I have maintained my eldest's bedroom until now, but I am going to repurpose it as a guest room/sewing center this summer. Her little sister wants her big sister's double bed for her own room, and so there will be her sister's twin bed in my eldest's room if she needs it. However, at this point my eldest dd is 23, a college graduate, has been living outside the home since leaving for college in 2008 (although she continues to store stuff at our place), and plans to marry this October. Her fiance owns a house. The knowledge that she could always go home has, i think, been helpful to her but at this point, she wishes to strike roots of her own. I took my brother's room when he left for college; until then I had shared with my sister. My parents repurposed both rooms into a guest room and a guest room/study when we left for college. I kinda did feel bad about that, however, which is one of the reasons why I maintained my eldest dd's room.

Both my kids had vision therapy at ages 14 and 8 respectively. They are now 23 and 16. No sign of regression thus far. I had vision therapy for convergence insufficiency at age 23. They told me that I would need to do the exercises for the rest of my life but I am 56, and have not done so since 24, and I don't have insufficiency. I agree that since vision therapy especially with respect to convergence insufficiency is basically exercises for the visual muscles, yeah, there could be regression. If there is, presumably one restarts doing pushups for the muscles involving vision.

I have no advice on the GI issues. With respect to the behavior issues, because you didn't have TV and she was uncomfortable with other kids, she most likely never saw alternate ways than those in her home - which you say was super strict - until she lived with Grandma for a month. Suddenly she went from total control to huge freedom. She probably watched TV until her eyes fell out, stayed up late eating popcorn and did whatever whenever. From the point of her allergies and GI system that was a big error. From the point of view of a girl entering adolescence it was like, wow. Wow! WOW!!! I LIKE THAT!!! She sounds like she is currently on the dungeon level in terms of privileges, so she has no reason to cooperate with you, but at this point you are going to have to negotiate with her so she needs some privileges so that you have something to withdraw. Does she have a cell phone? If not, she most likely wants one, and there are parental controls available which will limit the amount of time she has available on it. Does she have any control over her meals? Likely she wants some. That too can be a negotiating point. Are there things she likes to do? They need to be scheduled into her day/week if humanly possible. Home has to be something other than a jail cell. A lot of this is adolescence. My eldest also had a bunch of hits, although none in terms of allergies/GI sx, but she was okay until we moved to a different state in which there was a high Hispanic population almost entirely composed of recent immigrant males there for the construction boom. She had previously become used to being ignored as the sole Hispanic kid in whatever school she attended previously - I'm asian but my kids are adopted - but suddenly, total strangers were rushing up to her in the grocery stores thrusting their telephone numbers on her. She went from a 14 year old social epsilon in a cold white world to a social alpha in a hot Hispanic one overnight. It was definitely "eager young lads, and roues and cads" all wishing to offer her "food and wine," and it absolutely went to her head. I reacted like the Asian tiger parent that I am. I forbade her friends the house unless I could meet their parents, watched her like a hawk, and took away her cell phone and other privileges when she rebelled against these restraints. This scared away the lesser evils, but, since she felt she was fighting for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it pushed her into a more dangerous set of friends, the ones who were willing to buy her cell phones (which I kept finding and confiscating), and sneak her out of the house at night. We had locks and alarms on every window and door; she made a bolt hole into the garage through an interior wall and evaded all of these. She was hanging out with an exceedingly dangerous set, including at least one older predator, and I lived in fear of her being kidnapped and turned into a sex slave in some mexican bordello. I figured she would stop making progress in therapy if I sent her to boarding school; we were still doing a lot of intervention. A regular girls boarding school would have been too difficult for her and I didn't think she could get in, anyway, or "fit" if she did. I did consider sending her to military school except there are no girls military schools and at that age, girls are an obvious target in coed military schools, especially when you consider most boys are sent to military school for cause. In addition, military boarding schools are mostly places where troubled rich kids can get their "been to high school." (When she was eleven, I had sent her to a coed military school for the summer to take for credit Algebra there because her school refused to put her into either 7th grade Algebra or Prealgebra for the next year, and I wanted her out of their bottom track which would have been more of essentially 6th grade math. She got an A in the course and enjoyed the experience, but didn't actually learn any Algebra. Her school and I compromised on Prealgebra.) The things that helped were as follows. (1) We got her out of Dodge. We sent her to spend the summer in a girls only wilderness adventure program and while she was gone, we moved out of that state to another in which there was a city where there was still a large Hispanic population, but it was mostly second generation and respectably middle class and conservative. She came back feeling normal and acting sane and fitted better into this second generation Hispanic population. (2) We got counselling, and yes, the counsellor told us she needed to have some privileges. (3) We didn't allow her to get physical with us any more and quit making excuses for her acting out aggressively. After she returned from that program, she attacked me in a fit of frustration just once. I called the cops. She spent the weekend in jail and didn't like it at all. Of course I refused to press charges or cooperate with the prosecutor so the charges were dropped, but she never struck me again. After that she would walk away from confrontations. Yes, they can learn.

