Livvy and Learning

We've been concerned for a long time that Olivia has a learning disability or is possible A.D.D. or both. Every teacher she has had has talked to us about having her evaluated and looking into her having an attention problem. Clint and I aren't ones to jump on the ADD bandwagon so we've tried to work around it and help her in other ways. But things did not improve and she was really starting to lose confidence in her abilities, no matter what positive things we told her about herself. Last year, we had her evaluated at school and sure enough, she has a serious learning disability, primarily with reading, and it looks to be dyslexia. She is stronger in math. The psychologist said the same thing that every teacher has said.......she has great difficulty focusing on things that she is not interested in. But that even with the things she is interested in, she struggles to concentrate. I thought maybe that it was allergies. I could tell that she had them but didn't have her on any regular medication. I thought maybe that explained the fuzzy thinking and difficulty concentrating. But she has been on Claritin now for a couple of months and the problem (with learning) has not resolved. I was telling Clinton last night that I'm hoping that we can find the "key" that unlocks learning (specifically reading) for her. I want to figure out how to speak her (learning) language. I know that there are different learning styles and I know that she can learn, I'm just trying to figure out what makes it all come together for her. She has a lot of trouble understanding &/or remembering reading principles and turns letters around often.

I spoke with the reading resource teacher today (Olivia goes to a special reading class each day) and she said that Livvy is very bright and really soaks things up like a sponge but that she (the teacher) has trouble keeping Olivia's attention. She often has to say her name to "bring her back". She likened it to a screen letting in air and that Olivia's "screen" has extra holes in it that are letting in too much for her too process. While I was speaking to the teacher, the psychologist that evaluated her last year at her old school walked by. I spoke with him about a course of action. He gave some recommendations. What Clinton and I have decided to do is to make an appt with our family doctor to start her on medicine for ADD and to set up to have her monitored frequently by the doctor. Coupled with that, I will make an appt with the child psychologist to help teach her behavior modification and to equip her with skills to help herself. We don't want to put her on meds as a "fix all". I am looking into dietary changes, etc. and ways to help her develop better habits. This is a hard thing to figure out but as we watch her struggle and feel badly about herself in other areas, too, we know that we owe it to her to do whatever we can to help her. She wants to learn but she has roadblocks and we have to help her remove them &/or help her navigate around them.