momma2kact wrote:I am asking this for a friend of a friend (so I don't know much about the issue at hand). The child in question is 9 y.o. and has trouble reading. The parents are wanting to know "what" kind of testing is available and "where" to get it?
Debbie
Posted by TriciaMR » Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:22 pm
One place I have heard of is called Learning Rx. They are independent of schools and such.
-Trish
Posted by mgardenh » Thu Nov 20, 2008 8:28 pm
There are private diagnosticians. I would start with asking the pediatrician for some names. Then call places that do speech therapy or occupational therapy and ask them for places to take the child. They might say they can do it. You can probably look them up in the phone book. Most states have an early intervention program. You can call them and they can connect you. Sometimes a child psychologist can do diagnoses.
Posted by donnagio » Thu Nov 20, 2008 11:39 pm
I agree with other suggestions -all good.
Also, just for info, a book (Bliss Hollow)about Splish,a frog who has not learned to read yet on the The Old Schoolhouse website you might want to check out. It is about a homeschooled frog though(:
I am an OT but have just started working in Preschool. Having the child evaluated could pinpoint what the problems might be, what would be causing his problems with reading. There could be many reasons, not always obvious, and not always clear which affect him. Sometimes it is just maturity, sometimes it is sensory processing issues, learning disability, and so on . So all the suggestions given are a good place to start. Different professions will see from different perspectives so it is important to get the different angles. Hope the answers are found. The Lord is of course the one with all the answers, and is the answer Himself(: I find that a comforting thought when I do not know the answer! Donna
Posted by cbollin » Sat Nov 22, 2008 7:53 am
I would suggest they start with asking their child's pediatrician for some private referrals.
Then, I would suggest the parents ask around to other parents in the school and churches for places in your town that do private tutoring. I would even consider the old fashioned approach of looking in the yellow pages of your local phone books under Schools and see if there is a private school near you that specializes in reading, or one of those chain places that does tutoring. I would even check at your local library to see if they know of any tutors. I see some regular study groups in our library. Maybe your town does the same.
Another out of the box suggestion is to have the parents get the child's developmental vision checked. Not just having eye glasses check. Have them look on visiontherapy dot org
to learn a bit more about it. Sometimes we forget to rule out the physically obvious things. So encourage to not forget to do that. Many people don't know about the idea of vision therapy and how it affects reading.
Also, the phrase "has trouble reading" can mean so many things with different answers. If it is just comprehension issues while reading, then there are different answers of how to approach that to teach him how to read with meaning. If it is the case of he can't read at all, then it is going to be more details of an answer. I get a catalog from a company called
rempub.com
that has lots of products to help with some of this. Not really using much from them. The catalog just shows up. But it might help the parents to know that there are companies out there that sell products to help with reading skills. As they look over the catalog, it might help them have the right kinds of questions to be able to ask to the local professionals to get the right kind of help.
Sometimes it takes a good tutor to start trying to teach one on one to see what the problems are and then that person can be the one to find the right expert to diagnose the underlying issues of the symptoms.
That's the route I went. I knew my middle child couldn't talk or understand us. We got a speech/language therapist working with her. That person ended up referring us to a few places to get a full work up while continuing to treat. Never did find out the reason with her.
-crystal
Posted by mamaofredheads » Sat Nov 22, 2008 11:47 am
Your friend also might want to watch the video presentation on dys-add dot com. They might be dealing with dyslexia (many dyslexic kids have add/adhd as well). This video is excellent and might help them narrow down what the problem might be.
Posted Wed Apr 22, 2009 8:15 am by mamaofredheads
I would highly recommend watching the on-line seminar at www dot dys-add dot com. I believe it will answer your questions. :) She is also available for free consultations by phone or e-mail, even if you don't use her program. We do use her program and are seeing great success. You are very blessed to see these things now & recognize that it might be dyslexia!
There is also a yahoo group called Heart of Reading that you might be interested in.
Glenna
Posted Mon Jun 29, 2009 6:50 pm by my3boys
If you can find a good pediatric psychologist that does psycho-educational testing that is usually the first step to a diagnosis (we were refered to one by our pediatrician, but we had to ask specifically). After the psycho-ed testing they will probably make a soft diagnosis and give you a list of recommendations. Some of the recommendations were to have an occupational therapy assessment, speech assessment, appointment with a pediatric psychiatrist. It's been a year since then - we have done all of their recommendations and will go for a second round of testing in the fall. The assessments have led us to a totally different oppinion of what's wrong with our ds than we had originally thought, but still we feel like we have more questions then answers. We have decided to make a trip to some place like the Mayo clinic for his second round of testing, because we have found that in the little communities that we are going to they don't have enough experience with different disorders to give a solid diagnosis (that and we are tired of travelling to this person and that person). Many people have told me that medical school hospitals are very good places to go as well.
Posted Mon Jun 29, 2009 10:47 pm by mgardenh
Our dd has aspergers. We got it diagnosed through a group of doctors, psychiatrists, etc at a University that has a medical school. I would try online search for a pediatric diagnostician (particularly university ones). Or try anyplace that has some particular diagnoses place (Mental health hospital). Not that you use them but usually these people can point you to someone.
Posted Wed Jul 01, 2009 11:49 pm by mgardenh
For Auditory Processing how about a pediactric audiologist or just an audiologist. Our daughter saw one recently and he told me he has a test he can do for auditory processing issues but not tell she is 6 or 7 because of the different things needed that a 4 year old is not able to do yet (lanquage development, being able to handle longer test and such). Might be a place to start.
Posted Tue Jun 30, 2009 1:33 pm by 4Truth
We were able to get a full battery of developmental testing done with our youngest a few years ago through the children's hospital. It was quite a process to get in the door (you have to be persistent!), but once in, she made great progress over the course of the next year+. It didn't "resolve" the problem, but it did get us to the point where we could actually communicate with our dd.
Posted Wed Jul 01, 2009 11:23 pm by RachelT
Every family's path will probably look different. In our case, my ds has been going to a pediatric ophthalmologist since he was 3.5 yrs. old. Long story short, when his vision was finally 20/30, it confirmed for me that our reading and spelling and writing problems were not visual but something else. We had received referrals from our pediatrician to begin speech therapy and occupational therapy (for handwriting and motor skill delays) and began those in August/September.
So, then we went to a developmental psychologist, PhD. at our state's university medical school and children's hospital, about an hour away. (I also tried to find out what our public school system had to offer, but they would have referred us to a local child psych. to do basically the same thing. My husband is a pediatrician and he chose to go to the other PhD because he valued her opinions more highly and trusted her more.)
So, we were able to get an appointment and we had a lot of papers to fill out beforehand. I also gave her reports from the speech and occ. therapists. When we arrived, she took some time to talk with us herself and ask us questions and established some trust with my son. Then, she did testing for 2-3 hours. (He was exhausted at the end!) She met with me afterward and shared her initial observations and then sent us a full report with lots of pages that explained her evaluation and diagnoses and recommendations. For us, this ended up being partly covered by insurance because along with the learning disabilities of dyslexia and dysgraphia (would not be covered by our insurance), my ds also has ADHD symptoms and this is considered "medical" for our insurance billing.
So, to try and summarize, the developmental psych. was a great help to us and she gave us the information we needed to understand a lot more of what is going on inside his mind. It also reassured us in other areas that he is doing well and working at an average or higher level. I would start by asking your pediatrician or general physician for a referral, in case the costs could be covered by insurance.
) and will work on getting audio books from RFBD for as many things as possible, or purchasing audio books.