Another possibility is to move her to first grade in a less demanding school. We did that with dd1 partway through first grade; she went from a private school to a weak public school. She fitted in much better and learned a lot, but in 2nd grade the teacher was very weak and she was not advancing the way we would have liked to see. We tried a different private school for third grade which was again too demanding for her. We moved out of state after third grade and took advantage of the move to retain her in third even thought she had met criteria to be moved on. Best decision we made. I only wish I hadn't started her early in Kindergarten.

Vision therapy is definitely important, but the auditory issues need to be tackled first. I discussed what worked and didn't for my kid on a couple of the CAPD threads in this forum, including the one on "The Listening Program" today. After you have gotten phoemic awareness down she will be able to learn from OG methods, and after she can consistently sound out words, vision therapy will help her with the visual processing issue. Once she has some visual processing ability I would have her memorize the first 1000 most common slght words, (which will help her to read with fluency and comprehension; you cannot have the memory spacve to understand a story is about if you have to keep sounding out words like "the", "of", and the infamous "you." Vision therapy will also help her track better and keep her eyes from fatiguing and giving her headaches. After that I would go with fluency drills. I think there is computer based software for that now and it gets built into speed reading software, but this is also a resource. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fluency-Speed-Drill-Packet-Word-Lists-More-297672 Again, fix the auditory issues first.

Is this really a hill you are prepared to die on? More to the point, is this a hill you are prepared to have your kid die on? What is your kid prepared to do to make you let him drive? My sister and I are twins. Our brother is a year older. Big bro got taught to drive when he was 16, and immediately started running around, coming home at 2 AM and generally acting like someone on a movie set. My parents did the Asian thing. They said, "Well! We are NOT going through that with the girls!" No sanctions were taken agains my bro, and he drove one of the family cars off to college, but WE weren't allowed to learn how to drive! Sis and I learned from friends when we were 21 and no longer needed parental permission for the driving test, but the rents still wouldn't put us on the insurance. I didn't drive on a regular basis until third year med school, when I deliberately messed up all my rotations in med school so that there was NO WAY I could get to them without a car. At that point they gave in, bought me a car and put me on the insurance. A month later after less than two weeks real practice since getting a license at age 21 three years previously, I was driving a car in NEW YORK CITY traffic!!! I learned quickly, had no accidents until that winter when I first encountered snow and ice: nobody died. I was fortunate. So were the good citizens of Gotham City. Sis was/is a better kid than me and so she didn't get a car until she graduated from med school and bought one herself. The salesman had to teach her how to drive it off the lot. I too wanted to wait for my eldest DD who had multiple hits including ADD, CAPD, visual processing issues etc to show some responsibility before handing her the car keys. However, when she was 14 she was brought home by the cops at 1 AM because she had been picked up driving around town with MY car (which was left parked 20 miles away by the cops), having been taught how by her loser 23 year old predator boyfriend. (We pressed charges against the boyfriend and he fled the state, but we also figured that she needed to get legal as soon as possible.) So while she got disciplined for taking the car out without leave and without a license, we also taught her how to drive. It took her 5 tries to pass the written test but only one to pass the driving test. The testing center's record was 23 tries to pass the written test, so while she got on a first name basis with the local center folks, she was not really that much of an outlier. My 16 year old, bright, but very rebellious nephew has been driving without a license since he was 14. This is partly because his father (my brother) is a wimp who spoils him rotten, but also because he simply never sat down and studied for the written test. He figures that the usual rules shouldn't apply to him. After all, as he would be the first to point out, he is a VERY good driver. Why should the rules applying to mere mortals like you and me apply to him? They don't at his home. So again. Are you prepared to let your kid die on this hill? Because if not, you need to at least get him a learner's permit and teach him how. You don't need insurance for a learner's permit.

