my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
maybe someone here could give advice what my family can do.
my sister is 6 years old and has somesort of learning disability but the school system will not help or do anything yet because she is 6. they told my mother they don't usually act until a child is 8 years old. by then it will be too late. she already stayed back in kindergarden once and still does not know her ABCs or numbers. because she doesn't know them it will be impossible for her to begin reading or anything else. my mom sits down with her everynight, reads with her and so forth but nothing is clicking. if anything my sister ends up getting frustrated and doesn't even want to do the work.
my mom has called all sorts of doctors to get her anaylized and as it turns out my sister's IQ is slightly below normal but other than that they said nothing else can be done for now. and like i said by the time someone acts it will be too late. she can't stay in kindergarden forever. currently the only help my sister has gotten was from the private school she attends which is giving her after school tutoring-the local public schools refused to even offer that although a doctor tried to convince my mom to take my sister out of private school to get her help. which clearly is not what would have happened.
my mom has done some research on my sisters symptoms and belives that she is dyslexic but isn't sure since no one else will help out.
we live in NY. can someone give me advice on what to do next? thanks
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
She needs to have a full evaluation if she has not had one already. If they are telling your mother they don't *usually* act until a child is eight I would press the issue with them to intervene and consider your sisters case now because of the obvious trouble she is having. Tax dollars go into programs. You are right-on to not delay. Why do they say- nothing can be done for now? There are specialists who test for learning disabilities and you should not have to wait for her to get help/therapy now. I was taken to Hofstra when I was 9. They evaluated and administered many tests. I went to a private elementary school. There was more available in public school. Check that avenue again and make sure she is not losing out on assistance. Talk to that doctor and discuss your concerns with him. Ask him why he thinks she should change schools.
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gemi
She needs to have a full evaluation if she has not had one already. If they are telling your mother they don't *usually* act until a child is eight I would press the issue with them to intervene and consider your sisters case now because of the obvious trouble she is having. Tax dollars go into programs. You are right-on to not delay. Why do they say- nothing can be done for now? There are specialists who test for learning disabilities and you should not have to wait for her to get help/therapy now. I was taken to Hofstra when I was 9. They evaluated and administered many tests. I went to a private elementary school. There was more available in public school. Check that avenue again and make sure she is not losing out on assistance. Talk to that doctor and discuss your concerns with him. Ask him why he thinks she should change schools.
ps: How is her hearing?
hi thanks for answering
no her hearing and vocabulary is excellent and so is her vision. she just doesn't regonized letters or numbers and my mom has called NUMEROUS places seeking out help. she got 1 evaluation already which told us she had below normal intelligence and the person administering the test said that alothough she is below normal she is not low enough to be considered a immediate problem. the person then went on to tell my mom that she should keep working with her which is what my mom has been doing since the child was 4 years old.
the reason why my sister is in private school is because they were the only ones offering to give her tutoring and extra help. my mom was ready to send her to public school but the teachers said that they do not send children to special programs or give after school help until they are 8. so its clear that we cannot wait till she is 8 for her to learn her letters or numbers. so it is clear in this case that public schools are NOT offering more to help her.
then i should also say that a few places my mother called didn't even take her concerns seriously cause my sister is so young. i remember my mom took my sister to one place and had to tell the worker to stop playing with my sister and do the evulation thoroughly. apparently my sisters being gorgeous means that there is nothing wrong with her in some people's eyes. after that my mom got a second opinion-which is where we learned that she has below average iq.
otherthan that we will continue to follow up on this issue but its really frustrating that no one will even take this seriously because she is only 6. i also have a 4 yr old brother and he knows more ABC and letters than my sister-which is causing the situation to become even more embarassing.
i should also say that my sister has no problems writing her name her siblings name, repeating her address, or copying letters. but when you ask her to write down the letters she gets confused and when you show her a letter she doesn't know what it is.
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Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
FineChyna
I don't know if the experience we had with my daughter will help you or not. My daughter was in kindergarten, when we discovered she had a problem. She was in a parochial school, which had very little to offer her, so I went to the local public school to get help. The LD program at the school was very good and they agreed to evaluate her. The type of testing they did was inconclusive. I did not accept this and looked for another way to test her. I live in northern Virginia and the Children's Hospital of the District of Columbia had a satellite office near Fairfax Hospital that did testing of children for learning disabilities. They did a far more thorough set of tests and my daughter tested as having a severe problem known as a speech processing delay. I got the test results and took them to the local school and they agreed to accept her into the LD program. As a result, she went through the Fairfax County Public System for her primary education. This all happened more than about 16 years ago. My daughter is now in college and doing well.
