BlueTaelon
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Posts posted by BlueTaelon
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I would prefer online if possible, the kid hates books so I'm trying to avoid them if possible. Never heard of Wieser so will look into it. Thanks!
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I haven't been around in ages but between the yearly school choice evaluation in deciding which path to take and COVID here I am looking at traditional homeschooling again.
Is there something more entertaining like time4learning but more geared for a life skills type kid? For example she needs basic math skills to be able to figure out grocery budgets and bill paying. Doesn't need to know about improper fractions and order of operations. Needs to improve reading and writing skills but doesn't need to know how to diagram a sentence or terms like synonyms and antonyms. We have been stuck in a holding pattern reteaching the same things over and over it seems because we teach the core stuff then the curriculum moves on to whats technically "fluff" for her then she forgets the core important stuff and we have to start all over again! I want something that's going to teach core concepts and stick to it while expanding into various life skills stuff that she will actually use in life and keeps reinforcing the core skills. I can't tell you how many times we've had to reteach borrowing and carrying over the years. Going into 8th and still working on 3rd grade stuff because of this issue. The kid comes up with some amazing ideas but academics are not her thing and this is par the course for her syndrome and academic struggles. Based on what were seeing in older kids/adults with her syndrome 6th grade is about as far as the kids advance by graduation and thats with a ton of supports. I'd rather focus on those skills that will help her be successful in life then teaching stuff thats not going to matter in adulthood. I know I can create my own program from daily life but if its already been done I'd rather not have to come up with things. Thank you:)
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:grouphug: Thank you for updating after all these years, I've gone though hell with my own teen but we found answers unlike most people, things are still rough but thats more due to Autism then mental illness. Our demon goes by many names including schizophrenia. Joanne was right in more ways then she realized but the demon who causes these issues is a genetic issue called Pyroluria (which he probably got from his birth mom) and is usually accompanied by high free copper levels and either over or under methylation defects. With treatment recovery is possible but its going to take years of conscious choices to undo the patterns he's set himself into. If you ever do have your son want to become a regular part of your life please look into this condition, we go though Mensah Medical and its worth every penny. https://www.mensahmedical.com. My child was only 13 when we heard that dreaded S word but we knew about Pyroluria but were not addressing the copper or overmethylation issue so she became violent and psychotic. She's 16 now and doing great, she's taking college classes even and doing well in school and has been an A/B student since we started treatment 3 years ago and without medication.
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I'm glad it's starting to get straightened out.
Our community college is very "PARENTS STAY OUT." They are very clear that a parent should not talk to a professor under any circumstances, only the student.
I can call the high school programs office and that's about it.
The high school is the one who told me to call the dual enrollment office, dual enrollment said it was totally fine in this case because there was an actual problem and not just a parent demanding to know why their kid is failing type thing.
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As a professor, I have had this happen with courses I am teaching. It was very frustrating because I would not know it was happening to certain students, and when I found out I could not contact the students. This would happen if I were teaching multiple sections of the same course. I had one course that I was teaching that had multiple sections and a lab that caused a strange registration issue. Every semester on the final withdrawal date, all of the students in one section would be removed from Blackboard. It would happen at 5:00pm on a Friday--and I would not be able to get it resolved until the next week. Having to spend more time on getting the registrar's department and IT to correct their mistakes than I was spending on teaching was annoying.
Thankfully he was very nice about it. I know there are 2 sections for the course so it sounds like they merged into 1. I let him know there were a couple other students that seemed to be in the same situation so he might want to look into it as tomorrow is drop day. He's letting her make up the missed work she refused to do last week because of the lack of due dates. She had a teacher last semester who wanted everything by Wednesday instead of Sunday and no late work accepted period so she was afraid she would just waste her time.
So with the new info and changes I'm ok with her staying in the course.
ETA: I did not expect him to let her make up the work, didn't want anyone to think I was asking for it. Its very nice of him to allow her to do that.
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IMHO, dual enrollment requires some parental involvement. In my state at least, the homeschool parent is still in charge of the student's education with the college as an outsourced provider, just as you might outsource to a local or online homeschool class provider.
With my oldest, I gradually backed off on his dual enrollment as I saw that he was fine handling issues that came up. Then when he became a full-time student, I backed off completely unless he asked me for advice or got into a rough situation. We had a crazy issue with his AP Latin credits where he wasn't getting anywhere with them, and I finally went in as "professor mom" and got it straightened out. They've been really frustrating though. Frankly I know much more than the majority of the advisors in terms of crafting a degree that will transfer under the guaranteed admission agreements to specific programs.
