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07-12-2007, 03:50 PM
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#1
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Hello, I'm new
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Senior Mommysavers Member & Approved Trader
Last Online: 09-28-2007 04:50 PM
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 258
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Hello, my name is Karol and I have been looking at Mommysavers and posting for about a month.
I have a nine-year-old daughter with Sensory Integragion Dysfunction with a speech delay, an auditory processing problem, and an emotional developmental delay. It has been a roller-coaster ride. She is of normal intelligence, but only this past year (3rd grade) got up to grade level academically. She is still about a year behind a year behind in speech and auditory processing and at least a year behind in emotional development. She has been on and off Zoloft for an anxiety disorder. She is off for the summer to see how she does, but she is so far a nervous wreck. I am waiting to see if it is just withdrawal from Zoloft.
I am currently a SAHM, but taught school (am a teacher by training) before we went overseas to England for a year and South Africa for almost a decade. I had my daughter in South Africa. Luckily, with her problems with language, there was a pre-school for the deaf, the Carel du Toit Centre that took her. They did not use sign language, they use hearing aids and cochlear implants and taught the children to speak. The preschool was the only one of its kind on the continent of Africa, in Cape Town. Luckily, that is where we were. It is attached to a medical school/teaching hospital, Tygerberg Hospital of Stellenbosch University.
They had classes in three languages, luckily English was one of the three languages for classes. They took a few hearing kids with extreme language delays (2 1/2 delay at age 3 1/2). They had speech therapy and occupational therapy on site (which was mostly covered by our medical insurance in South Africa - a different system than here.) We came back to the US when she was in kindergarten and am glad that she did because there wasn't going to be a good place for her in the school system in SA. She was not low-functioning enough for the special education schools they had there, but was going to struggle in regular school either public or private. There are no special services at schools in South Africa unless they are the special ed. schools. Everything has to be done outside school. So, coming back while she was in kindergarten (her special pre-school in South Africa went through the equivalent of kindergarten.)
My daughter's Sensory Integration Dysfunction and anxiety disorder APPEAR to be ADHD. I want to get the word out, not everything that LOOKS like ADHD is ADHD. Schools try to rush to that conclusion.
I had a child psychologist diagnose my daughter with ADHD 2 years ago here in the US without ever observing her directly. He talked with my husband and myself and gave our daughter over to a 23 year old grad student doing her clinical time and the student administered tests to our daughter. I threw out the diagnosis because it went against every thing that we did in South Africa and what the OT and a psychiatrist said here. The preschool and the professionals we saw in South Africa were first world and even could be considered cutting edge.
When I told the school staff about the diagnosis at our IEP meeting, they wanted her to be put on Ritalin or something for ADHD. I explained how the other conditions mimic ADHD and that she has an emotional developmental delay that will make her more impulsive than other children her age as well as an anxiety disorder. I did not accept a diagnosis from someone who never directly observed her when everyone who has directly observed her says it is something else. The school staff stated she could go another year and be observed. I will not bring it up again at the next IEP meeting and wished I hadn't now because it is irrelevant to the treatment she actually needs. For someone who is a teacher, I should have known better. I was trying to get them to understand that not everything that looks like ADHD is ADHD. It is just convenient to drug the child. A child psychiatrist told me that Ritalin works whether or not a child has ADHD. Please remember that: A six-week trial of Ritalin will work whether or not the child actually has ADHD.
My daughter receives speech therapy twice a week at school, has a social skills class four times a week. I took her out of OT because it was 20 minutes every two weeks and put her in private ballet, gymastics, and trampoline classes. She took ballet in 2nd grade, but when I put her in all three in third grade, I saw a great improvement in her. It took the place of OT, only better.
The experts think that the system of movement and balance is off in the inner ear and that is what has caused her extreme speech delay. It is a rare thing and is part of her Sensory Integration Dysfunction.
I cannot believe she is the same child who was like a whirlwind/tornado that my husband and I called (with her not in the room) the one-woman demolition team that she was from the time she could walk until she was about 6. For those of you struggling with a "tornado toddler", there is hope and it can only get better.
I was a teacher and understand how the special ed. system works in the public schools and would be happy to give advice to the best of my knowledge. (There are differences state to state, but I understand the general system.)
I would welcome any responses to this post. Raising a special needs child is difficult.
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