I asked for your advice for parents of a child diagnosed with nonverbal learning disabilities, and the latest contribution to that page promotes the importance of finding outside help to explain your child to the school. Writes Guest Mom:
"The best thing that I ever did to help my son with all the issues he was having at school was to get the support of an outside educational psych that I hired to work with us. This person advocates for us at school and knows the system and can therefore get the help my son needs at school. Before getting the help of an outside advocate, my son was terribly misunderstood at school and treated very unfairly by the staff. He was labeled as a bad kid with oppositional defiance issues. Once our outside advocate became involved a lot changed for the better and my son can actually thrive. It was well worth the expense. Since the stress from the school situation has lifted my son no longer has anxiety attacks as he had before and we have been able to avoid medication. From my experience most schools do not seem to be ready to recognize NLD as a real learning disability. With the help of the advocate they were willing to re-write and comply to his IEP based on her recommendations.
Have you had luck with an outside expert shaping your child's IEP? Share on the Readers Respond page for IEP advocacy. And if you have NLD tips to share, like Guest Mom, add them to the NLD Readers Respond page.
Photo by Terri Mauro