I have a 9 yr old who is very bright but is performing very inconsistently in school. I’m sure she has an LD, but are unable to ‘prove’ it. She strated speaking before the age of one and by 18 months could speak in sentences. Retrospectively, the problem surfaced at age 5 when she would throw a tanrum every time she had homework to do. She could not read till age 7 (only high frequency words). She had a psychological assessment at age 8 and was diagnosed as being dyslexic (“masked” dyslexia). She went for intervention at a centre for dyslexic kids and they felt that she was not dyslexic but possibly has problems with her phonics. She was on remediation for 1 year and was reassessed by a different psychologist who was positive that she was not dyslexic at all. And we were told that she has an IQ of 135.
She has difficulty spelling words like break, immediately, disappointed, brought, interesting to name a few. Her compositions are not reflective of her general abilities. Her sentences do not flow, her spelling a pain to read. Grammer does not seem to be a problem, She has difficulty putting her thoughts into words.
She does very well in Sience, computer skills, above average in Math but not in English at all. (Considering that this is the language we speak all of the time). Of course, her Mandarin (2nd language)is a total disgrace!
We live in Singapore and somehow I don’t feel we have the ‘know how’ to diagnose these kids. Can someone point me in the right direction?
I doubt that psych-educational testing is going to tell you a lot that you don’t know already. My recommendation is to look at direct remediation options.
In general, I would recommend doing a cognitive skills training program — specifically, BrainSkills. Website for this program is http://www.brainskills.com .
Prior to doing that, you might want to get a developmental vision evaluation. There is one board-certified developmental optometrist in Singapore. You can find his information at http://www.covd.org/membersearch.asp?cn=SG . (If that link doesn’t work, go to http://www.covd.org to search.)
For more information about developmental vision delays, check out http://www.childrensvision.com
BrainSkills addresses both visual and auditory processing skills. However, it assumes that basic developmental vision skills are in place. Instead of getting a developmental vision eval, you could do BrainSkills and use that as a litmus test for getting a developmental vision eval. That is, if your dd has difficulty with the visual processing exercises in BrainSkills, that would be a red flag that there may be sensory-level visual efficiency deficits that need to be addressed by means of vision therapy.
Nancy