It does not seem to me that your sister has been fully evaluated. I would not accept that she has a low IQ based on partial testing. I believe my daughter has an above average IQ, but if I had accepted partial testing, she would have been known as a person with a low IQ all of her life. My belief is supported by the fact that she does well in school, even though she has to compensate for her learning disability. A child with a learning disability can not be tested for intelligence in the same manner as a child that does not have a learning disability. The biggest thing that my daughter had going for her is she worked very hard at her studies. Even when she got headaches from it, she keep on working.
Self esteem is the most important thing to give a child with learning disabilities. I praised what ever my daughter did correctly, from the smallest thing to the biggest thing. I constantly encouraged her that she could do the thing she was working on. I also tried to instill in her the feeling that every person should have about the fact that they are a unique person, who deserves to be listened to and loved because of that uniqueness.
The most important thing is to get your sister properly tested. If the test results show severe learning disabilities, the school system must accept her into a LD program. It is Federal Law that they must. Your mother can force the issue.
I know this is long winded, but I feel very strongly that every child who needs help should get it.
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
your right do not wait to get help for your sister. My mom had to fight and fight to get me the help i needed. it wasn't until i reached the second grade that they said yes well she dose have more delays then we thought and put me into special education. my mom knew since i was in kindergarden that i needed help for i was not even able to reconize my own name. I have what is now called mild intectual delay which means my iq is only slighlty below the norm. I now can read and write at a grade 6 level but it gets me by. don't let them wait as long as they did with me. my mom was told that if i got the help earlier i would proble be reading and writting a bit higher and i wouldn't had the problems i hade with my self esteem.
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob2
FineChyna
I don't know if the experience we had with my daughter will help you or not. My daughter was in kindergarten, when we discovered she had a problem. She was in a parochial school, which had very little to offer her, so I went to the local public school to get help. The LD program at the school was very good and they agreed to evaluate her. The type of testing they did was inconclusive. I did not accept this and looked for another way to test her. I live in northern Virginia and the Children's Hospital of the District of Columbia had a satellite office near Fairfax Hospital that did testing of children for learning disabilities. They did a far more thorough set of tests and my daughter tested as having a severe problem known as a speech processing delay. I got the test results and took them to the local school and they agreed to accept her into the LD program. As a result, she went through the Fairfax County Public System for her primary education. This all happened more than about 16 years ago. My daughter is now in college and doing well.
It does not seem to me that your sister has been fully evaluated. I would not accept that she has a low IQ based on partial testing. I believe my daughter has an above average IQ, but if I had accepted partial testing, she would have been known as a person with a low IQ all of her life. My belief is supported by the fact that she does well in school, even though she has to compensate for her learning disability. A child with a learning disability can not be tested for intelligence in the same manner as a child that does not have a learning disability. The biggest thing that my daughter had going for her is she worked very hard at her studies. Even when she got headaches from it, she keep on working.
Self esteem is the most important thing to give a child with learning disabilities. I praised what ever my daughter did correctly, from the smallest thing to the biggest thing. I constantly encouraged her that she could do the thing she was working on. I also tried to instill in her the feeling that every person should have about the fact that they are a unique person, who deserves to be listened to and loved because of that uniqueness.
The most important thing is to get your sister properly tested. If the test results show severe learning disabilities, the school system must accept her into a LD program. It is Federal Law that they must. Your mother can force the issue.
I know this is long winded, but I feel very strongly that every child who needs help should get it.
hi thanks for your answer. just to clarify some points:
first off as i stated in other posts, despite what people think of private schools at this juncture my sister is still there because they are the only ones that offered to give her the additional help she needed and have help come in. my mother went to the public school first as soon as she realized that something was amiss and she was told my sister is too young for help and unless she showed sever problems they wouldn't not allow her in a program until 2nd grade. this is what the school district told us. 2nd grade is too late to wait for help so she remains in public school. i know every area is different but this is what we were given to work with. some other people told my mom to take her out of private school, BUT IF PUBLIC SCHOOL IS UNWILLING TO HELP BECAUSE SHE IS A K, WHY SHOULD WE WAIT? THAT MAKES LITTLE SENSE. and thats why she is in private school. so unless she shows severe enough problems she will continue to be behind until the school allows her in a program. you may say it doesn't sound "right" or is against the law but as of now those are the rules here. her "disability" is not considered severe enough to warrant the extra help.
the IQ test was only one of the exams given. i don't know what else she had done but she went to 2 seperate testing areas through the school district and a local hospital and will be given a 3rd test soon. so far they are unsure how to pinpoint what is wrong maybe because she is so young. according to the doc the only think that is certain is that her IQ is slightly below normal for those her age although you would never know it. my sister is an A class social butterfly, has excellent vocab, and good peminship for a child her age.
