Executive Functioning Problems in Son and Who Can Help

First, you may need to travle to get the proper evaluation and diagnosis, and if you do not have the right kind of profesionals in your area to provide treatment, then you may have to travel for that as well. Even if you think you know what his dignosis is, you need a professional to help you, and you need to know that you have not missed something important. Most of us are not equiped to do that ourselves.

You can go several ways. A Developmental Pediatrican will do a complete evaluation that will include educational, psychological, nuerological, speech and language, OT, ENT, audiology, genticists, PT, or any other aspect of evaluation that your son needs. A nueropsycholgical evaluation and treatment with a board certified child psychiatrist would be another way to go, but you will need to suppliment speech and langauge, OT, or any other needs, and you may be put in the position to guess if he needs these things or not, and will be responsible for putting the whole picture together yourself. One thing is for certain, you need a very indepth evaluation that will take many professionals many days and hours of evaluation time to get a good handle on what is going on here.

Executive dysfunction is a big part of many nuerodevelopmental issues, and is one processing measure that will be fully exposed in a full evaluation. This is the function of the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that is in his forehead) and many conditions have significant executive dysfunction as one diagnostic critera. It is usually not a stand alone diagnosis, and he probalby has a more specific diagnosis (it is kind of like saying that my child has fluid in his lungs, when the diagnosis is asthma and fluid was caused by inflamation and and secondary infection-the fluid is the presentation needing treatment but the problem that needs more indepth treatment is broader.)

A counselor is not the appropriate first line or diagnostic professional. First, get a full scale evaluation with a comprehensive treatment plan, then, seek out the treatment that is recomended in your area if possible, and travel if you can't. He may qualify for school based services too, but you should own the evaluation that holds his diagnosis and should never know less about your son's needs than any state agency. Get as much as you can from the school, then provide the rest with private services. Where is he in the school process? If the executive dysfunction is bad, he cannot be doing well in school, but he must have a broader diagnostic category to recieve services, unless the school decided to serve him as LD. What does the school say?

www.wrightslaw.com will be helpful on the school front, but since you did not mention school, I don't know what to tell you about that just yet.

M.

I would first seek the help of a psychiatrist rather than a counselor. Next, I would consider checking into Occupational Therapy, Vision Therapy and Play Therapy as methods to work on increasing his skills. Even small towns often have some form of these therapies available at the local clinic or hospital.

Good luck

In response to some other posts, from my own experiences, I have little faith in the psychologists at this point. We have seen dozens, and have been given everything from she is absolutely fine, to you have screwed her up beyond any hope of "repair" and because is now older than 5 just get used to it there is nothing you can do...

SO... on that note (sorry, again this is just my experiences) I found what seems to be a much better approach. I will agree with Starr and vote for play therapy and OT, if you can find GOOD ones. DONT be afraid to interview therapists, and dont be afraid to keep looking if the one you start with just doesnt seem to be working out. Anything from a personality issue to lack of experience in what your son really needs can make each session little more than a play hour if you are not matched correctly.

The BEST program I have found so far that is ABSOLUTELY amazing is called Bal-a-vis-x (www.bal-a-vis-x.com) Bill is in Wichita Kansas, but has trained thousands of teachers and therapists all over the world. If you email him on the website, he would be happy to forward you information of anyone in your area that is providing the program, or hopefully a local school that is using it! BAVX prescribes to the thought that... ok there is an issue, lets see about how to fix it, rather than worrying about what diagnosis may apply. It uses fun and challenging "exercises" using balls and sand bags that integrate the body and the brain to work more effectively together. I dont care what the diagnosis- I have seen this work with amazing success on all ages and dozens of issues, from Down Syndrome, CP, Strokes, Dyslexia, auditory processing issues, reading issues, vision issues (including nystagmus that every eye guru told me could not be helped) and many kids with many different executive functioning issues. I cannot say enough good things about the program. If there is a training being provided anywhere near you, or somewhere you would like to travel, I can say you would definitley enjoy it and it is worth the time and effort to attend the class (Most are two days long)

Lastly, I would not get terribly hung up on diagnosis, as (again in MHO there are very few correct diagnosis provided out there, as there is just not enough solid understanding of the brain and all the issues that have been evolving over the past years... Think twice about accepting drugs as a solution, as in many cases they will just prescribe the latest and greatest in a trial and error basis, and your son will be the one that has to live with the side effects associated with each one of them. Not saying that sometimes they are not neccesary, but I believe it is only a very small fraction of the kids that are actually recieving them.

Good luck! I know this can be an EXTREMELY frustrating journey. But just keep believing you know your son the best, and you will know when you find the right solution for him. Trust your gut, not just what someone says because they are a "professional".

(I am a mom of a child with multiple learning "issues" and have been studying these issues and the brain and body connections for the past several years...)

I got this diagnosis for my son from a Pediatric Neurologist. At the time, the doc had no advice, but I requested a referral for OT. The next neurologist didn't use the same words, but tested and prescribed meds for ADHD, and recommended OT.
Most of the help he gets is through the school. They do use the picture schedules, but it goes way beyond that including an aide with him most of the day and lots of one-on-one work out of the classroom.

I'm sorry, I don't have any specific info for you but have you seen the info on this website:

http://www.ncld.org/ld-basics/ld-aamp-executive-functioni...

There is a resource section where you can search by city/state.

Good luck to you and your son.