Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Gifted with Specific Word Finding Difficulty

Does anyone have any experience of a gifted child with a specific word finding difficulty which is showing up in reading as well as speaking? actual scores in the tests are still very good but the therapist says there is a definite problem.

My EG ds doesn't have a specific word finding difficulty, but he has an expressive language disorder (basically more global than trouble with finding specific words - ie, inability to express thoughts in words in certain circumstances). I don't know if this will help at all, but fwiw, our ds struggled with this tremendously in elementary school. In 5th grade he started private speech therapy with an SLP who was very invested in wanting to see him succeed, and he's been in speech therapy ever since (once per week, with us practicing at home and with a ton of scaffolding from me on writing assignments). DS is 14 now, and has been in SLP therapy since he was 10. This may sound discouraging, but we really didn't see any significant results until almost a full year had passed, and even then, progress was slow - it was mostly learning tips and tricks for how to get his brain jump-started and up through last fall he still found writing assignments extremely stressful and frustrating. Then things kicked in and progress finally really started cascading for him, and he's come a long way in the past year.

The things that I think helped our ds the most were:

1) Working with a good SLP.

2) Playing word-generation type games (fun board games) before he started a homework assignment. This wasn't directly helpful with the actual assignment, but helped (how I don't know!) somehow rev up his brain so that he had less difficulty getting words out.

3) Giving him remediation and regular assignments *at his intellectual level*. The first inclination most therapists and teachers have for a child who obviously has a challenge in an area is to give them lower-than-their-ability intellectual level work to do while remediating. The difference in progress my ds made when given an appropriate intellectual challenge was huge.

4) Repeat repeat repeat repeat... etc... When a gifted child can learn some concepts extremely quickly, it's hard for parents and teachers to realize that with some challenges a ton of repetition is needed, even for a highly gifted child.

5) Making sure that outside of his area of challenge, ds had intellectually stimulating work and that he had self-confidence building activities that he could accomplish and be proud of. It's easy when students are young to get heavily invested in remediating challenges, but it's equally important for the development of their self-esteem to give them opportunities to shine

Re test results - my ds' SLP eval, on the surface, looks a-ok. His combined score was high average or something like that. However, when you look at the subtest scores, his scores were all > 99th percentile except for one area - and that was only around the 61st percentile. That may seem like a good set of scores with no worries - but that 61st was enough to diagnose an expressive language disorder, and there was no question at that point in his life, if you met him, you'd agree, he had a significant issue with expressive language! There was also an important note from the evaluator in his report - the subtest that he scored the 61st percentile on wasn't timed, and the tester noted that it took him an extremely long time to come up with the answers, which she felt was significant.

Is the therapist your dc has seen an SLP? If so, is he/she recommending a therapy program? Have you noticed your dc struggling with word finding?

Best wishes,

polarbear

Did your DC's problems appear to be more language related or was the word finding an isolated deficit? This deficit can be a sign of memory retrieval problem (such as those related to ADHD) or it can be a sign of a language issue. Do you see any other weaknesses that stand out?

Any suggestions for these? DS sometimes seems to have trouble remembering words (although I don't recall this being specifically called out on a recent speech analysis). Revving up his brain in this way could prove helpful.

Outburst or Outburst Jr. sound like they would be helpful.

The game is a category like "things found at a slumber party" and the one person has a list and the other person calls out as many things he can think of in a certain amount of time you get points if your words match what is on the list.

the difference is different categories...adult category might be frat party and kid version would be slumber party. The jr version isn't babyish, just more appropriate.

hmmmm, I might get this for an Easter present so we have it for this summer. Uno was the big hit last summer and I think this might be fun this summer.

What is that game that is an app?....Heads Up? That would be another good one.

I'm not sure if this is what you are referring to but my DH cannot say a word if he pictures the person or object in his head. He will often substitute odd but not totally unrelated words or use sentences without nouns as a work around. It can make a conversation very difficult for the other person. For example he might say "Can you grab that for me? That! Behind you! That... the thing with the papers inside it. You know for your nose..." "Oh you mean the box of tissues?" "Yes! That's what I was trying to say."

When my 2E daughter was first identified and I was reading everything I could get my hands on to try to get a handle on all her LD issues I read a description of a specific type of dyslexia that fit what DH does. It described him perfectly. Unfortunately I can't remember the name (ironic I know...) or which of the dozens of books or articles I found it in. He did this at an early IEP meeting for my daughter and I referenced it appearing that he had that specific type of dyslexia and the very good, very experienced spec Ed teacher nodded her head in agreement.