Interactive Metronome helps a lot. It retired my kids ADD, although not her executive function issues. http://www.interactivemetronome.com/ I would also think about a sleep evaluation (does he kick at night? Restless Leg Syndrome is treatable and he may think of it as insomnia), when it is the legs keeping him awake, not the insomnia making him restless. Does he snore? Adults who snore usually are overweight and have their airway collapse on them. They need CPAP. Kids who snore usually have big sucker tonsils and adenoids, or a zillion environmental allergies, making their noses useless, which btw are often to be found in landscaping jobs. Those kids a T&A and possibly an uvulectomy and partial paletectomy as well if you really can't see down their throat. http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/868925-overview (The uvula is the dangly thing in your throat.) Either way, the insomnia is because the need for O2 overwhelms the need for sleep. Fix the insomnia and often the ADD will go away by itself. Have you tried light therapy? You want to reset his clock so he gets lots of bright light (replace the standard light bulbs in his room and especially his desk with high intesity lights used for SAD http://www.sadlight.com/?gclid=CPPSvdauvr4CFQIT7AodnDsAcg and keep him away from TV, video, iphone, computer screen, kindle etc 2 hours before sleep.

Although an evaluation is always a good idea, it is also reasonable to try out various interventions while waiting on the big evaluation. To be honest, we went for the big evaluation from a world famous prof in the greater Washington DC area. Some of it was helpful; she did catch the language disorder and recommended Lindamood, and she picked up on her kids impairments with fine motor coordination. OTOH, she specifically recommended AGAINST Fast Forword which was THE most useful thing for both her CAPD and to a lesser extent her ADD, but she wholly missed the visual processing disorder and the sequencing issues. The IQ test never got completed, because I was looking in on it through the mirror room and realized that the final score would be somewhere in the 70s and give her a dx of PDD which could do her no good at all. So I stopped the test and we went home. (Prof was not pleased.) Incidentally by age 19 after vast amounts of academic and therapeutic remediation her ACT scores placed her at exactly 100. IQ changes both for better and for worse. Any way, I would try interventions while waiting for a workup. In my experience you have to kiss a bunch of frogs to find a handsome prince, but when it is your kid;s future at stake you pucker up early. I have metaphorically kissed numerous interventions, some of which were definite frogs. First, I would get an auditory evaluation by an audiologist experienced and knowlegeable in childhood CAPD. Instead of just having her sit in the soundproofed hearing booth and press a button whenever she hears a tone which will (if she is correct, cause the audiologist to turn on a device causing a pair of stuffed rabbits to bang castanets etc), this exam ALSO involves listening to a standard list of words read in increasing amounts of background noise.and push the button only when she hears the target word. CAPD kids can handle the former but not the latter. They are FINE one on one, but are distractable in background noise, (e.g. a normal, well behaved first grade classroom with occasional coughs, foot shuffling, chalk squeaking and teacher droning voice.) They can't separate the signal from the noise. If he has CAPD I would get him Fast Forword. Also, please see my other post on interventions I found useful and otherwise on "The Listening Program" today. Second, I would get a baseline on his ADD. I suggest using the circle e method. Take an old, non English language book - I used an elderly German dictionary - and have her circle as many e's as she can in the space of 2 minutes without lifting the pencil from the page except at the end of the lines. Tot up the scores of errors (skips and wrong letters over the total number of e's in the selection.) Off Adderall she would have 5-6 skips/errors per page on a consistent basis. On Adderall she would have 1-2 which is normal.) After Interactive Metronome and off Adderall she consistently got 1-2 errors even months after the intervention, and we were able to permenantly discontinue the med. Thyere was no improvement on TLP which she did about that time. I didn't use this method when dd1 was doing Fast Forword and dd2 never had ADD so I don't know how much my dd1 benefited from Fast Forword. However, DD1 definitely did benefit from Interactive Metronome.

