally Posted by polarbear
    In a hurry so can't reply at the moment, but fwiw our ds12 has alanguage disorder. In his case, his receptive language is ok but expressive is the challenge. I'll come back later and let you know what we've done. FWIW, the "holes in parts of the brain" sounds like a great way to describe what our ds experiences!

    polarbear

    ps - has your ds had any kind of speech therapy / worked with a speech language pathologist?

    Oh, thank you smile He's had a little bit of speech therapy at school - one session per week - with a speech language pathologist. I'm hoping he qualifies again this year - I'm still waiting to find out.


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    I'm not a lot of help, but I know with my ds7 we help his verbal language skills by pairing them as often as we can with visual language. (In his case, he mostly learned to speak after he learned to read. We subtitle everything he watches, write out as many instructions as we can, etc.)

    Does he still confuse before and after if you give him a written definition, etc?


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    Originally Posted by mgl
    I'm not a lot of help, but I know with my ds7 we help his verbal language skills by pairing them as often as we can with visual language. (In his case, he mostly learned to speak after he learned to read. We subtitle everything he watches, write out as many instructions as we can, etc.)

    Does he still confuse before and after if you give him a written definition, etc?

    No... he's fine if he sees it in writing. His reading is better than his speech (and he has strabismus, too... poor kid!) So if I show him something in writing, he totally gets it. However the minute I take away the writing... he's back to square one.

    Another example comes to mind... he asked me what "HP" stands for. I said "Hewlett Packard" and what I got back from him was bizarre. "Hewa Poh-dar? Hee-da Powa?" etc etc. I finally wrote it down for him and he said "Oh!! Hewlett Packard!" It sounds like classic CAPD, but he sailed through those tests.

    I asked the audiologist about his receptive language score and she questioned it, saying he had enough language development to pass the closure portion of the CAPD test (where they muffle the beginning and endings of words so they have to fill in the words using context).

    In other words, he pulled the muffled words out of his head, but now as I type this... I wonder if he had those words to access from his reading, rather than receptive language. I wish I'd thought of that to ask the audiologist...

    Last edited by CCN; 09/08/12 03:13 PM.
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    I wonder what's happening when you pull away the visual? I know with my ds7 he's still "seeing" that visual when he talks, because sometimes he does air writing to help himself figure out what he's saying. It's still frustrating for him, of course, because I feel like he's a nonnative English speaker who has to consult the ds7-to-English dictionary in his head every time he speaks a sentence longer than 5 words.

    But I think it's noteworthy that your son loses that connection when he loses the visual. (Edit: If you don't mind me saying. I'm new here, so if I make mistakes on the protocol on these things I apologize. I feel like dh and I sometimes spend all our waking hours trying to decode what our kids are doing. I am stuck on "why does he do that? and what will make it better?" mode.

    Last edited by mgl; 09/08/12 03:23 PM.
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    Originally Posted by mgl
    I wonder what's happening when you pull away the visual? I know with my ds7 he's still "seeing" that visual when he talks, because sometimes he does air writing to help himself figure out what he's saying. It's still frustrating for him, of course, because I feel like he's a nonnative English speaker who has to consult the ds7-to-English dictionary in his head every time he speaks a sentence longer than 5 words.

    But I think it's noteworthy that your son loses that connection when he loses the visual.

    Yes... me too. I wonder if it's a working memory thing, because of the ADHD (I go back and forth with that... some days I think he definitely has it, and others, not so much).

    But consider this... DS does mental math. He hates showing his work (I think his fine motor issues make it hard) and does things in his head. He recently got 8/16 on a math test - he got all 8 answers correct but he lost the second mark for each one because... no work. All in his head.

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    Originally Posted by mgl
    (Edit: If you don't mind me saying.

    Not at all smile Any ideas we can bounce back and forth can only help smile

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