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
FineChyna
It sounds like my daughter had a more severe problem than your sister, because she had vocabulary problems as well as the speech processing delay. For anyone who might be reading this who wants to know what a speech processing delay is; It shows up when children are given tasks to do that have multiple instructions. My daughter was still concentrating on the first instruction, when the second instruction was given. Therefore, she did not even hear the second instruction because she was still mentally working on understanding the first instruction.
Here in Virginia, the only reason a child is held back in kindergarten is they are not capable of paying attention to tasks for a certain length of time. Perhaps your mother should have her evaluated for attention deficit disorder.
If your sister gets frustrated, when your mother is working with her each night, maybe she should do it for a shorter length of time. What I did with my daughter was get very small childrens books from the library and read one to her each night at bed time. I did that from the time she was in kindergarten until she was about 12 years old. She looked forward to going to bed each night because of the book reading. By the time I stopped doing the reading, we must have read over 2,000 of the little childrens books.
Something else to think about is that your sister can not be forced to catch up to her grade level by more work. Your mother should pick some small thing that needs work and work on that one thing for a short time each day until she gets it pretty well. If she is forced for too long a period of time, she will be turned off by school work and never want to do it.
My daughter would have only one break through in being able to do something well in a year's time in her lower grades. She did not really take off with reading near grade level until the completion of fourth grade. The important thing is to never give up on her and always try to make her feel good about herself.
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
Sounds like Dyslexia to me if her other functions are fine, dyslexia is fairly common and even in the early Eighties when I was in school in Switzerland (when hardly any other learning disabilities were screened for or diagnosed unless you showed VERY severe problems) dyslexic students were diagnosed and helped, so it is very disconcerting to see a school just ignoring these obvious signs "because she is too young"!
She needs a proper evaluation done ASAP as she may need support (for example someone to read out the instructions to her etc.) in order to get through school without falling behind.
__________________
25, female, AS with attentional dysfunction
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
The disorder is called apraxia. I would call your's sister's pediatrician and ask for a referral for a psychologist. They may administer some neuropsych testing. The testingis usually not covered by insurance. Where in New York are you guys from. I use to work as a referral coordinator in a pediatrician's office and that office is participating in a huge ADD/ADHD study.
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
i have a quick question. when your mom teaches her a word does she get it for the first 2 times and then has no idea what it is? then maybe after working with her for a week or so she can remember it. but the week after nothing?
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
hi, thanks for all the responses....
i do finally have an update: a hospital is going to put my sister through a series of test and we will FINALLY have the answer(s) to what is preventing her from learning.
someone mentioned that my sister might be dyslexic. my mother has suspected that but since she is not a health professional, she was not sure. she mentioned it to a few "professionals" and they for whatever reason never followed through.
believe me when i say: its hard when you have a kindergardner to get help especially when you kid doesn't have sever problems because everyone wants to point the finger at the parents. my mother sits for HOURS with my sister daily and some people have actually tried to say that it was my mother's fault that my sister wasn't learning.
another problem that has prevented us from pinpointing what is going on is because my sister is adopted. we didn't find out recently that her biological mother has some serious problems until recently.
but thanks to everyone that has responded to this thread. it was/is appreciated
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
Quote:
Originally Posted by aardvarklips
i have a quick question. when your mom teaches her a word does she get it for the first 2 times and then has no idea what it is? then maybe after working with her for a week or so she can remember it. but the week after nothing?
i think my mom tells her more like 5 times and makes her repeat what she said and 2 seconds later my sister has no memory of what she just said. there are other times where 1 day my sister knows something like a word or letter and then the next day she doesn't know it
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
Quote:
Originally Posted by FineChyna
i think my mom tells her more like 5 times and makes her repeat what she said and 2 seconds later my sister has no memory of what she just said. there are other times where 1 day my sister knows something like a word or letter and then the next day she doesn't know it
That sounds like my 8 year old daughter. They have since diaginosed her with having no short term rote sequential memory. Try as she may she cannot remember anything that she is suppose to. Such as the Dolch words that are given to the children here in grades one or two, to help them with reading. Maybe you should inquire about this as well.
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
these schools and school board have a program called no child left behind for children with learning disabilities my grandchild has been in special ed since she was 5 so the school is lying to you go to your school board and talk to the department that handles special education for children with learning problems you have the right to have this done bug and bug them dont let them get away with this .
__________________
To live my life to its fullest and to put all my trust in God.
Last edited by delrae4753; 03-04-2004 at 06:40 PM.
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
i would defently contact the supervisor of the special education program in the area if no help then contact the school board my daughter had been in school since the age of 3 and they do testing and help kids like your sister they have the program called no child left behind if they don't follow through then i would contact your congressman in your area about that hope this helps
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
hi, have asked her doctor to refer her to the cdc.(childrens developmental center)?they will test her and place her in the center for a normal school year and if she does well will place her in her normal grade level to where she needs to be with the help she needs. i know this because my now 7 year old son wentthrough it and gets the help he needs in school and is tested every six months to see what his areas of progress are and what his weaknesses are.and then gets placed where he needs to be in school as far as help goes.do not ask her doctor tell her doctor you need a referral for her to see them and she will get in sooner.i wish the best of luck for her and your family.