My mother, who is a classical concert pianist and still (at 85) a college professor of music, used Tomatis, which is similar to TLP about 15 years ago, when she first started having significant issues with age/profession related hearing loss/tinnitus. Apparently professional opera singers and instrumentalists alike swear it does wonders. At the time the Washington DC area didn't have Tomatis, so she would fly out to Brussels every summer to spend two months at the Tomatis center there. Mom was so enthusiastic about the program's good effects, that I got TLP for my kid who had CAPD, Visual Processing defects, and ADD. The kid did TLP while doing vision therapy. She didn't mind it, but I didn't see any improvement in her CAPD. (Vision therapy did help her visual issues, however.) I handed the TLP tapes over to my mother, who said they were very like Tomatis, quit flying out to Belgium every summer, and currently just uses those to maintain her hearing abilities when she is exercising. What I did find helped my kid was (in this order), Fast Forword www.scilearn.com, Earobics (she couldn't handle it before Fast Forward but this was 15 years ago, and I expect it has improved), the Writing Road to Reading (which is an OG variant), and Lindamood Bell. She spent a summer doing therapist based intervention at LB's Washington DC center. I didn't think it did much good, but their summer program in Washington DC at the time was handled by unlicensed Australian speech therapy students, and was done in cubicles in a very noisy environment. I wrote a letter of complaint to the licensing board and they wrote me back a formal letter saying that their one licensed speech therapist was personally in the tiny cubicle watching my student the entire time she was at their center that summer, but gave me my money back. However, I did think that the Lindamood Bell MATERIALS - which you can buy on amazon - were very good, and I figured that I was just as smart as any unlicensed Aussie grad student and used it with her myself, with some positive effect. I think a large part of the problem was the background noise, which is really hard on kids with CAPD. I also liked Read Write and Type https://www.talkingfingers.com/online-demo/ which is a phonics based typing tutor. For a younger child, I would begin with a combination of Earobics, Bob books, and Phonic Faces http://www.elementory.com/ . That is what I did with my younger child. (Actually she did Fast Forword at age not quite 4, before Earobics, Bob Books and Phonic Faces. I only used the cards out of the Phonic Faces materials; I thought they were better than the Lindamood Bell mouth position cards,and much more appropriate for young kids. Incidentally, I also used Interactive Metronome for eldest dd's ADD. It was definitely worth the money. I was sure about the diagnosis, because I had been trying out various interventions for her ADD by using the circle E method. (Take an old, non English language book - I used an elderly German dictionary - and have her circle as many e's as she can in the space of 2 minutes without lifting the pencil from the page except at the end of the lines. Tot up the scores of errors (skips and wrong letters over the total number of e's in the selection.) Off Adderall she would have 5-6 skips per page. On Adderall she would have 1-2 which is normal.) After Interactive Metronome and off Adderall she consistently got 1-2 errors even months after the intervention, and we were able to stop the med. Thyere was no improvement on TLP which she did about that time. I didn't use this method when she was doing Fast Forword and my younger dd never had ADD.

