NLD Information and Support Thread

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That Christmas kernel is so sweet...!

Thanks. Yes it is sweet.. I went looking for a festive avatar and found that one straight away, I was lucky. He reminds me of my dog who is also white with black ears.

He reminds me of myself, apart in my different world and still trying to go along with the customs of the humans...

Look. you've heard about the experimental observation that the point at which reflex becomes amenable to conscious intervention in humans runs on the end of a half-second delay line?

It's my theory that neurotypicals develop - before age two as far as I can make out - a feedback loop between perception and behaviour that runs faster than that. Aspies don't.

In compensation, aspies develop, later, the fastest couplings they can find between conscious intervention and behaviour; and they're often unreliable (stims, twitches, ...)

The upshot - neurotypicals form judgements about people that aren't accesible to reflective intervention. People who react right pass, people who don't don't. The semantic content of the dialogue is largely irrelevant, it's the behaviour that counts.


And, yeah, I scored high on all the tests I was given as a kid. Noone noticed that I didn't communicate and noone did anything to help...

Yeah that is my problem at times, I get hung up on semantics.

Snoopy is so adorable in his fantasy world, he has so many daydreams and so much going on in his head though he seems so quiet...

I think I am more like Peppermint Patty in personality though: she was loud, and worried too much, and would blow social situations by talking too much and letting the wrong thing come out. Familiar, lol.

Shoot, I can't edit my original post anymore (only within the first 9999 minutes apparently). I wanted to remove the poll, change the title, and add some more general NLD information to it for NLD newbies.

I didn't have any actual evaluations before my NLD one. I'd been in therapy for a bit, but just for social anxiety.

Probably Merle could help?

I went to this neurofeedback type place called The Drake Institute which has various locations in southern California.

http://www.drakeinstitute.com/

anyway it was orientation . they first showed a video about it. mostly dealing with add/hd treatment. anyway we spoke I think to a clinician afterwards. not sure what kind. anyway my mother and sister were there. we mentioned late-talking. not sure what years.

the clinician ruled out nld because of that.
I also learned a hand flapped I think for a very short time maybe up to age 2 ill have to ask
I have visual-spatial issues.

my viq is much higher than my piq . seems to rule out hfa.
of course the late-talking plus visual-spatial seemingly rules isn't common with as.
the late-talking could exclude it. not sure how late i talked. well i did call dada and mama and 1.5 yrs.
2 languages were spoken in the house as well.

funny thing is I was only told about the appt on Fri. my sister made it. I'm going to their QEEG brain mapping tomorrow. not sure if I'll go through with the whole program. I really just wanted a neuropsych evaluation.

I think they said they aren't interested in giving me an actual dx. that may just be for the AS Assessment. with the neuropsych evaluation perhaps they would.
i'll ask them.

lol my sister wanted to know people with asperger's who went through this. was told the doctor would be more open to that if she did the brain mapping or some svc ($$$).

oh im assuming most with nld would merit an eval. of course there are other factors such as school dist. and you are younger than me.

David Dinklage, who was mentioned previously in this thread, gives an important caveat in his article Asperger’s Disorder and Nonverbal Learning Disabilities: How are These Two Disorders Related to Each Other:

“As humans, we naturally want to categorize. [But] the complex relationship between Nonverbal Learning Disabilities and Asperger’s Disorder may be an example of how categorizing too rigidly can confuse, rather than clarify, our thinking.”

I think the point he is making is that it is incredibly hard to categorized brain-based developmental/neurological "differences" because the brain is so complex AND there is so much overlap between the different "syndromes" that someone out there has identified (thank you Dr. Asperger).

Funny thing, I have more of a verbal learning disorder, I am definitely a predominantly visual learner, but still have some of the same things that are seen in Asperger's Syndrome and/or NLD. I have intense focus and a couple of long-term special interests. I was behind my peers in social and emotional development, and continue to have problems with that. I didn't participate in games and didn't use my imagination in play. I get socially anxious, panicky, and depressed because of the uncertainty I experience due to my neurological makeup. Technically, I could probably have had a diagnosis of PDD-NOS as a child (if they had been doing that in the 1960s). I also fit the description of kids labeled with "Einstein Syndrome" (a term developed by economist Thomas Sowell whose son was a late talker and had other developmental issues). I also match the characteristics of Visual-Spatial Learner which is the opposite of Nonverbal Learning Disorder.

My IQ and psychological tests show that I look a lot like "Twice-Exceptional" kids who are "gifted" and have Autism Spectrum Disorder. Their lowest scores, like mine, are in socialization. BUT, I've worked very hard on communicating and socializing effectively, by college I was doing OK, and now in my 40s, I'm quite skilled and verbal and written communication. It took a lot of work to get where I am, but that doesn't mean that I don't still struggle with many of the same things I was struggling with when I was three. My wiring doesn't seem to have changed, but I've found some ways around some of the problems.

