Hi, My son is 10 and was diagnosed with APD this year. I did an extensive amount of reading on the subject because the systems in place weren't detecting/screening for any auditory processing disorder. With that said, all of these things you're listing could be related to auditory processing disorder: executive functioning, working memory, difficulty imitating, language disorders like speech issues and dyslexia. (They could also be related to hearing impairment as well.) My memory says that they won't diagnose auditory processing disorders until 7. But, the research and technology in this area is progressing, so that age may be changing and get younger. I would start looking for someone who can test for APD and I would recommend finding a pediatric audiologist. Use igaps.org to find a person that diagnoses APD, then narrow it down by people who serve children primarily. I would call their office and ask about when they test for APD, they may say you need to wait a year or two. If it were me, I would schedule that one 6 months in advance and do it as soon as you can (based on the symptoms you're describing). Our APD testing was in the $200-300 range. There are a bunch of subtypes of auditory processing disorders, so having a diagnosis will point you to specific interventions. If you plan on sending your child to school, get a thorough private diagnosis with documented accommodations so you have some definitive information to share with the school and they can act on. As far as I can tell, my child's school (ohio) wouldn't have the ability to do the testing, but now that we have a private diagnosis, they can bring in the county's educational audiologist to assist with classroom accommodations. Knowing what I know about APD (I'm a mom and not a teacher or therapist), here's what I'd look for as far as learning to read: • Look for programs and/or activities that are multi-sensorial. Sound only might not be enough support. You want your child looking at the letter and saying the sound. Hearing the sound you make and looking at your face. When you're doing handwriting - saying the sound while writing the letter on a textured surface (handwriting without tears has multi-sensory pieces that help a child to learn handwriting.) • Allow for as much repetition as needed. It's easy to get frustrated with a child with APD because it seems like they're "not listening" or "not focusing". Much of the time they are listening, but the processing is inefficient/incomplete. (They can also be kids who would rather be playing than listening to mom) • Know that they're using other things around them to compensate. They're watching what other kids are doing, they're watching your body language, they're watching your face as you make each letter sound. Give them good access to your face when you're talking to them or demonstrating letter sounds. Watch your body language and patience, as your child may pick up on your frustration or worry. • Executive functioning: Use visuals to explain routines or schedules. Visual schedules. Avoid barking orders at him and expecting him to immediately comply (this is something that has been a struggle at our house). Instead, create routines. My son is a bit older and reading, but I avoid verbal commands as much as possible… he has a planner, a calendar, a packing list, a showering list, etc. With the visual schedules/routines he's very responsible. With verbal commands he seems non-compliant (It's a combo of APD and reading our impatient/frustrated body language) and everyone gets mad at each other. • When teaching reading, pick an optimal time of day where your child is well rested and cooperative. This is probably a very hard task and you want him operating under the best circumstances. • Can you work one-on-one in a quiet environment on reading? Can background noise be eliminated (not covered up by white noise)? Depending on the type of APD, a child may have a very hard time pulling apart what you're saying to them in the foreground from the sounds in the background (screaming toddler in another room, another child running a toy truck across the floor, dad unloading the dishwasher, the neighbor mowing the lawn).

