question about 12yo boy

[mchel210]

I had typed a long question. Ahhhh. And it deleted by accident. So...I am trying again to post now..>LOL.:cursing:

 

Is there a way to determine how your child retains info? As far as which learning style works best for a LD child? Meaning if he is a right brain child? Or visual? My husband says he wants someone to tell me as he says I have to stop guessing what learning style he is ...as friends suggest different ways to teach him.

 

I believe my son is Right brain and he really loves when I read to him. He remembers everything. I have started allowing him to use colored pencils. I dont know if it helps...but I am trying. I also have been trying to get him to learn mult. tables with no luck. I tried times tales...and that stuck. For the first time. It is a story that helps you memorize 6-9 times tables. It worked....but how do you teach other subjects that way?

 

 

Next year...I had planned on taking a light year...

Just doing...

Sonlight 4, LA from Sonlight, Spanish, LL7, TT7 (cont. with lots of review)apologia general science, fallacy detective.

I figured that was an easy la for him(switching from abeka 6 that was a huge struggle this year) Is this light enough for an easy year?

Thanks,

Michelle

[Claire]

I had typed a long question. Ahhhh. And it deleted by accident. So...I am trying again to post now..>LOL.:cursing:

 

Is there a way to determine how your child retains info? As far as which learning style works best for a LD child? Meaning if he is a right brain child? Or visual? My husband says he wants someone to tell me as he says I have to stop guessing what learning style he is ...as friends suggest different ways to teach him.

 

I believe my son is Right brain and he really loves when I read to him. He remembers everything. I have started allowing him to use colored pencils. I dont know if it helps...but I am trying. I also have been trying to get him to learn mult. tables with no luck. I tried times tales...and that stuck. For the first time. It is a story that helps you memorize 6-9 times tables. It worked....but how do you teach other subjects that way?

 

 

Next year...I had planned on taking a light year...

Just doing...

Sonlight 4, LA from Sonlight, Spanish, LL7, TT7 (cont. with lots of review)apologia general science, fallacy detective.

I figured that was an easy la for him(switching from abeka 6 that was a huge struggle this year) Is this light enough for an easy year?

Thanks,

Michelle

 

Did you edit out some information? I read your post before taking a nap and came back to answer it, only to find lots of differences! Thought I was in the Twilight Zone for awhile there. Anyway, I am going to include some recommendations based on some of the info that is no longer here.

 

Many different underlying conditions produce symptoms of ADD. From your initial description of your son, he sounds a lot like my dd. In my dd's case, many of the problems were caused by visual efficiency deficits that had gone undiagnosed by her opthalmologist. She also had delays in development of phonemic awareness. I'm pretty sure these two problems contributed to her "right-brainedness". We were able to fully remediate the underlying problems and get her up to speed in reading. We had to work a little harder on math and writing, but these have developed also. (My dd is 17yo now and in public high school.)

 

My first recommendation is to get a developmental vision evaluation. Visual efficiency skills are *not* tested in regular eye exams. A child can have 20/20 vision and still have severe visual efficiency deficits. From research and surveys I have read, 80 to 90% of the children displaying the problems you describe have an undiagnosed visual efficiency problem. At the very least, it's a problem you want to rule out. You can find board-certified developmental optometrists in your area here. Cost for an eval is usually around $300 and is not covered by insurance. If you decide this is something you want to do, I advise you to post again here so we can give you some advice on finding someone good. There are inexpensive and expensive ways to do vision therapy, if it is needed. If you are on a budget, my advice to you will be different than if you are a family who can afford out-of-pocket expenses for therapy.

 

Has your son ever had an occupational therapy evaluation? In your initial post, I think you mentioned a visual-motor problem. An occupational therapy evaluation can evaluate this and provide exercises to help. If this is indeed a problem, then the OT should actually be done before vision therapy or concurrently with vision therapy.

 

Once we had reduced my dd's visual efficiency deficits, we did a cognitive skills training program that worked on a wide variety of subskills necessary for academic learning. This greatly improved her reading. Before this program, my dd could not remember the values of individual coins. By the end of this program, she was spontaneously counting up change left on the kitchen counter.

 

My dd had difficulty with math facts too. Since your son has been able to learn the facts with the story approach, I would *highly* recommend following up with daily drill to improve his math fact fluency (speed in combination with accuracy), as this makes all math much easier to handle. We used QuarterMile Math for 10 minutes every day, with me doing the keyboarding for her. (Doing the keyboarding for your student seems to be crucial to success. It allows many more problems to be packed into the 10 minutes.) Drill is deadly in large quantities, so should be done for only short periods of time. We set a kitchen timer. It took my dd 4 months of daily QMM when she was 11yo before she was solid on all of her math facts. When we stopped, I noticed after awhile that she started "losing" facts. We did QMM again daily until she was solid, and then I put her on a maintenance schedule twice a week (doing her own keyboarding). After a year of that, she never lost math facts again.

 

There is no way to adapt all curriculum materials to be efficient for a right-brained learner. It's great to use materials that "fit", like the multiplication stories. The solution for us was to work very hard to improve dd's left-brain processing skills so that she could learn better from standard curriculum materials.

 

My dd is still right-brained, but she has enough left-brain skills now to be able to make her way in the world. There are advantages to having right-brain skills. She is unusually creative and innovative with her problem-solving, and she is an excellent artist.

 

A complete neuro-psychological evaluation can help you identify learning strengths and weaknesses, and will also evaluate the different types of memory. This is an expensive evaluation, however. We did the OT eval and developmental vision eval first, then completed vision therapy (because this was such an obvious area that needed remediation). We did the cognitive skills training after that, to develop the visual processing skills that were still lacking, and got wide-ranging improvements in many areas as a surprise benefit. The neuro-psych eval was actually our last step in the process, when writing remained difficult after all of our remediation strategies. (Dd was diagnosed at that time with borderline dysgraphia, which has since resolved to the point where it would not even be considered a borderline disability anymore.)