Perhaps I am overly cynical, but I would not bet my kid's 9th transcript on the goodwill of the local PS, and it is really tough to get decent grades on seven high stakes exams if they all have to be done in a short period of time. What I would do is smile and send him into PS as an entering 9th grader, while having him simultaneously take online courses from an accredited HS on the side during the summers. That way if they refuse to accept the online accredited HS credits, he can still graduate from the accreditted program at the same time that his friends graduate from this PS high school. That is somewhat what I did with my eldest dd. In 11th grade, my dd was in a private high school and she and her English teacher (ET1) absolutely loathed each other. For example, ET1 wouldn't let her go to her locker to get her homework assignments, thus failing her on stuff she had done but had left in her locker because it was late, while simultaneously allowing ET1's more favorored students to go get their assignments out of their lockers. I insisted on getting my dd transferred around the fourth week of school from this honors English class to the other English teacher (ET2) regular English class due to "poor fit". Even though it wasn't yet the first marking period, ET1 insisted that the crappy grades follow the kid so that she had a D on the first quarter report. (The kid got A's with ET2, btw, while doing much less work.) Honors and AP classes at this school got only an extra 0.03 increment as to GPA. A 2.0 would become a 2.03) Placement in dual credit College Composition for 12th grade entirely went by the grace and favor of ET1. I knew that if ET1 let dd in, it would only be for the pleasure of torturing her with head games, so shortly before Christmas, I dropped by the local university to see if dd could do distance learning College Composition for credit during the Spring semester, or failing that, developmental Basic Composition. They had her do some sort of a computer based test (Compass?), and she placed into College Composition. Encouraged I called the school and left a message for her counselor, explaining the situation and asking that she be allowed to drop 11th grade English in favor of taking College Composition for dual credit at the university. The counselor called me back and asked that I drop by "for a few minutes" the next day for "a quick chat about her schedule." We set up an 11 am appt. The next day I dropped by the school for this little chat and was ushered into a largish meeting room by the counselor. In came the principal of the school. In came ET1. In came ET2. In came four college students - education majors from the local university - doing their required practicum at this school. In came the school secretary to take notes. I felt a trifle outnumbered but feigned pleasure, gave them my most charming smile, and shook hands all around. ET1 opened the Inquisition. ET1: "We're very concerned about dd." Me: "Ah..." ET1: "We don't think she should do College Composition." Me: [Nod, smile, no verbal response.] There was a pause, and ET1 fairly roared. ET1: "I am the one who makes that determination!!!" Me (still calm): "Oh." ET1: HOW did she get into that course?! Me: "She took the test." ET1: "WHEN did she take the test??!!" Me: "Last week." ET1: "WHERE did she take the test???!!!" Me: "At the university." ET1 (deflated): "Well, I don't think she should take it. Me (still calm.) : I disagree. ET1: She doesn't belong in College Composition!! She can't even handle 11th grade English! Me: "The university seems to think otherwise. Obviously," I smiled apologetically at the college students, shaking my head sadly, "the standard there must be very low." ET1: "She is NOT going to get credit for it at this school." Me: "Well, that is certainly your prerogative. However, since I think we all agree that dd would benefit from as much English instruction as possible, we will have her take ET2's 11th grade English class for hs credit in addition to College Composition for college but not hs school credit this semester. " [Enthusiastic agreement from ET2, who seemed highly amused. The rest of the cast of thousands just seemed perplexed.] "You are an excellent teacher," I said, turning back to ET1, "but I just don't think my daughter is up to your class." I shook hands warmly all around again, and the meeting ended on this note. The same day, however, I enrolled her in University of Missouri Columbia High School Online, which is a regionally accredited high school program. They accepted all her credits real and and anticipated, including some college credits from an Outward Bound experience she had, the College Composition credit, and the second semester College Composition credit she did at the university that summer. She filled out her schedule with 5 carefully chosen guts and went from completing 11th grade in Spring 2008 to being a freshman in college in Fall 2008, and graduated high school from University of Missouri Columbia High School with their bricks and mortar students in Spring of 2009.

<<Key Curriculum was what I was thinking of, but you are right, it started with fractions and decimals. It's been awhile - my youngest is 10th grade and precalculus, and I forgot. My bad. I think I went to Key Curriculum because the adaptive math software my kids liked stopped at that point.

My eldest finished her high school degree at University of Missouri High School. https://muhigh.missouri.edu/ She went from the end of 11th grade to having completed all requirements for their high school degree and being a first time college freshman over the course of a summer. She moved into the college dorm Fall of 2008 and graduated from high school Spring of 2009. You can also do single HS and college credit courses. I know people who used it for credit recovery, for courses not available at their school, and for getting college credits.

With respect to easy courses, you probably want to do things that will count for both college and high school. Your friend here is the CLEP exam. http://clep.collegeboard.org/exam Their format is computer based testing, (done at a testing center with government ID required and probably biometrics in a year or less), with straight 4 answer multiple choice with no penalty for wrong answers, and they have a blessed simplicity about them, with far fewer word type problems. They are WAY WAY easier than AP courses (which however are very much like real college courses, which is why I am making my normotypical 16 year old youngest kid fight her way through APs as well.). You should look up the policy of your local CC and State Uni, but most accept oodles of CLEPs and DANTE exams hhttp://getcollegecredit.com/ because the veterans use these exams to get out of coursework, and the veterans, unlike our poor little first time freshman have powerful voting blocks protecting their interests. ( IMHO, this is the major reason why these older students manage to do so well when they return to college older and wiser a few years later. All the military folks take this route.) If you fail a CLEP exam, you can retake the exam a month later, no penalty. I strongly suggest you look at the CLEP College Math book and plan to have her take it this summer, CLEP College Algebra is really just Algebra II, and is in no way comparable to College Algebra even at the CC level, but COUNTS as College Algebra for credit. There are cram books in your local bookstore, and aim at getting done with all the core courses she will need to have for college. Furthermore, having a bunch of college credits is wonderful for building confidence in a weak student. I would also look at getting the other core courses out of the way. All 4 year colleges now have stupid distributional requirements like Music Appreciation etc nowadays which are REQUIRED, and which are NOT guts any more. (Sheer rent seeking IMHO, and the uni's way of keeping their Music/Art/PE/Theatre departments alive when nobody in their right mind would take a course like music appreciation for a grade and for credit if not required to do so. Real music lovers would just go to concerts, take music lessons, and read books.) See if you can take them online long distance so you can help out. At 16 she is old enough to take college courses at your local CC.

