Dyslexia - Mount Laurel,NJ

Good responses so far! My son had some minor issues (mainly sensory) that I didn't seek help for for a couple of years because it didn't limit him too much in preschool. Finally my pediatrician noticed something that made her pause at his well-visit. She suggested I take him to a private pediatric therapy office and they did a very thorough evaluation of him including vision testing designed to pick up on small problems that the pediatric ophthalmologist could not. I was so impressed by the evaluation and learned so much. We have had him in private OT for 8 months and it's made a huge difference. Good luck!

Have you had his eyes checked lately? My 7 year old daughter was being evaluated for an IEP at school just a few weeks ago for learning and behavior and all signs were pointing to dyslexia. One of the "process of elimiation" steps was an eye exam. She had her first eye exam last April (2010) and it found she was far-sighted with a very slight astigmatism in her left eye, and she got her first pair of glasses. Knowing that we had to get another exam before we could move forward with any evaluation and have the ability to get her any help she may need, so I bit the bullet and paid out of pocket for another eye exam (insurance only covers one per 12 month period, so she was not "due" until April). Come to find out, there is no learning or behavior issues at all. Her eyes are the problem. She has a very rare (1:1000) form of an astigmatism. Her eyes are "football" shaped, but instead of sitting length-wise (think football in a trophy case), hers are oblique. This means that her oblong shaped eyeballs are sitting diagonal in the socket. The top of each "football" points at the top of her nose. The eye doctor looked at me and flat out said "I'm surprised she can even walk, its no wonder she can't do her work at school!" She explained it to me that the way you or I would see things in a "stretched out" fun house mirror (the one that makes everything tall and skinny) is how she sees EVERYTHING! By the end of the exam, when the proper lenses were in place, she was seeing perfectly and reading things she had never been able to read correctly.

hi, this thread is a bit old, but I would like to respond for any parents who may be doing searches. I am in the Philadelphia area. I recommend Dr. Selznick at Cooper Learning Center in Vorhees, NJ for evaluation. He has a great rapport with children and did a very thorough eval which was covered by our insurance.

It sounds like your child is having some abstract reasoning challenges, but not dyslexia. Consider that this is getting missed in school. Understand that if you leave all the educating up to a teacher that is handling 30 or so students, it is unlikely she will catch everything (please know that I am not blaming you). It is not unusual for young children to mix up "d" and "b", although at 8 he should already have this cleared up. Could be the teachers have not been catching this or making it a point to correct. Also know that if a child is allowed to put the wrong answer and it is not corrected, he learns it wrong and it is harder to unlearn the wrong and relearn the correct way. To put your mind at ease, maybe have that dyslexia test done so you can rule it out or in. Hope this helps.

Hi, Rita:
What interests me is your ability to identify so specifically the issues that your son is having difficulty with.

The question I would like to know: How is your son handling these issues you are telling us about?

The worksheet that your son brought home with all the errors, have you talked to his teacher about this event? What was the solution?
Just want to know.
D.

Some of your concerns are of things that seem very normal to me, and could be easily explained. HOWEVER, I'm all for parents going with their gut feelings and there is no harm in testing. Peace of mind is a great thing. Good luck!

It sounds like his issues are mild enough that he won't be evaluated in school, and enough of a concern to you to get your own evaluation outside of school.

I would get an OT evaluation to address the fine motor and some of the visual issues. I would also suggest an in depth vision evaluation by a specialist who deals with convergence insufficiency. My son was diagnosed with convergence insufficiency (difficulty with both eyes focusing on his target) and he received therapy for 6 months to correct the problem. What often happens is that one eye suppresses the image it is seeing and the other eye takes over enough that your child could be getting excellent grades, but still isn't focusing correctly. This makes reading a tiresome and less enjoyable activity and can cause some of the mistakes you are talking about. Each eye sees a different image. Please note that I had taken him to the regular eye doc several times and he is the one who suggested the specialist based on the problems my son was having. A regular eye doc doesn't test in depth enough to diagnose this. No teacher ever suspected this, but I kept noticing it. My son always got good grades, but he skipped lines while reading, lost his place and mixed up letters.