 

HTH!

[mchel210]

You have given me a lot of information. Thank you.

 

Yes...I was having a bad day and went in and reworded my entire post. I am glad you had been able to respond to the first.

 

Originally, our son received OT but it was a joke. They didnt do anything really to help him. I was told he had Visual Motor problems ...and needed visual therapy. At the time we didnt have the money to pay the therapy and put it off. Later when he was tested again, they said his muscles had caught up and he didnt have the problem any longer.

 

The school told me he had dysgraphia but I forgot about that. The OT the school provided was like a few minutes to play with clay. So they stopped and just told me to do it at home. The OT center only wanted to treat him for Sensory Int. I think it was the diagnosis of the year at that center...as he just loved the play therapy...but the therapy was nothing close to what he needed. They ended up changing therapist...and I couldnt get another appointment. I tried to get another eval but the new ot lady was asking me for advice. OMgoodness...I gave up.

 

He had been in private school and was totally caught up in all reading and math levels. They didnt even deal with science and history...so I am seeing he is very good at those subjects with stories. As far as the math...I spoke to a friend last night that said her students in 7-8 grade math, she is a teacher, have the same problems I am having with my son. I guess it is an age thing not so much just him.

 

I am going to look into that math program you told me.

 

As of right now...I am stopping all school. I think I need the break and need to take a step back to evaluate what is working. I realized last night...my only issue is handwriting and math with him. I really need to get him back working on clay to see if I can get his handwriting up to speed. I have to look into the dysgraphia to see how to deal with that as well. My son is great on the keyboard and we allow him to do as much on the computer as he wants...which is a great help. It was hard with all our books this year as they are mainly workbooks. So I am looking forward to the changes next year.

 

My friend was reminding me to focus only on what we need to learn and master that first without working on all 6 grade material. So we can master it as we have plenty of time. I guess I just look to far ahead and keep feeling we are so far behind. That is a huge stress for me.

[Claire]

For the handwriting, you might want to try Callirobics. It helps kids who need to work on fine motor skills associated with handwriting, and it sounds as if your son fits that bill.

 

It's a shame you couldn't get better OT.

 

Are you aware of computerized home vision therapy? It works well for the most common visual efficiency problems. All of the posts I have seen from families who have tried it have been positive. So far, everyone has reported a total cost under $300 for pre-testing, the software, and post-testing. It is one of the most inexpensive ways to do vision therapy.

 

Cognitive skills training can be helpful too. They work on developing a wide range of skills that support academic learning.

[NCW]

When you say "later he was tested again and they said he didn't need vision therapy anymore because his muscles had caught up"...it sounds like this was an OT? An OT can screen for possible vision issues, can provide treatment activities that can be helpful, but only an optometrist can fully determine whether or not vision issues exist or not. If you didn't trust the rest of the services you received, you may want to find other information regarding this statement as well. Just a thought.

 

NCW

[NCW]

OTOH, perhaps the OT was effective in taking care of his visual needs, in which case he did benefit from treatment. He wouldn't just "grow out of" needing vt.

 

NCW

[Laurie4b]

The best way to get the info you need is through an evaluation. If your son is 12 and still struggling, that would be a necessary step. At his age, I would start with a neuropsychologist. He or she will listen to your concerns, and decide which tests to give him based both on your concerns and the results of the IQ testing. The IQ test consists of 4 parts: verbal, spatial reasoning, working memory, and processing speed. Just looking at the comparative scores between the 4 subtests gives quite a bit of information. If s/he sees an area of general weakness, then s/he'll pursue additional testing. If there is a large split between verbal and spatial reasoning, that would give you your cue about whether there is truly a brain difference that would support leaning one way more than another for teaching. (Personally, I think people make way too big a deal of "learning style." Unless there are severe deficits, kids need to learn through several modalities, and it's not a magic bullet to find "their learning style." For kids with signficant deficits, you may find strategies that work better than others, but it's unlikely that they will all be the same across the board. I have a son with a whopping difference in IQ scores and he responds to both verbal and visual teaching. I have to look at exactly what is working and what is not for each intervention I try.) However, the IQ testing will tell you if there is a deficit in one of those two areas. Additionally, you'll get info on active working memory (how well he can get things into short term memory) and regarding his processing speed--both very critical pieces of info for you as a homeschooler. Those too, require specirfic strategies not related to "learning style" if there is a deficit.

 

The other reason for getting testing at age 12 is if your son does have a disability and you are going to need accomodations on the SAT or ACT, you need a paper trail going back a number of years that documents the disability and the fact that accomodations were made in the school setting and in previous testing. It's hard to get accomodations from them, but what I've heard is that it's pretty much impossible if there is ONLY recent testing. They want both longer term testing to show it's always been a problem AND recent testing to show that there is still a problem.

 

As for the play room and change in vision issues with OT, my son did OT and the stuff they did in the playroom combined with the assignments that they gave us to do at home actually DID change his eye tracking from the severe range to somewhat below normal. This was per our optometrist, not just the OT. So treatement for sensory integration can do that. My son still has some residual eye movement issues that we're doing vision therapy for. I'm not sure how much they figure into his current issues, so we'll see.

 

I would reseek OT help. He sounds like a candidate.

 

At this point, I would bag handwriting work on keyboarding. A local private school requires their incoming high school students to type 20 wpm at 90% accuracy or above, so that's a goal to shoot for in the next few years. Our OT worked with my son on issues such as posture, hand positioning, finger movement, etc. in keyboarding. (I had taught him finer positions, etc. and he was typing some of his assignements)