Im a mom with LD too(what can we do)

Toni,

Have you had any cognitve therapy. Writing and spelling was a real chore for me but with a lot of persistence I learned the rules. I’m not implying that you may or may not be able to do this but it may be possible with therapy for you to improve in these areas.

I am curious is it a memory thing where you can’t remember the rules of spelling? You seem to write using phonics. English is the toughest language to learn.

Please don’t feel selfconscience here. I am an OK speller because taught myself a lot of tricks.

Toni—

I’m new here so I don’t know the players. When you responded to my question about suspected LD, you seemed so confident and comfortable that I assumed you were an old hand around here!

You don’t need to apologize for anything! Your spelling is off but I could easily read your post. To he!! with people who might give you a hard time about it. Take Ball’s advise and do what you can but never feel badly about doing your best.

Today I am angry with people who equate LD with dumb. I can tell by your posts that you are one intelligent woman. If someone “live” can not see that, boy is it thier loss!! I have two sisters. One of my sons has a pretty bad speech impediment. One sister takes the time to listen to David, one does not. My David is an intelligent, humorous, charmer. It is my sister’s loss that she will not take the time to see that. The jokes she has missed!

Sometimes I get overwhelmed with life and the extra work it takes us. Sometimes I get angry. Making school work out for my two special sons takes a large amount of my time and energy and it may for you too. Hang in there and know that you are doing your best. You love your son with all your heart. That will take you far.

Feel free to write to my anytime, about any thing.

Barb Bloom

Barb & Ball,
Barb, I am preaty confadent.Its just well my hard head , it gets a little sorre from time to time.As fare as this thread goes I was felt the need to confes sum intere dialog out loud.Im looking in to going back to school , I dont know what I realy want to do.Thin I have to whay what is realesticely optanabel (with a baby and LD) The hole thing has me pulling my hear out,I dont want to fling hash and mix drincks the rest of my life.Allthoue I am a hell of a bartender,the best Alabama slamer yull ever tast.Sorry now Im being silly.
Oh barb I was a stuterer and if Im realy upseat,tierd or have dranck way to much coffie it some times showes up.I pause from time to time now to stop the stuter. Please tell your son to keep trying and wright wright wright :)

Ball,
ya I have been in resours classes all of my school carer,how ever they just throw me in the (slacker)or ideat classes in high school.There I dident just have to wory about ower every day stuff but bullys to. It was grate I was bord,indegnent and picked on more than normal.(Can you say shutte down)
To anser your queston about spelling I realy dont know.I was dubed with (are you ready) a short term outetory memery disfunchon with transposing tindenses.I do know that I proces in bulk, the rouls for spelling and reading go completly agenst that.To read I have to brake every word down.
Unfortchonatly I spell the same way. Oh well we’ll keep plugging a way.
thanck you bouth so much. I WOULD LOVE TO TALK MORE Toni

Toni,

Did you have a brain injury? It sounds to me like you did. Perhaps birth trauma? You seem to have remembered the rules of phonics.

I am always leraning to spell. I will write or type a word and think, hmm, “that doesn’t look right” The way I learned to spell was a combination of phonics and reemembering how words were spelled and knowing that in English there are just as many exceptions as there are rules.

Do you believe your spelling can improve with practice?
If you do go to your local library and see if they have a literacy volunteer program. Also see if you can learn one rule a day. For instance let’s take the word FAT. If we write FAT and put an E on the end we get the word FATE We see that adding an E to the end of word that has a vowel separtated by one consonant the short A in FAT become a long A in FATE.

I still do not have a complete understanding of your difficulty but I will give it some thought.

Try to learn another rule and post it here.

BELIEVE = BE LEVE Here’s a trick that will help you spell believe The reason there is an I in believe is because I believe. B E L I E V E ……… b e l I e v e.

I hope this helps.