Reading stamina: I think this is a very important piece of the reading puzzle that is often overlooked. My boys learned phonics rapidly, once they had all of the phonics skills they weren’t reading novels. For both, they needed about 2 years of regular reading to build stamina. I would make reading stamina your goal for the next year. You don’t need curriculum. Go to the library once a week and pick high interest for your child books. Get a variety - graphic novels, beginner chapter books, science picture books, poetry, etc. set a goal … usually mine read aloud 15 minutes or 1 chapter a day with me. From my personal experience, kids at this point need to practice decoding long words (3-5 syllables) with parent support and you can read from word lists for this practice. They also usually need coaching on reading out loud with prosody/expression (pausing at commas, making a sentence with an exclamation point sound exciting, etc.) Literature - I get the impression that this child is gifted… and my experience is that gifted kids love information. My kids were not impressed with their reading ability at first, because it didn’t open the flood gates of info until they built stamina. So, open the access to info as much as possible without relying on him reading just yet. Science shows are great, audiobooks, podcasts. Read aloud as much as you can manage. My boys love History Quest. It’s history curriculum but has a lot of literature: a text book that has story components, an illustrated history book, links to videos, hands on projects, and best of all a list of related books. We’ve read all sorts of awesome mythology from this curriculum. We started when one was pre school and the other 1st grade… you can modify based on age. From your description of your son, he sounds like he likes to have a lot of info to chew on and this curriculum provides a plan for that. Structured writing - look at Evan Moore work books: writing a super sentence, how to write a story. These are very structured and give a lot of visual support. They give a kid a formula or model to work from. A bonus for these is that they aren’t very expensive to try. If they do work, you could use the same structure over and over again. Potentially a lot of bang for your buck, but if it’s not a good fit, you only invested $12.

This suggestion seems very contrary to your parenting/homeschool… so I think it’s going to take a lot of reflection on your part to decide if you want to follow the advice. A few things that are schedule-like that I use for my sons that may be helpful: My 10 year old has a weekly planner. We sit down and discuss the week ahead and I write it in the planner. He often has to do homework that is hard and he’d rather not do. If we look at the week ahead, he sees when he has opportunities to do it. Then later in the week I say, it’s Tuesday, you planned on doing homework. Much much better than nagging him. Sometimes the homework is overwhelming and this gives us an opportunity to break it up across a few days. He is at public school, but I think it would work for homeschool too. Maybe he can arrange his week so he has a certain afternoon off to meet with friends or watch a movie. It also is motivating to see what’s coming up - a game, activity, gathering, etc. my son tends to be much more cooperative when he knows something has to get done b/c the next day we will be busy doing something fun. We use checklists for a lot of things. It puts the responsibilities in the boys hands and removes me from verbally commanding or nagging them. We have a chore list for each day of the week. We have a list for packing bags. A laminated list in the shower to make sure they wash throughly. A list for room cleaning. Chore cards with detailed notes for each chore. (We started doing this b/c one of my sons has a hard time capturing verbal directions. But, it sets them both up to be very responsible and independent. They know exactly what is expected of them and there’s no room for negotiation.)

I don’t know enough about long term memory to know how you could use this… but I do know there is a lot of research on different types on memory. Particularly knowing how people capture and store things into their long term memory could be beneficial to you and your kid. physically adroit & taking things apart makes me think he could enter math from more of a visual spatial point of view. Think about how you can make math more 3 dimensional and physical. Magnatiles, math manipulatives, unit blocks, fort building kits, number lines. Some people are just wired to think about the world visually/spatially first, and language second. Some books that would be helpful are the dyslexic advantage and upside down brilliance. nature interests and social skills are certainly valuable… keep doing those and you may find out how they can connect back. Just doing things that make a kid feel good about themselves is reason enough to do it.

What are his strength areas? Generally you can use strengths to support weaknesses. It’s possible that he’s already doing this -compensating.

First off, Im not going to claim to have any advanced knowledge of dyscalculia. but, I have read just an enormous amount of information on learning disabilities in the last year. My son is 2e and has mismatched skills… for example, his math ability outpaces his writing ability and depending on how he would’ve been assessed in the past, it could’ve been very confusing. I think what the psych is trying to say is the testing is pointing to adequate math skills, but problems with output (saying/writing) the numbers. Rapid naming is being able to think of and use the right word. One of my sons has a mild issue with rapid naming and he’ll forget the word for common things like a spoon and it is not predictable/consistent (he’ll not be able to think of a word one day, but remember it most of the time.) If I were to ask him to get a spoon he would be able to do it. And if I were to ask him if we use a spoon or fork for ice cream, he’d know the answer. If I asked him which is round, a fork or spoon? He’d know the answer. If rapid naming is the case, your child may be able to show math skills without verbal output. For example, if you gave him a sheet with a number line on it, and you gave him objects to count, could he point to the correct number? If you wrote on an index card “more” and on another “less” could he match them to two comparable lego towers? Or if he isn’t reading yet, you could say “point to the tower with more blocks”. If you remove verbal responses like saying numbers or math terms and replace them with visual responses (pointing, matching, number stickers) do his abilities seem different? If this was my kid, I would experiment a little with doing math that doesn’t require him to say his answers. And I would read more about rapid naming - how it presents and how you can support a kid who struggles with rapid naming. There are probably lots of layers going on here and you’re starting to put it together. I’m almost a year out from my child’s neuro psych report… after carefully considering each piece and reading in more depth and seeing how accommodations worked, it ended up pointing me to a auditory testing and a diagnosis that no one saw coming.

