Learning difficulties and asd a question and a rambling post ...sorry.

[genieinabottle]

Hi, sorry in advance if this is a bit long and confusing :headspin:

Is there specific tests that can be done to see how bad a child has difficulties with learning or is it more a general overview of the level the child is at that gives it away?

I'm a bit .
DS (4.10, asd) does have learning difficulties, we obviously have noticed this at home, and various professionals have mentioned it too.
EP; SALT; and sp. teacher at the lang.unit he attended the last year who wrote on his report 'he requires a lot of repetition and over-learning to understand and retain concepts. He finds abstract concepts difficult to understand and benfits from the use of visual cues;...'

But asd team who did his assesment said on the non-verbal reasoning test clinical psy. did he came up in the higher range for average.
At his latest salt assessment, his age equivalent for core language was that of a 3.3 y old.
I suppose his lang.delay has something to do with the learning difficulties.

But nevertheless DS really does take a long time and a lot of going over things before finally memorising something.
Things like colours he took agesss to learn, recognition of his name which is still very inconsistant despite lots of work on this, or the days of the week for ex; we have been going through these on his calendar when we cross the day off since January at the begining of the year.
And he is still none the wiser as to what comes after monday.
And this is on a 1:1 basis with me in the quiet of his room.

I'm really wondering how he is going to be able to learn anything at school with 28 other pupils in a noisy classroom...

My boy has to overlearn everything (ASD)- we are still having major difficulties with him recognising boy/girl, and he is now 7. But he clearly has islands of ability as in other areas, he is very good - eg his writing is now quite neat, he uses a computer really well, and he can read simple sentences. He came out really low in those IQ tests, but tbh I think even the "experts" in the field of autism really know SO VERY LITTLE about the condition, or about how it affects the brain, or about how you can teach the child and therefore develop parts of the brain, that I think those IQ tests are almost meaningless. Just keep plugging away, don't let anyone tell you to limit his potential. Nb - for maths, I would definitely try Moondog's recommendation - the Numicon maths set( I got the home set). It really makes maths concrete. For reading, I used the jolly phonics DVD - the bit at then end where the nice lady enunciates each sound, next to the letter on a big screen. In school, he will probably need worksheets of differentiated stuff to work on - does he have an LSA? I photocopy pages out of the jolly phonics workbooks. Good luck!

Genie, my ds scored in the 'gifted' bracket on all test EP did.

He is 6.5 now and still couldnt tell you what day comes after Monday, or when yesterday was. No concept of time what so ever. Lots of difficulties understand before and after etc. He couldnt tell you that a washing machine is called a washing machine, he will just describe what does ie 'its where you wash things'. He also terrible for remember names of people and often gives them names that he can remember ie auntie Sandra, is called 'strawberry'!

He often doesnt understand verbal instructions and needs these broken down or better still demonstrations or visuals.

At home to i do use lots of visuals to help him learn. Ds has a big calender, which doubles up as a visual timetable with pictures of what he is doing that week, which we cross off every day. Then look back to yesterday etc hoping he will make the connection.

In school i have applied for Statement, as i feel ds would find it very difficult to learn without help.

Have you considered a Statement? this could also help for a special school if you feel he cannot cope in MS.

Genie - 'learning difficulties' is such a wooly area.

But the thing is, that I'm not sure knowing that he does or doesn't have learning difficulties will help you particularly. In that both you and the school have to adjust to his needs regardless of his dx.

My DD clearly has very bad dylexia (which is a learning difficulty), but she has never had a dx because it won't change anything at all. The (new) school are doing absolutely everything they can to help her. And a dx wouldn't change anything. They are already doing everything they can.

Whereas her previous school wasn't so good. A dx wouldn't have helped them either, because they too were already doing everything the could - they were just incompetent so everything they could wasn't good enough.

A lot of people think a magic Ed Psych report saying little Johnny is good at x and bad at y helps school. After my experience I'm not at all convinced.

So an Ed Psych is the person to dx learning difficulties - and you are already under one.

(However a dx of ASD for my DS has been very helpful). And this is just my bias and experience. Others will certainly disagree.

I agree with the others it's entirely fuzzy, and dependent on too many factors to be able to generalize.
My experience has been that having a dx has helped, because it gave us access to services which would have been more difficult to access otherwise.
About dyslexia, Indigo, I hope your DD will have overcome the related difficulties by the time she goes to uni, but what I've seen with some of my students over the years, is that if you do have a dx you get extra time at exams, or the possibility to use a computer or a scribe instead of writing the exam yourself.

Indigo, i agree a dx is only as good as the help it brings.

I?m not sure whether an EP is always sure what causes poor results either. My DS had weak results too but the EP said he was very inattentive and he seemed to be not comfortable (he has motor and some sensory issues) and she concluded in her report that results should be viewed with caution. She said ? taken with a pinch of salt ? verbally . However she said that whatever the causes of his difficulties were he needed help in accessing the curriculum and that?s what she focussed on.