Ball,
No, I dident have a brane engerys and I was a very helthy child.(no ear infechons) nothing. I get the baseck ruals of vauls and some otheres like,( ph ) in plase of (f ).
What it gets better. Whin In school I could study for a spelling test and ace it.
I would get home my Dad would Quise me and I wouldent have a clue. If I dont use the word frequintly, I dont retane it.
This frusterated him and stumped my teachers.I have even been documented in a study or two.I dont want to brag but for the sack of understanding; my I Q.
was in the range of genas.( Ohhhh I hate saying that sorry)
I dont know if that helps. How ever it is Quit a stimulatting Quandy , isent it?

Hi Toni,

You do sound very articulate and intellegent. Ball’s suggestions were really good. I think that with the rules of spelling you have to come up with tricks, like the “BEL EVE” one to remember how to spell correctly. My problem though is with proof reading. I skip lines and miss words all the time. I was taught as a secretary (the world’s worst job for me) to proofread my work from bottom to top. In other words reading the sentence backwards (ie, backwards sentence the reading words other In). And, I repeat information I receive like phone numbers back to the person giving them to me, to check to make sure that I didn’t transpose the numbers.

I always have to think,” i before e except after c and when sounded like a as in neighbor and weigh.” And, even though it’s not spelling, I always have to say out loud, “30 days have September, April, June and November. All the rest have 31 except for February which has 28.”

I can totally relate to your frustration about what to do. I’m not sure either. I really need to help bring in an income but I’ve had so many frustrations and so much lack of success on most jobs that I really am fearful of going to work again. I don’t think I could bear to be fired from another job!

My problem, more than spelling is comprehension. I try to read and re-read as much as I can about LD. I also recently read the book, WHO TOOK MY CHEESE, but it wasn’t until my husband, who just finished reading it as well, talked about a part that he related to that I could remember what I had read. I know that when I’m down about stuff I’m going to have to read it over again. Fortunately it’s a very short book!

If I do go back to work at some point, when my daughter goes to school all day, I will probably let them know about my LD after I’ve accepted the job, which I haven’t done before. But the key is to do something that I think I’ll be successful in and not to keep on going toward jobs that don’t play to my strengths. I’m still trying to figure out what they are. I write well, but even writing takes me a while until I figure out just what I want to say and how to say it without sounding long-winded.

Anyway, I hope that we can all continue to talk about things that have helped us, like Balls spelling tricks and that we can help each other in that way. What might seem like a small trick to one person might be a life-saver for another.

Glad to know I’m not the only LD mom out there!

Toni and LD Mom,

My gut is telling me that there is an organic component to Toni’s spelling difficulties. Toni expresses her thoughts beautifully.

Toni have you ever had your memory tested? When you are writing does the process of writing cause you to forget the rules of spelling or are you unable to memorize the rules?

If I am being too nosy let me know.

Not at all Ball, on the contrery I apresheat it. Its hart to reaserch your self with out hearing others apenon.(keeps me focest and obgeteve)
Yes I have had my memery tested, they disided the primery problom was in my short tearm atatory memery.
reamember thoue I also have trubel reading.If Im hurred or distracted my speed as well as my comprehencon suphers grattly.
please keep bounssing idias, it keeps me sharp
thancks Toni

Toni,

I tend to be the type of person who ends up putting his foot in his mouth so I am glad that I am not out of line.

I tink memory is a lot more complex than is readlily known. I have even heard of a theory (actually more than a theory) that even the our body cells store memories. I can’t believe the very tiny (hippacampus) area in our brain actually store all our memories. The nuances that memories and the feeling those memories evoke perhaps emcompass more than just the storage of data and it’s retrieval.

I believe the most memory problems have more to do with recall than storage. The processing of memories is the thing.

Toni, try incorporating the spelling of words into the core of your being. Spend a whole day on one word and another day looking up words in the dictionary. Remember, this TTT Things Take Time.

good luck!!!