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Both my kids are adopted, my eldest came home with kwashiorkor and a bunch of learning disabilities, now mostly overcome. With respect to Enders Game and Edgar Allen Poe short stories, the difference between them is that Enders Game is adventurous sci fi and Poe is horror. I myself love sci fi and am a voracious reader (and yes, I have read the Ender series) but I absolutely loathe and detest horror in all its forms whether we are discussing Kafka, (Metamorphosis gave me nightmares); Gogol, (I took several hours to get through The Overcoat because I felt overwhelmed by pain for that poor smuck), or Poe. Some stupid teacher had us listen to a recording of the Pit and the Pendulum one Halloween when I was in fourth grade and I screamed and ran out of the room part-way, falling over kids, chairs and desks in the process. They let me spend the rest of the afternoon in the nurse's office. I still can't sit though a lot of modern movies although I managed to get through the Star Wars series by standing by the door of the theatre room, and opening it a crack whenever I felt a bit overwhelmed. Even some of the GREAT animated movies out there today are too overwhelming for me; I have to watch them in bits on DVD. I had a good childhood, while your kid has been in foster care. Horror stories may trigger bad memories in her. My eldest was also a very concrete thinker, quite late. She didn't visualize at all well, and that is probably your kid's problem. For that, I would do manipulative based math with her, and try Lindamood Bell's On Cloud Nine Visualizing and and Verbalizing for math program. http://www.ganderpublishing.com/On-Cloud-Nine/What-Is-On-Cloud-Nine.html . If she hasn't memorized her math facts, I would make sure she does so, using drill software and stuff like the Keys to Math series. There is only so much capacity in anybody's brain, and if she has to spend it all on trying to figure out what it means for two cars to reach each other from separate directions when she can't visualize the cars, their vectors or the road, she won't have the capacity to remember her math facts without prior drill. There are plenty of routes to college if she wants to be a nurse or a paramedic. I would begin by having her take a phlebotomy course and a Red Cross BLS course and having her work part time as a phlebotomist and nursing assistant. After a few months, she should take a course to prepare her for the CNA exam, which is straightforward and can be memorized. This will give her better pay and confidence. After she has had some experience doing that, she may be ready to start working on her LPN; most LPN programs require a CNA. This does require a semester of anatomy and physiology, but if she is good at memorizing she will be able to handle that. She will be doing that at a community college, most likely. Math will be a curveball, so you need to get her up to college algebra. It can be done. My eldest did it. After an LPN, there are bridge programs to the RN, and from the RN to the nursing bachelors. For paramedic, I would again start with phlebotomy but do Red Cross BLS, Lifesaving, First Aid and ACLS coursework. I also had trouble with the open ended type of verbal question, especially when people started asking stuff like, "What is the theme etc. but I managed to deal with them by treating them as variables in an equation. For example, THE QUESTION: What do you think is the theme of The Tell-Tale Heart? Write a paragraph, giving at least five reasons. ME: (To myself, get a grip, it's just words on paper, it can't hurt you. Just start writing the framework ) 1. The theme of The Tell-Tale Heart is <A.> The <B> symbolizes <C>. Another symbol is <D> which represents <E> Then you go back and fill in the blanks. If you can't deal with it at first, you throw in some ringers and move on. 2. The theme of The Tell-Tale Heart is <undying love>. The <cabbage> symbolizes <C." Another symbol is <the pencil>, which represents <E> You then start dealing with the ringers, little by little, just putting down ideas. 3. The theme of The Tell-Tale Heart is <love/madness/monstrosity/guilt.> The heart symbolizes <the old man/human condition/conscience>. Another symbol is the eye which represents <Conscience/God/Satan/>> etc. You pick one or two of each category. 4. The theme of The Tell-Tale-heart is the interaction between love and madness. The heart symbolizes the old man. Anothor symbol is the eye, which represents conscience. And so on. After awhile you can let the props fall away and it smoothes out into an essay.