The college admissions scandal that occurred in March involved wealthy parents coaching their children into getting diagnosed with a learning disability so that they could receive extra time or other accommodations on the SAT or ACT. I have been frustrated because it is so difficult to put into words how angering and hurtful this is to me.
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Rapid fire. If in this moment you had only 10 seconds to choose whom you trust most in your heart, spirit and mind in this world– who would it be?
Hold on to your answer.
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Specific.
That’s the best way to describe having Nonverbal Learning Disability. To help me understand, I need you to be specific. Use your words. I need them for clarity. Why did it become awkward? Did I miss something? Understanding can take some time for me and it’s only through brute force repetition that I’ll begin to see a pattern. Sometimes it feels like going through flashcards: this is your happy face, this is what it looks like when you’re angry, that’s what it looks like when you’re feeling sad. I can’t tell how you’re feeling right now, but I know based on the situation that you’re angry with me, and just a little disappointed.
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Pragmatic language disorders impairs one’s understanding of the pragmatic aspects of language or one’s ability to understand what is being said and how it is situationally appropriate social situations. The https://www.asha.org states the general belief is this disorder only occurs in children with Autism, however it can also occur with an NVLD too. Having NVLD, I know how real it can be.
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Since NVLD causes social, academic, and motor challenges it isn’t unusual to receive multiple special education services. These include: Speech therapy for social and communication deficits, Occupational therapy for motor skills deficits, and Resource room for academic intervention. For a good percentage of students, accepting that you need services can be difficult (especially during the teenage years!), however, in the long run you will be happy you did.
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As I wait for the technicians to install a third tire on my car in the past five months alone, it is difficult to repress frustration about the costly consequences of visual-perceptual deficits. Getting lost everywhere and relying excessively on signs or the presence of furniture to determine which direction to turn in to arrive at my classroom/office from the front office or to a patient’s room is disconcerting and exhausting at best. Within the past three weeks, I mistook another person’s car for my own (and went inside of it before frenetically seizing my belongings and an empty Publix cookie container that took residence in the stranger’s passenger seat), ran over a median that I didn’t see, took aberrant turns to just about every destination, was unable to locate the entrance to an indoor trampoline park (to take an aerobics class) on the campus of a school and church despite the fact that I had delivered speech therapy sessions there for approximately four semesters, and had no idea how to direct my friend to take me to a parking garage.
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It can be difficult to suppress a grin when a few pairs of wary teenage eyes peer into the window of “The Language Production Studio.” As the high school students prepare to step onto the invisible but palpable social communication stage, I can sometimes see reflections of my past adolescent self from so long ago in their fleeting eye gaze, flat affect, anxious mannerisms, and manifestations of difficulty with transitions. The expectations have been clearly defined and some of them could recite the “conversational script” flawlessly, but the ostensibly simple role of initiating a greeting and a few conversational turns with the speech-language therapist may prove to be daunting when the spotlight shifts from the rules and the acquisition of knowledge of the skill to a spontaneous demonstration of it.
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My son Matthew is 14 years old. I am a specialist in special education and crisis therapy. At 15 months, Matthew exhibited signs similar to Asperger’s, at 15 months, I began DTT therapy within the home. His kindergarten teacher had concerns, not moved upon. Second grade, I referred him to SPED, some odd red flag behaviors, though high IQ, refused eligibility. Fifth grade preferred him again, shut down the meeting because the evaluations were filled with scoring errors and contained no observations in almost an effort to hide the red flags. His IQ is astronomical, therefore never eligible for SPED. Took his 5th grade evals to a neurologist who said the differentiation between his VIQ and PIQ scores, though within the superior to average range, substantiate he has NVLD.
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This blog has a bit of a different focus than my previous ones. Normally, I love offering advice, especially given the fact that I’m in social work. But I struggle, too. Disclosure of my NVLD is a topic that I’ve faced in my life recently: what to disclose, how to disclose, when to disclose. With a more unheard of LD like NVLD, it’s doubly difficult.
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Growing up with NVLD makes social skills and handling change a challenge. One of the ways to work through this is to connect with others who have the ability to interact with you to help make these challenges easier. Two people who made my challenges easier happened to be high school students. My Mom had been very involved in my sisters Odyssey of the Mind team so I became the team manager. The students in the program were a positive influence on me, however, the two who were the most supportive to me were Jason and Jennifer. Their older brother had a disability similar to mine so it was easier for them to help me out. Their support continued beyond OM and this was just the first of older peers that I looked up too.
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