Nonverbal learning disorder (NLD) is a neurological syndrome consisting of specific assets and deficits. The assets include early speech and vocabulary development, remarkable rote memory skills, attention to detail, early reading skills development and excellent spelling skills. Moreover, persons with NLD have strong auditory retention. Three major categories of deficits and dysfunction also present themselves:
•motoric (lack of coordination, severe balance problems, and difficulties with graphomotor skills).
•visual-spatial-organizational (lack of image, poor visual recall, faulty spatial perceptions, and difficulties with spatial relations).
•social (lack of ability to comprehend nonverbal communication, difficulties adjusting to transitions and novel situations, and deficits in social judgment and social interaction).
In a recent poll on the NLDline.com website, parents said that poor social skills and lack of friends were the two top problems. Map out a plan for helping with those areas. This may include setting aside two days a week for play dates for your child and a friend and gain skills for yourself to help facilitate social development during the play dates. Parents report several forms of therapy have been useful in the treatment of NLD to include:
Occupational Therapy 25 %
Sensory Integration 18%
Social Skills Group 25%
Cognitive/Behavioral Therapy 7%
Sensory Motor Therapy 7% ;
Auditory Integration Therapy 4%
Speech/Language 3 %
Other 7 %
Parents sometimes feel that they need to schedule every hour of the day with therapy, activity and enrichment. But children with NLD need to have time to rest. It is important that therapists help parents understand the importance of participating in therapy in a logical and sequential manner rather than a haphazard approach. Children with NLD have low muscle tone (thus poor endurance) and need more time to process information (both cognitive and sensor). They need time to rest and recover. They need time to re-organize and time to be a kid.
While individuals with NLD are precocious verbally, NLD is a problem of language. The children have the rote language skills but when it comes to functional use of language in everyday conversation, they have difficulties with tone of voice, inference, written expression, gestures, facial expressions and other areas of pragmatic speech. They benefit from rote learning, practicing that which many would assume to be intuitive such as greetings, eye contact, bullies and punitive forms of instruction. They’re very literal and while this can be a tremendous strength, it can also become a deficit. If you tell a child that you want them to pick up their toys later, that’s vague and later never comes. This can be interpreted as defiance when in fact it is a literal interpretation. However, that same child will only eat one piece of your See’s Candy you got for Christmas because you told them that was the rule.
Mathematics can become particularly difficult, especially after entering 3rd or 4th grade when math skills become more abstract.
In the pilot study done here at The Lighthouse Project last year, we were able to demonstrate that children with NLD
Tend to have poor registration of sensation (vestibular, proprioception in particular), tend to be seekers of sensation (always fidgeting, seeming to have a high tolerance for crashing and jumping) and appear to require such movement to feel comfortable. At other times, these kids are so droopy, they look like a soggy noodle. That poor registration contributes to this low arousal and the need to seek sensation to awaken the system. I’ve often said these kids have two speeds, 100% and off but nothing in between.
One child put it this way, " Even though I’m good at reading and remembering, sometimes it takes me a little longer to answer a question, because I cannot find the words. Because I’m focusing on what I want to say, I talk too quickly. It also slows down my writing. On essay tests, I know the information, but I have a difficult time getting it on paper. Sometimes even looking at the face of someone who is speaking can be too much. I feel everyday the way other people feel in a crowded shopping mall just before Christmas"