I agree, when its dual enrollment sometimes the parent does need to get involved and in my daughters case she really struggles with advocating for herself. Its something were working on but just because she can do the work academically doesn't mean she's capable of emotionally acting like an adult and advocating for herself. She has autism, maturity tends to come much later.
The instructor just emailed me and apologized, something about needing to merge the courses and she must have not gotten merged and was stuck in the old class. He also emailed a 6 page syllabus that answered all the stuff my daughter needed to know. He says it was sent out the first day of class but no one received it, its also now loaded on BB. I'm happy it lists the due dates so I can put it on her calendar, or rather she can but at least I know when to check in with her. It looks like they are updating the course like it should be as I see things changing looking around. I think she can survive the course with all the changes and it will actually force her to learn something I've never been able to get her to do, learn to take notes! You have to turn in your notes on his lecture every week. That ticked me off when it was required by my instructors but I think for her it will help her get used to taking notes because we can't get her to do it AT ALL. She just wants to memorize everything on the fly. The kid is thinking med school (immunology researcher), she better start learning note taking stills while the stakes are low. She's an A student and its always worked for her but that day is going to come when it doesn't and heaven forbid she has to write something down lol
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Today, I received an email from Canvas.Net My course begins in 2 weeks. I logged in and out of their web site, twice, without any issues. I could see that I am enrolled, and that the course is "In Progress", but didn't see any information from the instructor yet.
In the case of the OP, there is some irony in that the course is about Stress Management and that this issue is causing her DD so much stress...
Possibly the Instructor knows the subject and how to teach it, but he did not seem to have had it ready to go on the Blackboard platform.
Thats what I thought! His lecture is good but it needs to be put into 1 file, his lecture is 68 minutes long but is 17 different mp3's. They range from just 40 seconds to 2-3 minutes each. This is supposed to be the easiest class she's taken from a materials POV, instead its the most frustrating. I feel like I'm "THAT" parent, I don't like being "THAT" parent.
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I contacted her dual enrollment councilor and she forwarded my email to the dept head and the teacher and said we should hear back by tomorrow morning at the latest. The teacher is not new to the college, I know he taught this course last semester because we were on the wait list.
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I actually have them forwarded to me to help her keep track since she has problems with executive functions, I missed it too :o
Another vote for dropping the course.
One method for managing stress is finding ways to reduce it. Removing oneself in a timely way from a bad situation is a useful life skill. Walk your dd through the college's info on dropping courses and help her through the process. Many people have to drop courses in their college careers and knowing how to do it and when it has to be done is another growth experience.
BTW, you mentioned email. One thing that we've done is to have ds's emails auto forward to one parent account and to allow delegation to the other parent. Sometimes dh will see an important email that gets lost in the clutter. Sometimes I have been able to go in and find a critical piece of information that they couldn't locate. It might be a useful tool to consider. (Of course it also means that dh was getting double the emails about broken CC elevators all semester long. He started forwarding the emails along with snarky comments about the immanent rise of the machines.)
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This for sure! My kids have found about half of their professors use email as the primary contact and at least a quarter don't use blackboard at all, even though they are supposed to.
I would have her drop the class. She is essentially coming in 2 weeks behind and the odds are too high that the teacher's organization is going to remain an issue. But from now on, check email every day!
She's really bad about checking email, we've never had a teacher that used only email and everything was still within BB but it still doesn't excuse all the other issues. She has full credit for week 1, its only week 2 she's missed. We'll get it sorted and figure out what to do by Tuesday.
Blackboard has many disadvantages. It glitches frequently. The gradebook does not allow the full functionality an Excel spreadsheet has. Plus, if the instructor is not on campus, which is often the case especially with adjuncts who do not have their own office, they may be unable to log into the system remotely. Email is far more robust and more widely accessible.
Been using it for 3 years, none of the instructors are on campus though the high school side, very rarely an issue with it so wasn't worried about using it in college.
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ugh, one of the students replied last night to her help post that he emailed the due dates for the week a week ago and everything is now late and we don't even know his late policy! Maybe its just me but you'd think the due dates would be posted INSIDE the class. If at least 3 students are totally lost in a class with only 30 seats you know more have to be. I checked her college email and yep, I found the due date thing. Still contacting the dual enrollment office because there are to many issues with this class.
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I agree with Julie. You should drop this class and find a different one.
Unfortunately he's the only one that teaches the class. We have until Tuesday to drop, I'll check with the dual enrollment office and see if they can help. Maybe he's just been sick and offline or something.