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
ok here is the update
my sister has a BAD case of ADHD according to the doctor. so far the public school system has been VERY slow to respond to the test and act accordingly. they have even claimed to have never received the paper work although the doc office keeps a log of all the faxes that come into and out the office and it was clear that the paper work was sent and received.
as it turns out the PRIVATE school was the best thing for her as of this time cause they are offering her tutoring and giving us direction on who to contact for summer school and stuff. if she was in a public school we'd still be fighting at square one. it seems that the local district has a nasty problem if IGNORING learning disabilities until they get so bad that the kid is like 3 grades behind. i have a cousin who has a serious learning and speech disability-and its CLEAR AS DAY when you look at the kid that he has a problem and the school even gives his parents a hard time about receiving the necessary programs and help so that he can get educated. his mom stated that every year she is fighting with the school because they are always trying to cut corners and/or refuse services even when it is clear that the kid needs help.
alot of the programs you guys have suggested are hard to find cause they are under alternative names or do not exist-but thanks for the suggestion we will keep trying.
the doc suggested that my sister take meds and my mom is highly hesitant because of all the side effects. there is 1 child in my sisters class who has a horrible time holding his bladder (he wets his pants everyday) he has blown up like a balloon in terms of weight (he just looks swollen) and it just seems like he is having a hard time adjusting to the meds.
but on a side note does anyone know what it means when a child won't sleep fully through the night? my sister has NEVER slept through the night ever. she always wakes up crying but when you ask her whats wrong you get NO ANSWER. she has a horrible time getting to sleep even when people lay down with her and has an even worst time getting ready for school in the morning. as of now she has NEVER dressed herself in the morning-my mom always does it. if you leave her to get dressed she won't or can't do it. so this means she is LATE FOR SCHOOL EVERY SINGLE DAY!. which is highly embarassing. is this a symptom of ADHD or something else.
she also has a hard time figuring out the difference between feeling hot and cold. for example if it is hot in the house she puts on a jacket or sweater claiming she is cold and crying that the house is cold. we don't have air conditioning and she isn't running a fever so she can't be hot, especially when its like 80 degrees in the house. in the winter if she is cold at nite she takes off all her pajamas and crys that its hot although its clear that she is cold. whats that all about? but when she runs water on her hands she knows the difference between hot and cold water.
thanks for your help guys
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
Quote:
Originally Posted by FineChyna
maybe someone here could give advice what my family can do.
my sister is 6 years old and has somesort of learning disability but the school system will not help or do anything yet because she is 6. they told my mother they don't usually act until a child is 8 years old. by then it will be too late. she already stayed back in kindergarden once and still does not know her ABCs or numbers. because she doesn't know them it will be impossible for her to begin reading or anything else. my mom sits down with her everynight, reads with her and so forth but nothing is clicking. if anything my sister ends up getting frustrated and doesn't even want to do the work.
my mom has called all sorts of doctors to get her anaylized and as it turns out my sister's IQ is slightly below normal but other than that they said nothing else can be done for now. and like i said by the time someone acts it will be too late. she can't stay in kindergarden forever. currently the only help my sister has gotten was from the private school she attends which is giving her after school tutoring-the local public schools refused to even offer that although a doctor tried to convince my mom to take my sister out of private school to get her help. which clearly is not what would have happened.
my mom has done some research on my sisters symptoms and belives that she is dyslexic but isn't sure since no one else will help out.
we live in NY. can someone give me advice on what to do next? thanks
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
Your Mom has legal right to request that the school test her for learning disabilities with in six weeks of her request. This time of year I am sure they will try to slow it down and put it off. Tell your Mom to keep calling them. If they refuse to test she should contact someone in your state who represents students with learning disabilities so they can discuss it with the school.
You are right to feel that she needs help now. The longer they wait the farther behind she will get. My son was tested in second grade but they suspected a learning disability in preschool. He is now a sophomore in high school and still struggles but at least we know what we are dealing with.
Good Luck!
Jackie DH
Re: my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her!
hey there my granddaughter is on meds and she does take the meds as far as a bedwetting or wetting her pant problem she doesnt have that problem she does however have a weight problem but then girls going thru the puberty do tend to have that problem as far as sleeping habits she used to get up all the time and not want to sleep we do tend to still kinda have a sleep pattern problem the biggest thing is that we cannot let her take an afternoon nap no matter how tired she is, maybe this will shed some light for you.
__________________
To live my life to its fullest and to put all my trust in God.
my sisters has a learning disability but no1 will help her! 
