If your child sees or has been seen by Dr. Stephen Camarata...
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Anonymous
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03/22/2013 09:20 Subject: If your child sees or has been seen by Dr. Stephen Camarata... We had ours done in Nashville when my son was 4. Now he's 7. He sat on my lap while Mary gave him the Leiter nonverbal IQ test, which we still can't find anyone in Atlanta to do. She was amazing in connecting to my son and showing us all what he could do.Verbal IQ tests had been disastrous, but he could do so much visually that I knew he could find a place in the work world and even in school. She was so reassuring about what was inside him that other evaluators had not found with their verbal instruments. It changed our lives, the direction of future therapy, our belief in the valid differential diagnosis. Her husband came in at the end and did the CARS, which he is very well qualified to do. We had sent video and paperwork and watched his CARS eval. through the window. Dr Camarata is well qualified nationally -- google him. He has done so many of them that I really appreciated his expertise. He also gave us a letter with the CARS score. We followed their recommendations for therapy and school plan -- went with Floortime. Even though the CARS was elevated above most kids, it wasn't high enough for autism or spectrum. Yes, my son seems odd to many people. But now I know and can advocate better for him! Best money I ever spent on psycho-ed or therapy (and I'm nearing $20,000 now). Can't say enough good about how they helped us and our latetalking son. Time will tell if Mary or Stephen is correct on when his speech will catch up (her prediction was sooner than his), but we are on the timeline they drew, for sure. Gifted, knowledgeable, research based, experienced evaluators for latetalking children. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
| My late talking 4yo was evaluated by Mary in December, and she has been consulting with us on school placement, therapy, and behavior modification since then. One of the things I appreciated most about her evaluation, which I didn't get anywhere else, was that she helped us understand how we could work with his strong temperament and preferences - she truly does a strengths-based assessment. She is accessible, reassuring, experienced, professional, and compassionate. I think she loves working with this population of children, and it shows. She's given us the confidence to make good choices and put a plan in place for our kiddo and just five months later our DS is talking and tracking towards a mainstream classroom next year. I had professional after professional, including SLPs, giving me confusing or bad advice about my kid, the low point being the very expensive school consultant we hired telling me that she had no schools to recommend because he was too "low functioning"! It feels like a bad dream now, and one that I think we'd still be having if we hadn't gone to see Mary. I could go on, but that's our experience in a nutshell. |
Anonymous
| How do you make appointment with them? I tried the phone number from the Late Talkers Foundation but no answer so far. I checked out Vanderbilt Medical Center but not sure how to make appt to see Dr. Camarata. Thank you! |
Anonymous
| Not PP. I need the same information please. We only have so much time/money/energy, want to know the right thing to do. |
Anonymous
| 08:41 here. I found Late Talker Consulting website (http://latetalkersconsulting.com/index.php) and it does have similar information about an evaluation with Dr. Camarata's wife, Mary. I submitted the contact information. Will update how it goes. |
Anonymous
New poster- I tried that site and sent an email and no response. |
Anonymous
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I've seen the Camaratas 5 times. It can be very slow going getting a response. This is because Mary Camarata, a researcher and SLP, often does everything herself at the LT clinic: the testing and evaluating, the reports, the administration paperwork, the followup. She also has 7 kids and now the grandkids are coming. I've heard varying reports on Dr. Camarata's involvement -- I do know he still sees clients he's had long term relationships with. Another poster said he was indeed seeing people at Vanderbilt as well. And of course Mary can consult with him on any questions. My best advice is to be dogged about it. Message and call every few weeks. It is SO worth it once you are in. When you are in her/their presence, it is like no other family exists and she spends literally hours with you and answers all your questions. |
Anonymous
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info from another thread on them
http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/45/113052.page I was able to reach them through late talkers foundation @ Phone: 615-866-9457 FAX: 615-866-9458 info@latetalkers.org or http://latetalkers.org/ [Report Post] |
Anonymous
| Would it make sense to see him for a toddler with preliminary mild ASD diagnosis? DS didn't test as speech delayed because he has a good vocabulary, but there are speech issues: perseverations/ repetition, echolalia, not comprehending pronouns. TIA! |
Anonymous
| I've been reading all these posts about the Cameratas, and people seem to have had such positive experiences, but I find it a little bit befuddling what exactly makes them different, and why knowing your kid is a late talker versus a PDD-NOS dx makes any therapeutic difference, when the PDD bucket (which I know has been removed from the DSM) is so broad anyway. I have a 10 yo with an (educational) autism diagnosis and some language/social communication delays, and I know a lot of kids with similar profiles (often dx'd in preschool as PDD-NOS). As I've watched the dc I know grow up, they all have become more typical in their language use and are most in mainstream settings with some supports. As a dev psych said to me years ago, "These kids do pretty well as they grow up, regardless of what therapies you do." Some have NVLD dxs now, some are ADHD, some are more Aspergers-like....it's just that the types of therapies they get aren't really all that different, and that while they have different profiles, the differences are not that astounding. |