The EP came in on a Friday morning (on the day of his 7th birthday party so doing assessments was the last thing he wanted to do) and did a few hours testing on which she based her report. She had what she said was a long chat with his teacher .

It just seems to me that the school called in the EP as they weren?t sure what was going on. The EP then wasn?t sure based on the results of a couple of hours testing and still had to rely on the school to come to a conclusion so I?m not really sure if we learnt anything new but the benefit was that he got help. I know that some EP testing involves a few visits to test a child but in our case it appeared to be a pretty rushed affair

SC13 - this is one of the great myths that a dx gives you extra time etc. The dx doesn't.

The school / uni just needs to prove that they need it. Many, many people get extra time etc without any dx at all.

Dyslexia is such a farking wooly term. The EP decided that my boy (not my DD) doesn't have dyslexia despite having a reading score in the 90+ percentile and a spelling score in the 20th percentile. Yet a diff EP decided that my friends son does have dyslexia because he had a reading score in the 70th percentile and a spelling score in the 30th percentile.

So basically AFAICT it's absolutely random whether or not you will get a dx for a specific learning difficulty.

Genie - your son does sound like he has a learning difficulty similar to my DD. She is now 7 1/2 and is 2 years behind at school. At 4 she was absolutely unable to learn anything. Now with more maturity she is slightly better.

And maybe you should push for a dx. But only if it's not going to be dreadfully stressful pushing for it. Because it brings with it very little support....

However as he gets older, and things become more apparent it might be different.

genie

I sincerely hope that you've now put the request for the Statement into the LEA in question.

You already have a dx; now the hard bit really begins.

Thank you for the replies.

Lots of good advice as always.
I should have mentioned that yes, my DS already has a dx of asd and speech and lang.disorder.
'Learning difficulties' have also been mentioned on various occasions, but atm all the professionals say his learning difficulties are related to his autism and language delays.

During his school transition meeting i asked EP about these difficulties and she said they will need to keep an eye out to make sure he isn't falling behind any further.

SA was refused, haven't taken it any further atm.
We are still waiting to receive his dx report from asd team at CAMHS, and depending on how "well written" it is (i mean what useful info it has in it) because if it's a case of mum says... but hopefully not; then we will appeal to LEA with this new evidence along with the latest salt report (we hadn't received it at the time of letter of request was sent).

Failing that, we are going to keep an eye out on DS' progress or failures ... and keep collecting evidence to re-apply in 6 months.

That's the plan anyway.

Does you ds have an IEP in place?

Is he meeting targets?

Claw3, yes DS has been on action+ with Ieps for the past 18 months whilst at nursery.

However the targets on his last IEP at MS nursery stayed the same for 2 terms as he hadn't met them (he had 2 different IEP one at MS nursery, one at SN lang.unit which was more lang.specific).

I was told SALT from the unit will be visiting him at school in october to set some targets and write up an IEP.

I agree that the term "learning difficulties" is incredibly wooly. DD has ASD and dyslexia, but a high verbal IQ. She also has a speech and language disorder. But she is a bright little girl, who has difficulties learning. I think that is what the term really means; previously I associated it with meaning a low IQ, which I now know is not necessarily the case.

I think that a DX can be helpful, in terms of getting the right help and getting the school to use the right techniques to teach. DD is very visual, but really struggles with phonics. The only words she can read are ones that she has memorised as word shapes, complete words. She has a Statement and a LSA at school and now things are improving and she is much happier at school, now her difficulties are recognised.

DD's IEP targets don't tend to change much either, as she is still trying to meet a lot of them.

ds2 has ASD,CP & learnign diffs. He is always described as having a spiky develoment profile. He actually has a very good understanding can follow a complex instruction IF its given in the right way in the right environment for him. But as you say has learn hand over hand and by lots of repitition for concepts to stick.
His receptive language fro example is age appropriate BUT expressive & social lang is years behind, he can also just about manage to write his very short name - prob a reception level but he is in yr 3.
So I guess intelligence and learning difficulties are very different things

Genie, i wouldnt worry too much about tests etc.

I would focus more on the not making progress. Its all well and good EP saying lets keep an eye on him to make sure he doesnt fall any further behind, but what are they doing to make sure he progresses.

If the help in place isnt working and he isnt meeting targets what do they plan to do about it iyswim.

Good question Claw... i guess if i ask them that question they'll say "well lets' wait and see first"

No doubt they will.

But i would insist on no more waiting, you have waited long enough, he has failed to meet targets on 2 IEP's, its statement time.

The help and support he has received has not been enough, he has not progressed, he needs more.

Im not sure when your last SA was refused and if you cant apply again just yet, at the very least they should be seriously revising his IEP and the help he receives.