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My 16yo is dual enrolled at the local CC and normally when there is an issue its easy to handle on the high school side, were having issues with an instructor at the CC. The class is online and my daughter is very frustrated, the class is Stress Management and oddly enough its caused her the most stress she's ever had about a class and were only about 2 weeks in. There are multiple issues and since its a college class I can't step in to resolve the issues. Teen has ASD so is really stressing, especially about the fact she's going to tank her grade in just the 2nd week because she's finding the class impossible due to unclear expectations. I don't know how to help her or what to suggest since I've never ran into this issue before.
The issues:
The syllabus is a standard college issued one not specific to the class beyond the name and section. Not so much as a my name is Mike and I'm the teacher, here's how to contact me and what my expectations are (I finally found his email in the help forum on the discussion forum). Doesn't explain due dates, grading, office hours or anything. (she's been stressing all week so I finally sat down to see if I can figure it out and help her)Blackboard is a mess, the link to email the instructor goes to the page for the instructor to email the students, no due dates anywhere, in his audio lecture (which I listened to thinking maybe she missed it) it keeps saying to check the calendar for due dates but there is nothing loaded in the calendar, I can see her other classes due dates but nothing for this course.
The course is disorganized and what should be one file is split into many making it more complicated then it needs to be to track files and lectures. It stressed me and I'm not even taking the class.
She's emailed the teacher 3 times since Monday and has not gotten any response. She also posted on the help forum of the discussion board and also did not get a response, only from another student who didn't know either.
I thought I would just take her to campus during his office hours which are not mentioned anywhere either, I found them under the schools instructor directory and he only has online hours amd no campus office and no suggestion on how to contact him (her online HS has link to a virtual classroom on blackboard). I'm just at a loss and don't know what to suggest to my daughter beyond going to the dept chair which seems overkill.
We don't want to drop the class, I think it will be beneficial for her as she has major issues with stress and its a life skill she she needs to acquire. She's taken much more difficult courses without an issue but it looks like, well frankly laziness that the instructor couldn't even be bothered to write a syllabus. He has great reviews on ratemyprofessor.com so I don't know why were running into these issues.
She's had a good experience do far with college classes so I don't want her to get discouraged.
What do I suggest to her to help her resolve the issues?
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Wow, the school sounds awesome! I wish they had that level of support when I went to college.
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I met with disability services with my ds too. The guy was very friendly and talked freely with me. He encouraged me to stay involved.
Of course, ds's college sounds nothing like those described by other teachers here. He has received extended time, teachers are more than willing to have tutoring sessions, and he has never had a course syllabus that was more than a couple of pages with very few details about anything.
My dd's doesn't either, maybe they are working at large Universities? Were using a smaller CC with about 6,000 students and the classes themselves only have 30 slots. The syllabus for both her classes is about 2 pages long. Its crazy some of the stuff they are seeing with students suing when they were clearly in the wrong and just being plain rude. I honestly think this semesters college classes are going to be easier then her high school classes so I'm not very worried and spring session is her "fun" classes, its next year when she starts the academics like Eng 101 I will really worry:)
I am wondering though, can anyone tell me where would I find out if there's an audio version of the text book available I can buy?
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No, it does not. College falls under ADA and they must make it accessible to her now and they can't delay it a semester, that is not a reasonable amount of time. If the college has told you this, they aren't working hard enough to get their job done. If they are insisting upon this, you need to find someone to help her advocate.
I'm not particularity worried about it right now as all her classes are online this semester but next semester she wants to take a class thats only offered in person so it will need to be addressed by then.
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I am doing that, we have to do that through Voc Rehab here though and that wont be in place until next semester. I had no idea until a few days before school started and it takes a couple months to process the paperwork.
DS has been taking college classes for 2 years and is now on his 3rd year and no I don't interfere in that regard. What you could do is to contact college disability services and have it documented that she has autism. That way if something comes up, it goes through the proper college channels vs via a parent. Just a thought.
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Do you ever clue the teacher in for online classes that your kiddo is young and just a "hey, just wanted you to know they are only x years old and in x grade if you do see an issue please feel free to contact me"? I know its a very different ball game in college and the teachers don't even have to talk to us but in this case I'm worried because kiddo has Autism and she can come off as a little odd I guess and overly formal, especially in her writing.
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We struggle with anxiety here. I have yet to find something to help. I wish you the best.