DD can't remember names unless the person is very important to her (and may even substitute "mommy" and "daddy" when speaking to one of us) but generally is very good about nouns, great at verbs and beyond spectacular at using just the right adjective or adverbs. She was recently started on a new medication for her migraines and we were told a common side effect would be losing the ability to find the right word. Sorry I don't know why.

Hope this rambling may help.

Keinnaf, I am interested to hear more description of how the problem manifests in real life (or is it even noticeable?)

My father exhibited something similar to what Pemberley describes; constantly referring to things as 'that thingy' despite being a brilliant engineer. Kind of drove my verbally-over-the-top mom nuts. Not sure it ever slowed him down, maybe socially, but otherwise I did not notice any inability to communicate and do what he wanted, read huge books, etc.

My ds13, has something else going on, not quite the same but maybe related to categorization of data in the brain.
The psychologist who did a big battery of tests with him called it more of an 'odd wiring' of the brain rather than a definite disability. Ds will often use a word in the weirdest way. But this applies also to physical things; even simple things like sweeping, how to hold the broom (which angle to hold it at, which direction to pull in) seem to be things he needs to have someone show him.
This is despite picking up many abstract concepts quite quickly, almost by osmosis.
All these words/word combinations which most people take, pigeonhole, and never think twice about, he seems to leave open ended, perhaps lightly associated with something but not 'nailed down'.

It is less obvious as he grows, so probably he is 'nailing down' more of these things where he thought there were possible choices he now knows there really aren't as many options. In particular adjective+preposition combos (surprised by, excited about) still seem to trip him up a bit. He might say something like "I was excited to that". (I am the verbally over the top person being driven nuts in this case.)

In some ways, this sounds like DD16. When she was young, maybe until age six, she would mix up opposites - hot and cold were the most notable mix up. She also either doesn't know or can't find some word she should know. I can't recall the word, but a few weeks ago, DD9 knew the word and said it, but DD16 could not find it (or didn't know it).

With the words like hot and cold, I think she always understood the difference, but it didn't come out that way went she said it. She is a very good writer, but her vocabulary is odd. She knows some "big" words and tested at a graduate level lexile in 8th grade. However, she just took the SATs (as a 10th grader) and critical reading was her lowest score (though still 94th percentile). I don't think anyone sees this as a problem because she clearly can compensate well. Someone gave me a name for this a long time ago, but the cost to test and confirm seemed high.

thank you for your replies. It is a relief to 'speak' to other people with children experiencing the same type of problems.

I hadn't actually noticed any sort of speech problem at all. I thought she was dyslexic because she has an eye problem of some sort and I had noticed when she was trying to sound out words she didn't already know she would make some bizarre mistakes. After a dyslexia test came back as normal she managed to explain that she SEES it right and it is right in her head but she can't get the right sounds to come out. So I contacted a speech and language therapist who saw her this week and did some initial tests and said she definitely has some level of word finding problem. Since my daughter said the problem was she couldn't get the right sounds to come out (she said things like I want to say t but when I put it in the word I get th) I started to notice her mixing up brother and sister and whilst I was aware of her umming and ahhing and taking ages to get to the point I don't think I had realise how bad it was.

We are going back to the therapist in just over a week to have a more in depth word finding test (German test I think she said it was called) and start some therapy to teach her strategies for tackling the problem.

She is 6.5 so in her second year of school here (England) and at the moment because she is very bright the work is all very easy to her (that is a different story - not done anything about that really yet because we have only just got proof of how bright she is and I knew something was causing her frustration hence the other testing) so at the moment it doesn't seem to be impacting her and she doesn't yet seem self conscious of it so I am hoping that some therapy might help avoid that arising. The therapist said she thought 6 sessions of concentrated therapy would probably be enough for the moment because she is compensating pretty effectively already but that she may well need more in the future as academic language and requirements change as she gets older. I am now trying to find out as much as I can so that I can help her as well as explain to her school what her unique set of problems(or potential problems) are.

We haven't really seen any other difficulties I don't think. We hadn't even really noticed the language issue at all, it was really more that we were trying to find out the cause of reading peculiarities.