Anonymous
We have considered it. For us, it directs us for what services are best for our child. We have a PDD diagnosis and speech delay. I think we are more speech delay/late talker vs. autism. We have gotten a lot of criticism from our developmental ped for not doing ABA. We tried it and I didn't get the point of having a woman blowing bubbles with my kid in my living room for 2 hours twice a week trying to get basic language when the speech pathologist got far more, far quicker and far easier. Early on it would have helped us focus that we primarily needed speech vs. ABA, which he pushed over speech. I went with my gut and did speech as well as a speech specific preschool and for us it was the right call. Sometimes you just want a reassurance when you are at a low point that you are making the best decisions for your child and guidance as to what is best. Developmental peds are generalists for all special needs. The Camerata's seem to specialize in speech as the primary issue and other things as the lessor issue. We decided against doing one right now (partly because we didn't want to chase theme down and got tired of trying) but we don't need an IEP for school as we are going to a small school that accepts my child for who he is and is willing to work with him (no behavioral issues, just developmental delays that seem due to the speech and speech). If we were going to public next year, there is no question in my mind we would be getting an second opinion from them to help us advocate with the school system. We have found very few people who really understand speech delays (beyond our wonderful speech therapists but our developmental ped will not listen to them) and are very frustrated by it. Our child is doing well and starting to catch up, but a year or two ago, had I known about them, we would have gone. Sadly, having an autism label is a life long stigma. If my child has it, I am fine with that but if he does not, I don't want him to have that label as life is hard enough with labels that keep you a bit different. |
Anonymous
You make some good points. I feel like dh and I have been good about making our own calls about what interventions we want to pursue for our child. I thought OT was useful for handwriting, useless for sensory regulation, and I have no regrets about deciding to stop, for example. I do quibble with your assertion that autism is a "life long stigma." How would we know that? The adults who have autism now were diagnosed as children twenty or thirty years ago (or more) and they are a very different population than the children who have received the diagnosis in the last decade. Most of the adults I know who were diagnosed with autism as children are living in sheltered group situations, and have very involved needs. They don't share a lot of similarities with the kids I know who have more recent Asperger's or PDD diagnoses. There are so many of those kids, and I really doubt they will face lifelong stigma for that label - if anything, the meaning has eroded until people use it in pop-culture to mean anyone with any socially odd behavior, and doubt that these kids can have real and serious challenges. I have an adult sibling who is very much "on the spectrum" - he would unquestionably receive an ASD diagnosis if he were a preschooler today. But he was born in the 80s, and although many different syndromes and diagnoses were offered over the years, autism was never one of them. He was diagnosed instead as mentally retarded, but he's an adult in the community who works and goes to school, certainly doesn't think of himself that way and is in no way stigmatized by that label, which was applied to him in elementary school. |
Anonymous
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We very much see the stigma and the few people we've told, sure enough, dropped us as friends. I don't agree with calling it a spectrum and have children who barely meet criteria in the same category as kids who are barely functioning. It makes no sense to me. In all reality they don't know what "autism" and how to fix it.
I agree with you on OT. It helped teach me how to teach my child how to hold a pencil but for most things I didn't get the point. We have been in and out and the OT finally dismissed us as its stuff we do at home and we just don't need the help. For the situation with these evaluations, it is important to understand the difference between autism and a speech delay and how the speech delay impacts the child's functioning. Because of the receptive issues, my kid just does not get things asked of him. People act like he is being difficult when he needs to be shown vs. told. That isn't a feature in autism. Also, people really struggle with him when he is trying to express himself and they don't have the patiences or understanding of what is going on. It is easier to dismiss him than to just be patient. In your situation, your child has a family history of autism. It is probably a combination of things. But, for those of us who feel it is primarily speech and NOT autism, it really takes someone who has seen many of these kids and gets them rather than just lumping them all under autism, throwing a bunch of services at them and hoping for the best. |
Anonymous
| Very direct question: Has anyone on here who seen the Camerata's had an ASD diagnosis confirmed by their evaluation? |