Try the Red Apple Learning Center in McMurray. I was pleased with how they helped my son.

You are in a very common grey zone. The school is probably not going to help you, and when the ECI folks looked at him in preschool, he did not qualify for services, but that did not mean that he did not need therapy. This is a clasic reason that I always tell parents that public services are only there to make your child functional, and for you son, he is fuctional in the classroom, as far as the school is concerned if he is passing and not causing a problem for the teachers (meaning behavior, but also if they expect that he will pass the state mandaded assessments or not in the 3rd grade, and my guess is, they expect he will pass those.)

As I said though, that does not mean that he does not need therapy to maximize his potential. Your first step should be to first, stop asking what it could be with a specific name like dyslexia, and second, call a Neuropsychologist and have an evaluation becuase of all the reasons you listed, not to rule something in, or something out, but to ask the professional exactly what it is, and if that is not possible (sometimes, there is no word for it) what you need to do to help him be all that he can be.

I would also suggest that you call the nearest childrens hospital, and ask the OT department for a referal to a Developmental Optomitrist, not just to check visual acuity, but also to check on the development of his visual skills. This would include visual motor, visual perceptual, tracking, and the like. How he uses his eyes is important. While you are on the phone with the OT department, make an appointment for him to have an evaluation for his handwriting, he could benefit from therapy to help him with a more effecient pencil grip, and thus, a more fluent writer. My guess is, he will be overwhelmed when school takes a turn to reading and writing to learn, instead of learning to read and write, and if you think he is resistent to writing things down now, just wait, if you do not intervene, he will become more resistant, and unfortunately, you may have to provide the lions share of his therapy.

Basicly, you play right into the school districts strong suit by asking if your child has a particular disorder, especially the one you picked. Dylexia is the inablity to manipulate phonemes, and his spelling ablity is just too good for his issue to be a pure dyslexia, though he may have related issues, the school district will not see them as they have a very narrow view of what to look for, and it is based on excluding as many kids as they can. They are under no obligation (unless you make them by using the magic words) to say, no, I don't think he has dyslexia, but it may be something else, especially if he will meet the minimum standards. The magic words are those that you can learn at www.wrightslaw.com, which is the parent advocates bible. There is a lot to read, but I would start with basic things about evaluations, how to get an evaluation, how to ask for an evaluation, and the extremely important need to own a private evaluation so that you never know less about your son than any public agency.

Start reading at wrightslaw, get an appointment with a nueropsycholgist, a developmental optomitrist, and an OT. After you have the neurpsychological, see a medical professional if they recomend it, either a developmental pediatrican or a board certified child psychiatrist. If you feel overwhelmed by the school information, seek out an educational advocate, you can find one in your area on the wrightslaw yellow pages for your state, on the wrightslaw web site. Remember, your son must have both a qualifying disablity (or you must suspsect that he has one) AND he must have an educational need for special education to get services, and the educational need is going to be the thing that trips you up for a child who is very high functioning and has extreem aptitude in something like math.

Good luck,
M.

My daughter, now 35, unfortunately had the same teacher for 1st and 2nd grade. This teacher did not believe in dyslexia and told me and her dad and her (in front of the class) that she was just lazy and stupid. Dyslexia runs in my family, my daughter struggled until 3rd grade, I had returned to college and fortunately could have my daughter tested at the university for free. She was severely dyslexic and the school had to take the diganosis seriously, though they were mad at me for having her tested. They actually had the how dare you attitude. I feel that parents know their child best and should insist the schools do whatever testing is necessary.
Your son is showing signs of dyslexia though mild. My son and I are dyslexic in math and spelling and left-right disorientation but not in reading, his dyslexia didn't show up in testing until 5th grade though I saw it already in kindergarten. Keep advocating for your children.
I don't think it's a vision issue if he sees other numbers correctly but only confuses 2 and 5. Since he also has an issue with past-present-and future he may fall into the autism spectrum. Autistics often don't get jokes or sattire either. There should be a way to get him tested if nothing else to eliminate what it isn't. Check out autisimspeaks.com and see what services are available in your area. Recently laws were passed forcing insurance companies to cover autisim testing and therapy, but check with your insurance carrier to be sure.