<Edited due to privacy...>
Thats ok, I did see the original post, did you find the answer you were looking for? If not we also deal with a condition called Pyroluria and methylation issues, some people poo poo the conditions but I don't care, treatment saved our lives. We have had multiple therapists that deal with my teen sit up and take notice of the changes to the point neither of her school ABA therapists will work with her until she's had her morning vitamins because she's literally non functional and aggressive until about an hour after she's had them. It helped me with my severe depression and helped really dial back the tantrums in my 10yo, she can be very pleasant these days unless you ask her to do a non preferred activity. We see Mensah Medical for treatment as its hard to find a good practitioner here in the US.
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:grouphug: In my limited experience with my own son and close friends, you must get the anxiety under control before the child will be able to learn. So unschooling, or something very similar to that, until you get that piece worked out seems like your only option.
I would find a really good Cognitive Behavioral Therapist who can work with anxiety in kids. Get him/her on board ASAP. In my personal experience, though, often the anxiety level needs to be brought down to be able to make therapy progress too.
Since you mentioned biomedical, supplements you could check might include l-theanine (short acting here/not enough/we still use it). My son does well with n-aceytl cysteine, but that's particular to OCD in my research. He benefits from Culturelle, which is a probiotic. I don't know why, but he carries chronic c-diff, so maybe that's why. I don't know about dosing but Inositol has helped a friend's daughter.
But...a friend's son couldn't learn at all due to anxiety. Really low dose SSRI has changed his life. He was 2nd grade I think when he started. I know his mom really struggled with that choice, but he couldn't even do therapy. He's doing great now, in every way. Similarly, a family member finally placed their daughter on medication (I think Prozac in that case). She's absolutely thriving now, night and day.
Medication would probably be the fastest and most certain way to get her anxiety regulated. Regulated, she could better learn coping skills through things like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness, etc. Medication doesn't have to be forever.
:grouphug:
She has been getting therapy for 3 years along with community based rehab and has made no progress. We changed therapists last week to one who only deals with kids with Autism. The therapists have been at a loss because she can tell you what we think she's doing wrong behavior wise, what she should do and that she doesn't want to do what you want because she enjoys getting reactions out of people or what ever the undesired behavior is. She's one of those kids who likes getting reactions out of people, her favorite target is my teen who does not handle it well at all. She's worked with 4 different ABA therapist for school the past year and its been awful, from what I'm reading about PDA her reaction to them is typical. School has to be her idea. For example yesterday I wanted her to just do 1 page of the TT placement test and that was a big no, an hour later she asks me a math question and she's doing the thing on her own happily.
What Onestep said is good.
With my DD, making sure she gets enough sleep is extremely important. So is approaching easy-trigger subjects (in our house, math) at otherwise low key times when she is at her best.
We have been steering more towards child-led learning--not that she picks all the materials, but the overall goals, and the pace, and a good deal of the process, is controlled by DD as well as by our observations of what conditions foster her learning best.
Finally, you said "besides medication" but medication can make a BIG difference. It seriously can.
I'm off to look up Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome. If it's what it sounds like, it might fit my DD quite well.
She gets 10-11 hours a night, The Fitbit I put on her said she was waking an average of 40 times a night, sleep study disagreed but funny thing happened, her wakings went down to about 10 a night when we added the weighted blanket but I don't get any sleep since every time she moved it would fall off and I'd have to re position it. Replacing it with a much bigger, twin size option is at the top of my list. I know medication can make a big difference, I also know she's got a biological issue, 2 of them actually that cause anxiety and aggression, I can't get her to the Dr to get the lab orders for another week then we can't see the specialist until Sept since I have to pay out of pocket. Anyway I'm trying to avoid medication as we've had bad experiences with them and know about the Pyroluria and high free copper issues.
Please take my responses as those of a parent with no expertise in this field. My DS has had some similar issues over the past two years but not to the extreme that you seem to be dealing with. :grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:
What you might consider:
- Backing off literally ALL structured school work for several weeks. Give her a detox period. She is still young. Don't worry about whether she is functioning at grade level/finishing the current grade level. Goodness, her academics are small potatoes compared to the other issues. She has years to learn reading/writing/math/history/science. Truly, there is time for that. Right now she is struggling in ways that could impact her forever. Those have to take precedence.
- Make sure her sleeping/eating schedule fits well with her natural patterns.
- Find a therapist that specializes in kids with these challenges and possibly does Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Is she seeing a therapist already?
- Maybe do some projects or work on acquiring a special skill or hobby if it would give her sense of purpose and accomplishment.
