Emma McGregor
Emma is currently 8 ½ years old. She
is one of the sweetest, most loving people anyone has ever met in their
life. We would like to share how we got to where we are now….
As a young child, Emma’s parents noticed that Emma would sometimes just be in her own world, “Emma’s world”, as they would often describe it. As Emma got older, different challenges seemed to appear. Emma started to struggle in school. She ended up repeating first grade and was more successful the second time around.
Emma was initially diagnosed with inattentive ADHD as she tended to ‘space out’ periodically, as she had as a younger child. Emma was prescribed a couple different prescriptions for ADHD, which did absolutely nothing for her.
Upon further evaluation by her school, a private behavioral pediatrician, and a private occupational therapist, Emma was diagnosed with non-verbal learning disorders (NLD). This seemed to be the answer, as Emma seemed to fit all of the characteristics of NLD children: difficulty with gross and fine motor skills, difficulty following multi-step directions, etc. One way that NLD is diagnosed is by using the difference between the verbal and performance IQ scores. A difference of 10-12 is typically considered significant; Emma had a difference of over 20. We truly thought we had finally found the answer. We bought books and searched websites to learn all we could about NLD. This diagnosis was made in summer/fall of 2003.
