Learning Disabilities

Many clients who receive services at Children's Special Services, LLC, by Susan Orloff have learning disabilities.  Mrs. Orloff is highly qualified to work with these children because she understands children and learning from many perspectives.  She has three children and three grandchildren, is a former teacher, and has been an OT for over 30 years.

 

What is a learning disability?

• Defined as below average performance in math, reading, and writing that is not due to a physical or cognitive disability (APA, 2013)
• Interferes with occupational performance in school, and other areas of occupation (APA, 2013)
• Classified in the DSM-5 as "Specific Learning Disorder" (APA, 2013)
• Types of learning disabilities: (Brehm Preparatory School, n.d.)
• Dyslexia (reading)
• Dysgraphia (writing)
• Dyscalculia (math)
• Real example from Fieldwork: A 6-year-old girl named "Carly" (Pseudonym) came into the clinic for an evaluation.  Carly's mother said that Carly was having struggles in the classroom, so she wanted to have her checked out by an OT.  After a 3-hour evaluation by Susan Orloff, OTR/L, Carly's assessments were scored.  I copied and pasted the results of some assessments below, and what you should notice is the difference between what this 6-year-old perceives (age equivalent 13 years) and what she produces in writing (age equivalent 4 years).  Mrs. Orloff said that such a spread is typical for someone who has dysgraphia. 

Test	Raw score	Standard score	Percentile	Age equiv.
Drawing Visual-motor	5	68	2	4.0
Matching Visual-spatial	34	125	95	13.0
Pegboard Fine motor	25	100	50	6.3

• Real example from Fieldwork: Mrs. Orloff, OTR/L, also suspects that Carly (mentioned in previous bullet) has Dyslexia due to her scores on the Jordan Left-Right Reversal Test.  The Jordan Right-Left Reversal Test assesses visual perceptive functioning for children ages 5+ years with normal intelligence (90+).  It assesses visual reversals of letters, numbers, and words.  While the typical child will only miss up to 2 items on the test, Carly missed 19.  (This information is per Susan Orloff, my fieldwork advisor.)

Total Raw Score	Percentile Score	Normal/Borderline/Below	Developmental Age
19	0	Below Functional Expectations	<5.0

• What can an OT do to help Carly?  Mrs. Orloff mentioned that she would like to work on the following skills with Carly to help her function better in school despite her suspected learning disability:
• Address perceptual processing specific to but not limited to figure-ground, directionality and part-whole discrimination
• Increase visual tracking skills with head isolation and left right fluency patterns.
• Increase tactile acuity and localization of input

References

 

American Psychiatric Association [APA]. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Brehm Preparatory School. (n.d.). Learning about learning disabilities. Retrieved from http://www.brehm.org/what-are-the-learning-disabilities/



Mrs. Orloff, My Fieldwork Supervisor

(Children's Special Services, n.d.b)

 

(Children's Special Services, n.d.a)

 

 

References

 

Children’s Special Services. (n.d.a). Susan. Retrieved from http://www.childrens-services.com/susan-orloff.php

Children’s Special Services. (n.d.b). Susan Orloff Color. Retrieved from http://www.childrens-services.com/susan-orloff.php

Children's Special Services

Children’s Special Services is owned by Susan Orloff, who has been an OTR/L for over 30 years.  Mrs. Orloff provides occupational therapy services to children in the Atlanta metropolitan area, and while she serves the majority of her clients in her clinic (located in the large basement of her home and fully equipped with OT goodies), she will travel with a bag of OT equipment wherever she needs to go in order to help her clients succeed, including the school and community. 

 

The basement has tons of equipment in it, including, but not limited to:

• Climbing wall
• Zip line
• Shelves and shelves of board games
• Swing with different attachments
• Ramp and scooter boards
• Large mats
• Stairs
• Basketball goal
• Balance beam
• Drawers filled with manipulatives, writing instruments, and sensory items

Mrs. Orloff’s office is in the upstairs portion of her home.  (I love her Mac desktop computer.)

 

Mrs. Orloff told me that, while she has been trained for sensory integration techniques under Jean Ayres herself, not all of her clients need “SI Therapy.”  She said that if she did only “SI Therapy,” then she would lose the client-centered focus that she strives for. 

Even though she can handle almost anything that comes her way, Mrs. Orloff primarily sees children who have learning disabilities, sensory-motor issues, and social deficits.

 

Things that I think are pretty awesome about Mrs. Orloff:

• She was added to AOTA’s Roster of Fellows in 2013
• She trained under Jean Ayres
• Her therapeutic use of self is quite near perfect
• She spends one or two hours with a kid and has their brain functions and needs figured out
• Parenting Magazine called her this week and interviewed her as an expert on handwriting, and from the articles I see on her wall, this happens frequently
• Her office and her clinic are in her own home
• She published a book and created her own handwriting program
• She has red hair, is Jewish, and is very honest (very)

Children's Special Services, LLC, has only one OT, and that is Susan Orloff.  The only additional service provided by CSS, LLC, is science and math tutoring by her husband, Dr. David Orloff.  Mrs. Orloff currently has two students training under her - me and an OTA student from Denver.