- Eventually, after a detox period, I would try to focus strictly on trying to rebuild confidence in her academics and reduce the anxiety and help her get over what is amounting to PTSD from her academics through interest led learning with NO pressure, as well as fun activities, lots of hugs (when accepted), smiles, listening to audio books of her choice if she likes that, letting her discuss whatever might be of interest to her, etc.
- Finding materials that are better suited to her interests once she is in a better place for taking on more formal academics. Make sure to start with only one or two core subjects, keep lessons VERY short, and try to make the materials fit her learning style and interests as much as possible. Build from there.
I feel for you and send my empathy and hugs. It is so hard when our children struggle like this. There is no easy fix, nothing we just need them to study harder for and it all gets better, no surgery that heals the damage...and no easy, clearly laid out path for how to move forward... :grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:
Thats pretty much our plan, I just worry about not having some kind of education plan in place because we do deal with so many therapists, all we need is one therapists who disagrees and we get CPS in our lives which I don't want. BTDT a couple times when the girls were younger, all I got told was "good job mom! wish more were like you" but its still stressful as heck. I know I should relax, my teen missed most of elementary school due to her health issues and when she was finally in a place to really start learning in 7th they placed her in high school classes and now just 2 years later she's supposed to start college next month 2 weeks after turning 16 but she doesn't have the level of issues as my 10yo even though she's got serious issues.
Thank you everyone for being kind and understanding, I was very nervous about posting about this but needed some ideas from someone other then our frustrated therapists who were out of ideas.
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My 10yo has a list of issues and has been getting full time ABA through school for all school hours and its been a disaster, epic tantrums lasting several hours every single day. We were enrolled in a K12 VA, the school has been awesome in trying to help, they have bent over backwards but after a year of these tantrums I just can't take it anymore so were going back to traditional homeschooling and planning a low key year while we focus on coping strategies. She has an ASD dx along with ODD and anxiety. I recently became aware of a condition called Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome which at this time is pretty much only accepted over in the UK but it describes my dd pretty well. Basically the kids are little control freaks due to anxiety, we're looking into the bio med stuff to help but any suggestions on how to help her get a grip so we can teach her? She learned NOTHING when I put her in B&M for 2nd, enrolled in K12 for 3rd as its been awesome for my teen and even with a crazy amount of support she's only about half way through the year progress wise and were doing summer school trying to finish out the year, I'm not going to hold my breath on making it because its been difficult getting this far, the kid just melts down as soon as you sit her down to work on the OLS. Its not that the work is to hard, she won't even try due to her extreme fear/anxiety. On days when she decides she wants to do it she can get though an entire days work in about 2-3 hours when most kids are taking 6-7 hours. What I'm hearing from other PDA parents is they end up unschooling, which I'm not all that sure I'm ok with.
So, ideas on controlling the anxiety besides medication? We know she needs heavy work and I'm turning my living room into a therapy room so I'm totally open to idea's there. I'm wondering if some form of meditation would be helpful? Massage?
Recc's for curriculum happily accepted too. Pretty sure I'm going to get her Teaching Textbooks 3 since thats awesome for math anxious kids, thinking of FLL but need to look into it again since its been several years since I looked at it. K12 testing says she's 3rd grade for language arts and just starting 2nd grade for math (K12 is 12-18mo ahead of B&M). I've got The Writers Jungle around here somewhere I'll probably use for writing but this year will basically focus on the 3R's.
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You are way out of line.
Just stop.
Im sorry, I guess im having a bad day and this is a touchy subject for me.
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Most families cannot live off of $1000/per month. This hardly helps the OP at all.
The majority of the families I know do live on that. I know of very very few that are living on $2k or more. Perhaps because I live in a poor town and always have but I just can not imagine not making it on $3k month. Perhaps years of poverty has changed how I see things but when you dont have much and you see folks making way more then you its baffling why they cant make it.
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That might be true, but it might be that for the longest time they were and there was a significant drop in their income. That can happen to anyone.
With that much money they should have a good emergancy fund built up which gives them cushion time to adjust to the new lower level of means. If they didnt do that then no, they were not living within their means. Were way below the poverty line income wise and with this move its going to free up what to me is a lot of money. Even Im going to be putting something into an EF because I know I cant absorb any unexpected expenses. This is basic money managment stuff. To me someone living with that kind of income and having money issues is mostly likely buying things they dont need or living in a house they cant afford.
How to do high school with a student who is at a 5th grade level
in Special Needs Board
Posted
Its nearly a year later and I find myself with similar questions. Did you come up with answers?