I guess the point of this ramble is that there are "building blocks" that make up the neurological differences that we experience. It all boils down to how effective our brains are at transferring signals and types of information in and between different areas of the brain. The combination of specific "building blocks" can put us in one category or another, and there is enough similarity of traits in groups of people that they then get labeled with a "syndrome" such as AS or NLD. But there are a whole lot of people who have a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and in the end get more and more confused by professionals (and armchair enthusiasts) who continue to try to narrow down categories in ways that ultimately might not be so helpful.

I'm all for finding a good category that fits, but I keep seeing that it's often not one or the other. It is a combination.

Z

While I can see how the IQ scores would / could be this important to a learning disorder diagnosis, I personally am autistic and on separate occasions have tested differently on different (but comparable) IQ tests: on Stanford-Binet visual-spatial and performance was more than a standard deviation above verbal, whereas on WAIS-III that I took 8 years later it was the opposite - while the overall score had decreased quite a bit, the verbal was now a standard deviation higher, despite my having lost quite a bit of my speech/language skills!



I get what you mean here. I have a friend with NLD, and she strikes me as more on the aspie side than the NT side, evne though diagnostically she doesn't present like Asperger/autistic people. Maybe because of ADHD, but I've known a lot of people wiht ADHD, and I don't know, maybe the two combined can be a description of someone who is spectrummy.

I have NLD (self-diagnosed). I don't have anything in common with Aspies, except that Aspies are as bad as NLDers at the non-verbal part of social interaction, so we have a topic of conversation in common where we're very much alike and can benefit from discussion about it. If there was a good forum for people with NLD on the internet, however, there wouldn't be a point for me to be here on WP.

What I mean to say is that I don't see any overlap or similarity or kinship between the 2 conditions. Having 1 trait in common with another condition doesn't make the 2 conditions similar or overlapping or the difference between them confusing. Especially in the case of NLD and AS, where another trait is actually opposite in both: (visual-spatial vs. verbal skills) which makes both populations develop in totally different directions regarding studies, occupation, and challenges.

That's a good idea. I think I'll write up an alternate first post, and then ask for her help in changing it and removing the poll.

Well, my mom is actually a psychologist so she did some testing on me when I was a kid, so I guess I just meant I didn't have anything formally done before my dx rather than that I hadn't had any testing at all (I should have clarified). Like I said, I was in therapy for social anxiety though. My mom tested my IQ a few times when I was a kid, and my parents also got me this vocational evaluation when I was 19 which consisted of neuropsych-type testing, but wasn't meant for diagnosis- the purpose was to identify strengths which might point you towards a particular field. Even those these weren't formal "evaluations" for any diagnosis, you could clearly see the NLD pattern though- like in my IQ test scores, and also in the vocational examination where most nonverbal skills were in the 25th percentile or lower (most actually 15th percentile or lower), while my verbal scores were all in the 95th percentile and up.

I didn't have any formal interventions either when I was a kid, but my mom actually was really great at helping me with difficult concepts (like in geometry, telling time, etc.), the same way she did with my dyslexic brother (although he also had formal intervention in school). Despite the fact that she is a school psychologist (although she started out working with adults), she actually does not know that much about NLD (although she is learning more now). I believe she is an excellent psychologist, but that just illustrates that NLD is not well-known among most professionals. So although she recognized that I had problems with visual and spatial processing when I was growing up, she didn't think to put a label to it, although she told me a few years ago she thinks I have inattentive-type ADHD. She actually has become more aware of the NLD pattern when she is testing kids, and on a couple of occasions has asked me for advice or for some NLD resources she can look through, since she knows it is an interest of mine and I know a lot about it.

Although my visual/spatial processing issues were apparently pretty obvious to them from a young age, my mom and dad actually did not pick up on my social issues, even the problems with eye contact- but my brother did, which is interesting. He has referred to me as "borderline autistic," since I guess that is how I seem to him (he has known people with Asperger syndrome so he is familiar with that end of the spectrum). My brother is actually an excellent source of feedback, since he is the one who told me about making eye contact, he lets me know when I am rambling on about an obsession, and he also helps me choose appropriate clothing for different activities (like dressy versus casual). It's funny how he has been so perceptive when it comes to some aspects of NLD that my parents just never noticed.

Wow, that was rambling. Sorry it's so long!

well I came back from my brain mapping appt. long story short there is a good chance I am AS.
according to the good doctor