higher order language problem? Not sure I understand the Dr

[nonicknameseemsavailable]

DD1 had an appointment yesterday with community paediatrician and he hasn't ruled out autism which surprised me as due to her social and caring side I hadn't really thought it was a possibility.

Among the things he is concerned about was higher order language. She didn't understand the metaphors he was using etc. I have wondered about some sort of processing problems because she often asks things and says 'it doesn't make sense' but we don't tend to use metaphors and she is only in Yr1 so I didn't realise she was supposed to understand them (I don't get them either really if I am honest)

So she has been referred to a consultant.

My question is what problems would a higher order language processing issue potentially cause? Her other problems are anxiety related and adapting to change so I understand those having had them all my life myself and an aspergers diagnosis is well it doesn't change things IMO because the problems are there whether they decide they are enough to be aspergers or not.

TIA

Semantic-pragmatic issues?

oh crumbs - this is a whole different language isn't it. will google that - thanks

If I'm understanding correctly, you have an aspergers diagnosis yourself? Did the community paed know that?

I ask because it's a bit unfair to expect someone who has aspergers to recognise what might be signs that someone else has aspergers, because those things may well be quite natural to that person

'Higher order language' means that she uses and understands basic language well enough, but when people use more complicated language she doesn't understand it.

metaphors can be hard for someone with ASD because they are, by definition, at the extreme end of 'non-literal.' We say 'it was raining cats and dogs' -as people grow up they come to understand that as 'it was raining really heavily', but some people (like my DD2) would be trying to understand why the cats and dogs would be coming from the sky.

I don't have a diagnosis lougle but I would PERSONALLY say I am on the borderline and I think others would probably agree with that.

She does actually know cats and dogs don't come from the sky but she doesn't understand it any more than that and pulling someone's leg she said she didn't think it really meant pulling his leg but I have to say she didn't sound convinced. She definitely takes things literally.

I think you are right - lots of things which seem relatively normal to me (and in my family) I realise aren't normal compared to others but I am still stuck in the 'is she just extremely bright and meets dabrowski's overexcitabilities' or 'is there a concrete problem'. She is very like me.

As far as im aware Dabrowki's overexcitabilities does not account for higher language disorder, in fact quite the opposite.

Ds has higher language disorder or uneven language development. He is also very bright and high IQ. This tends to mask his difficulties well.

He has difficulty processing, understanding and acting upon more complex, sequential or abstract language and instructions.

He has difficulty with humour, irony, jokes, banter, sarcasm etc.

He can speak at length using complex sentence structures, but struggles to grasp the meaning of a situation or what another person means, particularly in social situations. He tends to give the impression of understanding, especially if visual clues are available to him.

He has a 'spikey' profile or uneven profile, ranging from very superior range to below average range.

I would also add I am sure that ds's higher level language difficulties are partly responsible for his anxiety. Imagine how difficult it must be not to fully understand what someone means or what they expect from you, particularly in highly demanding environments such as school.

Anxiety can have a massive impact on a child's ability to learn.

www.linguisystems.com/products/product/display?itemid=10362

This is a SALT assessment that DS1 and DS2 did.

DS1 was over 5 years behind expected level. But he scored 10/10 for idioms and is very good (now at 13) with humour, sarcasm etc.

These (higher level functioning and literal understanding) were assessed separately - ie idioms is not part of TOPS.

DS2 has an almost opposite profile - inference non-existent, 0/10 for idioms, doesn't get humour etc but above age with some aspects of higher level functioning.

Claw - can you give me a link/ ref to overexcitabilites and higher level language?

Ds2 has appt at neurology clinic at the end of the week.

see this is why I am puzzled. She doesn't 'get' some things but on the whole her level of understanding is WAY beyond the other kids her age. We don't use metaphors so she has no real exposure to them so how would she understand them and she did know they weren't literal but then in other ways she does take things literally. I assumed some of the questions she gets from reading books were from dyslexia issues rather than language but then I don't know.

The overexcitabilities would explain her other issues though. Her sense of fairness, her looking for the logic in everything, her anxiety is linked to perfectionism and not wanting to get into trouble for anything. She is in the grey area, nothing is really obviously aspergers.

She has a visual processing disorder and I am pretty convinced she is dyslexic but compensating for it.

she is definitely extremely bright and in a family of people who are often described as quite genius (sounds odd to say it but it is true) so she could quite probably be compensating for problems and hiding them. I suppose we just have to wait and see what they decide.

Keep, I don't have a link to a reference between higher level language and overexcitabilites, my comments were my interpretation. When ds was younger, without a ASD dx and described as 'gifted' by EP, Dabrowki's overexcitabilities was something that I researched, so just my opinion.

I found ds fitted the theory extremely well, however what didn't fit for me was higher language difficulties.

Nonickname, im not suggesting your dd does/does not have ASD or anything else. Just that it is possible that being very bright helps to compensate or hide difficulties well.

My ds for example also has a visual processing disorder, yet his reading age at 5 was something like a 10 year old, so indeed very puzzling.

At 5 his IQ was assessed to be in the top 5% of the population. After 4 years at school and suffering with anxiety, at 9, his IQ is 'not able to compute due to the amount of scatter between subtests'. He also has a very uneven profile of attainment. Anxiety has a big impact on learning.

interesting you have the same experience with the visual processing disorder as we do, very high reading age.

