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1K views 6 replies 4 participants last post by  SeaChelle 
#1 ·
Hi, my daughter just turned seven. We have homeschooled for three years now. I feel as though she has a developmental disorder or a delay. Whenever she speaks on the phone to relatives lately they say her four year old kindergarten brother speaks more clearly than her. When she is frustrated or if she is asked to do something she does not want to do she either grunts, cries or even meows instead of explaining her feelings or asking for a explanation of why she needs to do something.
She can not read, aside from memorized sight words. She writes letters other than the sounds they make to her f goes either r or t. We previously homeschooled and had a meet up group with a homeschool advisor. At no point did our advisor mention my daughter having a speech impediment or reading delay and I thought we were on track but on our own pace. Now if I record her voice and listen to it I hear something off, like a lisp but with vowels if that makes any sense.
Before we moved least spring she had a regular visits with a chiropractor and a naturopath but not an allopathic pediatrician. I'm concerned she might have a processing or other developmental disorder that was not picked up on earlier because of our homeschooling and use of alternative medicine. So where do I begin to walk down the path of a traditional diagnosis?
 
#2 ·
You need to check your insurance and see what is covered. My recommendations:

  1. Have her hearing checked. Real check, in a booth with a specialist who is good with kids. NOT A SCREENING.
  2. Have her vision checked. Real check, NOT A SCREENING.
  3. Find out if your insurance pays for private speech therapy, and if so, get her started. If not, ask for a speech eval through your local school. She is eligible for sp. ed. services through the school (if she qualifies) even though she homeschools. A hearing eval has to come first, though.
  4. See if your insurance will pay for a "full neuro-psychological evaluation." Keep the name of the person who tells you yes, along with the date and time they tell you this. These are expensive, and people have been told it is covered only to be told after the fact that insurance isn't going to pay.

What kind of instruction have you provided in phonics? She doesn't know phonics, but has she really been taught in a consistent, systematic way? Not to get into a homeschool or reading debate, but if she hasn't really been taught, then it doesn't mean much that she doesn't get it. Kids with speech issues have a harder time catching on to phonics because they don't hear and/or produce the sounds the same way the rest of us do.

I really like the program "Reading Reflex." It's a paperback (You can get it on Amazon) that has little puzzles you cut out and store in envelopes. Super easy, very affordable, and provides lots of practice and repetition but in a fun way. It's what I used to help my DD with autism get started reading.

But I would definitely get her hearing checked and get her into speech therapy.
 
#3 ·
Sorry for the delayed response. I had forgotten I had this posted twice.
So my daughter had her hearing checked and vision last spring but not by a doctor, by our naturopath. Now we have state issued insurance that does not cover anything but traditional doctors. There are only a handful of paediatricians or family practices in our city that take our insurance, even less are accepting new patients, and so far none will take a non vaxed child! Can doctors offices really refuse to see a child because of their vax status? Each receptionist has asked me the date of last vaccines when have called to make an appointment. I feel like I am stuck, on one hand I want a regular doctor to asses my daughter for a potential learning delay r disability. But othe other hand I do not want to vaccinate my daughter so she can be assessed. I really don't want her to end up labeled as a disabled child in case she ever has to go to public school. However I do want to know if their is an issue I need to begin interventions with. Although I feel like a bit of a catch twenty two, I am hoping some of you mamas can understand!
 
#5 ·
I really don't want her to end up labeled as a disabled child in case she ever has to go to public school.
Letitia is right -- if you have her diagnosed privately and don't tell the school, they have no way of knowing about her diagnosis.
However, if your DD does have delays and you enroll her in a decent school, they will eventually figure it out. There could be a really big delay between when she starts and when they qualify her for services (like the better part of a school year), and during that time she won't receive special help, accommodations, modifications, preferential grading, or extra help to overcome her disability and reach her potential. I don't understand how that would be a good thing.
 
#4 ·
The labeling isn't necessarily that big a deal because essentially you are in charge of it. If the testing is not done by the school, then the school doesn't necessarily have to know anything. We have found it helpful to share my daughter's diagnosis (ADHD) with her teachers, but nobody forced us to do that.

It's hard for me to imagine your daughter had true audiometry as her hearing test if it was done by a non-audiologist. I have hearing loss, so have had a gazillion hearing tests, 2 different states and lots of different providers, and been there for my daughter's, probably 6 sites in all. It's a long process, done by an audiologist, and it occurs in a standard soundproof booth. The booth is a tiny room, maybe 4x4 feet (a guess), and you sit in a chair in the middle. There's a thick window, and the audiologist sits outside the window. All the ones I've seen have a mechanized monkey and puppy that are used for testing very young children. I can't remember if my daughter wore the headphones (she was about 13 months), but yours would. Someone her age would indicate when she heard a tone and which ear she heard it in, but she would also have some testing where she repeated two-syllable words. If this doesn't sound like the testing your daughter had, then she didn't have full hearing testing. It's important to do this kind of test because it assesses a lot of different things very precisely. Hearing loss can vary in the same person from one range of frequency to another, and word recognition (how the brain integrates the sound) is an important part of functional hearing. Most insurance covers hearing tests. If you can't get some names from a pediatrician, find out if you can self-refer. As a last resort, if you can't get any info from someone like another parent or a pediatrician, I would look in the yellow pages under "Audiologis" and call and ask what percent of their patient population is pediatric.

I am sorry about the vax thing. I hate to say again to post in another forum, but there is a forum about vaccination and maybe you could ask there about how to find a pediatrician.
 
#6 ·
I think a lot of people misunderstand what being labeled as "disabled" in school means. It just means she needs extra help and will get it. A good teacher will also recognize an increased potential for bullying and handle it artfully.

Other kids will realize she's different even if she doesn't have a label. Her teachers will realize she's behind. Having a label and starting out with "she has these needs" just gives her a chance to be on even footing.
 
#7 ·
Thanks for the positive information on what it means to be labeled as disabled. I have been doing some research on teaching phonics to children with dyslexia and trying to opincorporate them into her lessons. She has made a bit of progress on some letters sounds. However her antisocial behavior is what concerns me the most. What really confuses me is that there arer a few people she makes eye contact with and just plain seems to like, but very few. Other people she will not talk to at all nor make eye contact with. I am hoping we will have a doctors appointment soon and be able to figure out more about what she is feeling and wher she is coming from.
 
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