Nonverbal Learning Disabilities at Home: A Parent's Guide

by Pamela B. Tanguay

Do you know a child who is bright, charming and articulate, but has no friends? A child who showed early signs of intelligence, but is now floundering, academically and emotionally? Children with Nonverbal Learning Disabilities (NLD) are an enigma. They're children with extraordinary gifts and heartbreaking challenges that go far beyond the classroom. Nonverbal Learning Disabilities at Home explores the variety of daily life problems children with NLD may face, and provides practical strategies for parents to help them cope and grow, from preschool age through their challenging adolescent years. The author, herself the parent of a child with NLD, provides solutions to the everyday challenges of the disorder, from early warning signs and self-care issues to social skills and personal safety. User-friendly and highly practical, this book is an essential guide for parents in understanding and living with NLD, and professionals working with these very special children.

Genres: Nonfiction, Education

272 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2000

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was glancing through this book wondering if it would be useful for the shop or if it was too old and outdated as diagnoses, especially in the US, change very rapidly. Much less so in the UK where socialised medicine means there is no financial incentive to find new things that expensive medical attention might help.

How many of us are newly 'diagnosed' with (invented) disorders because they can then they can be treated and billed by insurance companies and possibly even new and expensive drugs. Maybe we are all normal (whatever that is) and just different personality types.

I always thought, and a psychologist (who was not dealing with me but my son) did too that I had AS. I am good with words, an artist, high iq the Mensa and other iq tests actually measure how good you are at doing the tests, they don't measure intelligence at all being as they are extremely culturally-biased towards white, middle-class people who grow up with books. Intelligence is independent of class or race obviously. on the upside. On the downside, I don't always know what people mean if they are being subtle about something and I have some degree of prosopagnosia - face blindness. I can be very obsessive whether it is about a genre, painting something in my head, or food. So I accepted that.

Then a couple of years ago I had a meeting with the art and project directors of my Christmas ad campaign. It turned out that the Czech art director had exactly the same set of traits. Not that he told me, the project director was telling me and laughing and the art director then adding things. He told me of someone else just like us and since then I have met two other people with more or less the same traits.

So do we all have an NLD, are we all AS, or are we just a personality type, one of many?

This is not to do down those who really have a problem that is more than just the problems people face due to us all thinking differently and having different capabilities. It is more musing on whether these differences shouldn't be celebrated for their capabilities rather than diagnosed for their deficits?

[Manybooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

So while I do think that the information presented by Pamela B. Tanguay in her Nonverbal Learning Disabilities At Home: A Parent's Guide is for the most part very much enlightening (and also of necessary practical use), I oh so very much do wish that there had been at least some information about (and for) individuals diagnosed with NLD as adults (and adults, even older adults, do indeed keep getting diagnosed with NLD, simply because of the fact that when they were children or teenagers, NLD was at best a vague concept).

Now I was diagnosed with NLD in my late forties, and it is indeed and truly frustrating to the extreme that there indeed is so very little reading material available that is specifically geared towards adults, or that has at least a few chapters devoted to adults. And as someone who very heavily relies on books for information and learning, it would really be a boon to be able to find more than just a minutely few books that specifically give advice for adults diagnosed with NLD (or similar syndromes like dyspraxia), because while some of the suggestions shown and presented by the author do make sense even for adults, much of the advice presented in Non Verbal Learning Disabilities at Home: A Parent's Guide is just so specifically child or teenager oriented to be patently useless for someone like myself (and it sure was frustrating to keep reading suggestions that simply do not apply to me, that simply would not be important for me due to my older adult age).

And furthermore I also and personally do tend to find that a number of the suggestions that Pamela B. Tanguay proposes in Non Verbal Learning Disabilities at Home: A Parent's Guide might, in fact, potentially increase animosity and squabbles amongst siblings (might promote and create increased sibling rivalry). Sure, it would indeed be best and most positive, most productive and conducive to teaching basic organisational skills to a child with NLD if he or she had his or her own room (his or her own personal residing space). However, for the author to actually and rather categorically demand that for families where there there are not enough bedrooms, that the child with NLD should get a room for himself or herself, while ALL the other children should have to share rooms (especially if the bedrooms are not all that large to begin with, as Pamela B. Tanguay also seems to actively suggest that the NLD child requires a spacious bedroom) might be more trouble than it is worth and could easily lead to increased tension, rivalry and fights. I mean, the author actually goes so far as to think it acceptable for the NLD child to have his or her own room, whilst the other children, whilst the siblings be forced to have potentially three or even four per bedroom, not at all an ideal situation, in my opinion, and yes, a perfect vehicle for increasing and developing animosity and for the other children to feel neglected, spurned and not taken seriously. Two and a half stars for Nonverbal Learning Disabilities at Home: A Parent's Guide and no, this time, I cannot and will not be moving my score up to three stars.

[Cadence · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by a neuropsych. I'd say it's pretty dated, and perhaps a bit too 'lay' for my tastes. It feels very much like a memoir of the author's particular child, rather than generalizing.

[Jennifer Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Also see Nonverbal Learning Disabilities at School.

[Melissa Meyerhofer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great beginning book to understand NLD.