What a shame his anxiety is so crippling. One thing you could look into is Rob Kelly's Thrive book. I have been doing it myself for a severe phobia I have. I know he has had success with parents doing it and applying it to children. The book is about £20 and yes it works better if it is done alongside sessions with a trained person but you could work through many of the things at home yourselves and see if it helps?

Visual processing is a complicated business too isn't it! I think my ds is probably dyslexic too, he is 9 and still reverses some letters and complains of words jumping about etc. Which is very confusing when it comes to how he could have such a high reading age, if words are jumping etc.

Ds's spatial relations (measures the ability to see specified figures even when they are hidden in confusing, complex backgrounds) is on 99.9 centile. So I think his ability to see figures (or words) in confusing backgrounds, is compensating for it.

However the amount of effort this much take, compared to another child is probably massive.

Ds has had intense and extensive involvement from trained professionals for his anxiety. His anxiety is generally school related.

DD1 wears coloured glasses which helps immensely and stops her crying from the white board contrasts which hurt her eyes. She struggled with blending although is getting it now but reads extremely fluently just presumably from learning whole words and the shapes of them even though that isn't how she was taught. I think it must be exhausting for them if they are battling things like that, I suppose they don't realise how easy other people find things.

anxiety is a strange thing. I have always suffered and it upsets me to think certainly DD1 is the same, I would like to hope we can give her some skills to deal with it so it doesn't have to ruin her life and I hope DD2 isn't going to be the same, she doesn't seem so bad. I know it is all about changing how you think about things, having more confidence and less concern about what other people might think but it is so hard to change now, I hope if I can help her learn this at a young age she might find it easier to adopt the techniques. They must work for some people.

Your dd has Irlen Syndrome? ds was tested for this, he doesn't have Irlen Syndrome, ds has occolomotor defiencies type 2 unfortunately colour lens or overlays don't help. Ds's disorder is more to do with his inability to track text as for reading and writing. Although he has photophobia too! which means he cannot read from the interactive white board or see certain colour writing on the normal white board. Conflicting business it is too!

I wish you and your dd all the best and hope she can manage her anxiety effectively too

well we went to a vision therapy opticians that the school suggested because she was having awful problems with the white board and the optician did a very thorough check and said all was fine optically but she was always rubbing her eyes, crying about the white board hurting them and making them water all the time and generally very uncomfortable about it all. I noticed that when she was reading story books if a page had a coloured background she read it perfectly, if it had a white background she was rocking backwards and forwards and looking all over the place, missing punctuation etc and she would read a few pages beautifully and then just crash from exhaustion. We went and had a colorimetry test with astonishing results and with her glasses she went from reading literally only a few pages before being exhausted to reading chapter books. She hasn't had any styes since then either, presumably as she is no longer rubbing her eyes all the time. She still shows some dyslexia type problems but a large amount of her issues improved with the glasses which was a big relief.

We haven't had her tested with the tracking test they do (although that sounded like fun with them recording her eye movement and what she would actually see when reading) as we thought we would see if things settled down with the glasses and they have. The problems she still has are more to do with if she sounds out a new word she will get it in sections but say a bit is ae she struggles to identify the sound when seeing it in a word. if you say what sound does ae make she knows in a fraction of a second so she can hear it and she can see it if it is the only thing on a page but in a large mass of text it all still gets a bit jumbled sometimes. I suppose the glasses aren't a complete cure and probably aren't the perfect match for her colourwise. They did say her colour might change over time so at some point we will get her retested but she has had them for 8 months now. I have done a huge amount of work with her on blending practice and little techniques for when she is tired if she can't see the letters clearly what she can do to pick up other clues, especially if she can't see the punctuation.

I feel for your son (and you), life is complex enough even if you don't have any problems and if you are going to have a problem at least if you have a straightforward one it can be helped even if not cured but if you have a complicated combination of things then it is hundreds of times harder.

Ds is given use of the teachers laptop when required to read from the interactive white board, as he simply cannot see at all what is written on the board due to the glare and causing the words to fade out, he is extremely sensitive to bright lights, a sensory thing.

Ds has never used phonics (he knows phonics, he has just never used them to read) or sounding out words. He just memorises words, kind of sees it once, then just knows what it says for next time. He was reading like this at nursery, he was memorising and could read books. I was told 'this isn't reading', apparently a child cannot read, until they sound out. He would also read street signs, names of shops etc as we passed.

He does the same now and when you think about it, as adults we never sound out words as such when reading, we just know what they say.

Ds has always been obsessed with patterns, at a very young age being able to do complicated jigsaw puzzles without looking at the picture on the box, maybe due to his very high spatial ability. I am sure this how he reads, by patterns in words.

'large mass of text' and words being 'jumbled' could be due to tracking difficulties. Occolomotor deficiencies type 2 is exactly that. From ds eye specialist report 'his ability to follow lines as reading and writing was very inaccurate and this also made it very slow'. The test was ds being given a sheet of paper with lots of letters closely together and in different patterns and asked to name the letters.

He was given exercises to improve this. Also in school if he complains of words 'jumping' or being 'fuzzy' he is given enlarged text or use of a tracking magnifier.

So it might be worth getting tracking checked, as it is easily resolved.