In general I think neurodiversity paradigm is good and moving in the right direction. I certainly wish schools and medical professionals would have more consistent understanding and acceptance of the idea of neurodiversity and approach kids and families from that perspective. But, I think it leans on positively identifying with a diagnostic label. Although, the catch I have is that all disabilities aren’t fixed and the research progresses and labels change. From my perspective it’s easier to be more vague… some people fall outside the norms, they could have a clear label, they could not, they may improve in some areas, decline in others, one factor may be really impactful at a certain time in life and not in another. My other peeve is that it’s a nice mindset for parenting, but we’re parenting in systems that use the pathology paradigm: education, doctors, diagnosis, therapies… if you want to access all of those things (how can you not access education in any form or medical treatment?) you have to straddle the line between pathology and neurodiversity paradigms.

I just read this article about pathology vs neurodivergence paradigms in respect to gifted/2e kids. This is the sort of thing I want to read more of in regard to parenting mindset: https://www.giftedlearninglab.com/neurodiversity

Thank you! This is exactly what I’m thinking about trying right now. Try a test or two as individuals. Maybe do challenge math over the summer. And if they’re enjoying it and wanting more we can look further into in person events or a math team. My older is very motivated. The younger is great at math but still quite young and super playful, so I’m stepping in lightly to see who’s interested without being intense and overwhelming.

I enquired further, the middle school is no longer doing math counts If he’s going to get into math competitions in the next 4 years, we’ll have to get the school on board or start up our own math team (either through the school or locally) or do it solo.

Thank you! I have zero experience and want to figure it out for my kid!

Our local middle school has Math Counts. He’s a 4th grader, so math counts would start in 6th. I’m mostly looking for enrichment/challenge now, but maybe what he does now can set him up for math counts in a few years. What would you suggest leading up to math counts? thank you!

Thank you! I’ve had a few people mention this one to me. I spent some time digging around their site. I like that it seems less intimidating as a first math contest, i like that the tests are online (one of my kids favors typing) and there are pictures (I have visually oriented kids). I also like that it includes 2nd grade, so my younger (also math enthusiastic) child can also participate. The “challenge math” resources are intended for gifted kids and would make good competition prep/math team/math club material. They even have some videos about approaching math problems (drawing a picture, guess and check, etc) Have you used the challenge math resources? Anything else to know about Noetic? thank you!

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My kid is 10 and new to having a 504. He’s really awesome about coming home and telling me if something seemed off/not supportive, then I can encourage him to talk to the teacher or I can step in if needed. I’m pretty happy about this awareness because I think he’ll be able to self advocate more and more. He has written expression disorder and a writing fluency deficit and approaches writing so differently. He had persistent d/b reversals, and started using cursive “b”s to keep them straight. So his handwriting is all print with cursive “b”s. He figured out how to turn on all of the spelling/grammar support on Google docs and knows how to use keyboard commands to check grammar recommendations and voice to text (figured out while at school). He also writes out of sequence… so he might write all of the topic sentences in an essay first. It’s like he sees the big picture first and slides all the pieces into the framework. It’s very out of the box. I can only imagine how this will evolve.