Isn’t it amazing… all of the different strengths and weaknesses the human brain is capable of. I dropped out of my first year of high school and spent many years dropping out of college before my LD was recognized. Now I havea BA in psychology with a minor in special education and I have 2 beautiful boys, 5 and 6 years old. One is high functioning autistic. One appears to have some learning disabilities but we aren’t sure how serious. Dealing with SPED services has been an ongoing nightmare. Sometimes I’m afraid that my LD interferes with my advocating well for my children. Meanwhile, my husband gets mad at me for being disorganized and for not being able to write a letter “that looks like an adult wrote it.” He!!, I can’t even dial the phone right half the time! He does to me the one thing I will not tolerate anyone doing to my children… I pity the fool I catch telling one of my boys they just aren’t trying hard enough.

Rose,

This may be a bit off subject but what do you know about PACE Brian Skills cognitive rehab?

I can really relate to the phone.

I would also be interested in what your Neuro Psych scores are.

Have you looked at the parenting ld kids bulletin boards? I am wondering if one of the therapies folks talk about there would be helpful for an adult as well?
There are several that address auditory processing problems. Fastforword, Earobics, The Listening Program are some that come to mind. Maybe even the Lindamood Bell programs. Just a thought. Also, in the book A Mind At A Time by Mel Levine, there is a whole section about memory. Memory really is very complicated. This is a really good book by the way.
Best wishes.
Amy

Ball, I don’t know about PACE and I don’t have any test scores. I was tested in New Zealand. They didn’t show me the scores… just said my IQ was a couple standard deviations above the mean but my performance clearly showed learning disabilities. I didn’t know enough back then to ask more questions. I’ve seen you mention cognitive pychology in a few posts recently… it’s something I believe in a lot. I believe in early intervention but no one has convinced me that any particular educational therapies really change the challenges of learning disabilities this late in the game. Not giving up was the most important skill for me to learn before I could make it through university. Yes, many of my skills have improved with practice but over many years of trying and I still have to struggle… it takes me a long time and a lot of proof reading to leave these messages. I lurk around this board regularly without leaving messages and chat rooms… is it even normal for anyone to be able to keep up with those?

Rose,
personly if went throw all the mier to proff my meseges I would never get any thing on this bord. I dicided that this was one place were I could let all my short comming show. We all understand here.We dont mined sounding things out and fiering tipos out ether.
Please dont let your LD get in your way here. you are well spocken and seam to have a lot to ofere to every one. I wish we would have heard from you suner.
Personly I got tierd of not partesapating. This is how I am. My freands and famaly are intelagent anuf to sound it out. If I have somthing formel to wright then I spell check it.
Dont hold bake or be inbarest here, you are amugst pe3ople of the same flock. :) Toni

Rose,

I agree with Toni. You can post here pretty well without fear.

Your question regarding message boards and chat rooms is interesting. I personally will not do chat rooms. I do post on two other “normal” boards but I’m slow. One of them is slow enough (not that many people and those who are there don’t always go there every day) that I’m probably precieved as “normal.” I’m thinking about pulling back from the other board. The discussions tend to fly pretty fast and it just takes me too long to resonde to questions. Maybe I’ll just lurk there.

Barb

This is my problem—I can tell I spelled resonde wrong but have no idea what is right and I’m off enough that spell check has not idea what I want. Oh, well. Toni—‘cause of you I think I’ll just post it rather than delete the whole message. : )

Rose,

My wife/girlfriend would get frustrated with my poor organizational skills, my “brown outs” , confusion ect…

Part of it is she can’t be bothered to make the attept to understand and she thinks it is an excuse. Also she is unwilling to make the mental leap required to understand. I did have her sit in for part of a disscussion I had with my neuro psychologist. I think she realizes now that all my deficets are real but I still don’t think she’ll ever totally understand because that would take effort. Over the years she’s become distant and cold toward me and her grown son. She may find a way to blame that on LD but her hormones are out of wack and she’s stubborn.

I am not allowed to blame anything on LD/TBI but she manages to use it against me if we are having a dispute but I end these dispute rather quickly with 3 words. “You’re right dear”