The Truth Hurts

I’ve been overwhelmed by information lately. Information about my son’ s learning issues. I was undecided about sharing our new diagnosis with the world, but this blog is based on truth and helping others so here goes.

Let me preface this by saying that my son and daughter are adopted. We brought them home from Russia 10 years ago when they were 3.5 and 2 years old. They are now 13 and 12. They are a joy to us and we love our family very much. We are thankful that we were lucky enough to find each other.

My son just received a diagnosis of “Fetal Alcohol Effect“. That is a less obvious form of “Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder“. It results in wide ranging damage to the brain’s “executive functioning”. Children with this disorder have normal intelligence but face struggles with many things. Common problems are:

Higher mathematics
Abstract concepts
Working memory
Organization
Visual-Auditory learning
Time and money concepts
ADD/ ADHD

We always suspected this might be an issue but we were unaware of the wide-ranging nature of my son’s problems. We are spending time adjusting his curriculum and modifying the way we interact with him. This is a very helpful diagnosis because along with it came suggestions for strategies to make life easier for all of us. At the same time it has been a lot to take in and it’s certainly not something we were happy to hear. It takes time to digest this knowledge and settle our emotions.

We know now that our daughter has also been affected and are making arrangements to have her tested. She is having problems with her working memory and it’s showing up in her school work. 

I’ll be posting a lot more about this as we go along. We are developing strategies to make learning easier for our son, and life better for us as a family.  I am anxious to share what we discover.

Back to Reality

Well, it’s been a nice, long vacation. Now it’s BACK TO SCHOOL!

My son just completed his testing for his IEP. They recommend that his IEP designation be changed from “language disability” to “math reasoning and writing disability”. His testing showed us some encouraging things. His reading comprehension has gone WAY up and it was great to see because we’ve put a lot of effort into that. His speech teacher commented that she’s never had a speech student test so well in vocabulary. That’s another thing we’ve worked hard on.

His math calculation ability was ok but his math reasoning ability was very low. Those word problems and abstract ideas are eluding him and that’s going to be a challenge for us because I am terrible at math! Time to enlist his dad. Oh boy, I hope that goes well because dad is a bit disorganized.

Writing is something I can be of help with. The basics of expository writing are familiar and comfortable for me.

The school psychologist wrote that my son’s greatest challenge is his processing speed. He learns everything and can apply what he has learned but he cannot keep up in a fast-paced classroom or perform well on a timed test. I completely agree with this assessment.

I decided to enlist some further help and my son has just had further testing done be a specialist in private practice. I’m lucky that my insurance will cover it under a mental health benefit. I get the results next week and I’m very anxious to hear them. We need to pinpoint exactly how to help my son reach his full potential. Nothing less is acceptable for us.

On a lighter note – we were stranded for nine hours in the Atlanta airport over the holidays and my son, the aviation enthusiast, finally got enough airport time and just wanted to go home.

Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic

I promised a post about this wonderful organization, RFBD. RFBD provides books on tape or CD. They are very different from the CDs at the bookstore. I tried books on CD and did not find success with them. Many are read by English actors, I presume because Americans like to listen to a nice English accent. Many of the books are read in a very dramatic style. This is great for capturing my attention when I’m driving on the highway, but it’s a very bad thing for my son. My child has an auditory discrimination problems and needs nice, clear, American English to listen to.

With RFBD you either get a special player, or download special software, which transforms the reading experience. The books are not read by actors, but by volunteers. Most are nice and clear and free of difficult accents. They are not read in a overly dramatic style. You can use the player, or software, to slow down the reading speed too!

Many textbooks are available and the “readers” include all captions and sidebars and describe the illustrations. It’s easy to replay material and since chapters are clearly labeled it’s easy to find things for review.

If there is book which is not offered you can request it. It may be available shortly, it may take a long time, but at least you can make the request.

In order to join you must have a visual or reading disability certified by a professional. In my case my son’s school psychologist signed his application a few years ago. It does not need to be someone from a school , it can be an independent physician or educational psychologist. Individual annual memberships are $35.00 and there is a one time $65.00 registration fee. All postage is free both ways since it is classified as “matter for the blind”. EasyReader software is $45.00 and is much more affordable than the specialized playback machines. We love it and I have 90% of my son’s curriculum on CD.

When we first started using RFBD, with grade-school novels, I could see the light bulb come on in my son’s head. You could see the relief on his face, a child who was convinced he could not read suddenly found that he could.