I'm not sure that this is strictly a learning challenge thing, but here goes. My almost 5 y/o ds and I are stuck in a negative spiral. He gets fixated on something that he's not supposed to do or have, and it is nearly impossible to stop the sequence. He acts like he can't even hear me, and won't answer me if I ask him if he understands what I am saying. He also doesn't seem to "get" consequences. I can't tell if it is willful, or if he is getting "stuck." This is happening more and more often, and is affecting where I am willing to go with the kids. If I can't take the double stroller to keep him contained if he melts down, we're not going there. I learned about the Nurtured Heart Approach after watching Dr. Newmark's presentation about ADHD. I ordered the book "Transforming the Difficult Child" intending to use the strategies for my 7 y/o who has moderate/severe ADHD, but my 4 y/o has much more challenging behaviors than his brother! Has anyone used this program to break a negative pattern of interaction with a child?

Thanks! I'm glad to hear the RWT has worked well for your families. We will start out with the old qwerty keyboard, since that's what we have, but it's good to know that there's an alternative if ds can't wrap his brain (or fingers!) around the qwerty layout.

I was just coming over here to ask about this program! We will be using one of Ellen McHenry's science units this year, and I saw Excavating English on her website. I would be interested in hearing how it goes for you. :)

I am looking for a typing program for my nearly 8 y/o ds who has dyslexia, dysgraphia, adhd, and maybe a bit of asd. I have narrowed down my choices, and now need to decide between Touch-type Read and Spell, and Read, Write, and Type. Both programs claim to reinforce reading and spelling skills, in addition to teaching typing. Have any parents here used either of these programs with their kids with LDs? Do you have a preference? I am leaning toward Read, Write, and Type, mostly because I can buy a 5-year license for $35, vs. a 1-year subscription for $80ish if I buy Touch-type Read and Spell. Thanks!

My brother and sil spent a lot of time checking out what sounds like a similar property--it was a wetland property--and the final verdict was that they would have to buy the property, do a bunch of environmental and feasibility studies, and the results of those studies could add tens of thousands of dollars to their building costs, or mean building a very strangely-shaped house. They ended up moving to Gig Harbor and commuting. The last I heard, the property was still on the market. Maybe it's the same one they passed up. :p

I don't have any helpful ideas, but I am shocked that so many people would be interested in outsourcing the best parts of homeschooling: messy, wild science experiments and art projects!

This makes a lot of sense. Has anyone mentioned Apples and Pears as a morpheme-based spelling program? We have only just started using it, so we aren't seeing that aspect yet, but I understand that the morpheme approach becomes more prominent in the later books. DS has the combination of dyslexia and high verbal ability, so I am trying to find a good balance for language arts. I am intrigued by the MCT materials.

Thank you! I ordered Ticket to Ride Europe and Dixit.

I found the sample LiPS dialogues unhelpful, simply because my son doesn't respond like the hypothetical attentive student in the book. :) Responding to the response means that my dialogue is unlike that provided in the book. I also don't use the "well gollygeewhillikers what sound is that" style of speech modeled in the book. Fewer word work better than more for my son. P has trouble discriminating s-blends at the ends of words--pets vs pest, decks vs desk, lost vs lots, etc. We have been working on this orally, stretching out the words and labeling the sounds. He does something similar to your daughter in that he will sometimes say each individual sound correctly, then use the wrong sound when blending. For P this seems to be a perseverative issue--he will get "stuck" on a particular sound at the beginning or end of a word, and use it regardless of what phonogram he sees. This seems to be improving now that we have started Dancing Bears--he is forced to slow down and follow the cursor, and he wants that check mark for correct responses at the end of the line. :) His ability to give sounds quickly for phonograms has also improved since we have started using DB. He does very well with the flash cards, and his ability to decode the cards has transferred nicely to decoding sentences in the book. This is big for him--in the past, his ability to apply skills has been highly format-dependent.

Does anybody know if "before the age of 8" is a common cutoff to receive asd services? This makes me a little bit nervous--ds turns 8 next month, and possibly has ASD. Our insurance is changing next month and I don't have access to the particulars yet, so I can't look this up. Plus, DH's employer seems to change insurance companies every few years.

At the top there should be a button that says filter search. When you click it, it gives you an option to only see available materials. :)

I do not like McD's, KFC, or Subway. If fast food is the only option, I like Wendy's salads or Taco Time's chicken chili. If I want a hamburger, there is a local non-chain restaurant we like.

Toe by Toe was the inspiration for Dancing Bears, according to the Promethean Trust website. :)

Thanks! I think you are right. I probably still have the schedule that I printed three years ago around here somewhere, so I will use that again. :)

Years ago I worked for both Barnes and Noble and Borders. I preferred Borders, but that's not much help now. :) The retail climate depends a great deal upon your managers and coworkers.

My oldest went with us for baby #2's 20 week ultrasound. He was young--about 2 1/2, and he had a meltdown when he saw me lying on the table to have the ultrasound done. Dh had to take him out and walk him around the hospital while I had the ultrasound done, and then come back for a minute for the big gender reveal. :)

Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey is the most perfect ice cream ever.

It's silly, but my view of Atticus has already changed--a young, idealistic lawyer grows jaded and reverts to the racism he was steeped in as a child. sigh. I bet she needs the money. :(

Interesting. Ds's np suggested that if we are going to medicate, we come back and do the asd screen again with medication on board. She said that depending on the kid, she has seen the symptoms that can be indicative of either asd or adhd be controlled on the meds, indicating that they were actually caused by the adhd neurological processes, or occasionally a kid who is medicated with adhd meds will suddenly look very autistic--the asd symptoms were masked by extreme adhd symptoms. We are going to go ahead with the school iep eval. We are hoping for speech therapy services again. We all see a family practice physician, so no ped here. We're deciding what to do about the med question. Thank you! I am looking for non-drug methods to try first. If nothing else, maybe he will end up on lower doses of meds, if it comes to that. :)

If I remember correctly, there was a study done several years ago that suggested that learning happened more effectively when reading a physical book than when reading an ebook, and it was for this reason--being able to visualize where a bit of information was located on a page. Here's a Scientific American article about the phenomenon.

Can I slink back now? Thank you for showing me grace as I had my little hissy fit. :blushing: The best thing about having a neuropsych intern who is finishing up a PhD is that we can get in for appointments rather quickly. lol P had an appointment on Wednesday, and we have some more answers. He has been officially diagnosed with ADHD and he...well, I don't know if the correct word is pass or fail, but the autism screening tool suggested that he should have the full diagnostic interview. She suggested that we have a consult with a child psychiatrist to talk about ADHD meds. I'm on the fence about this. I don't want to rush into meds, but I do want to give him the best chance to learn. A nice incidental is that she asked him to read some words from the Titanic poster in her office, and he was able to decode some phonograms that he had only seen a few times on his Dancing Bears flashcards, and not read yet in the workbook. So that approach seems to be working for him. After talking with the psych, some relatives, homeschool friends, and friends with kids in the school district, I've decided to keep him home again this year. He is relieved. For the rest of the summer I will be researching how to set everyone up for success by improving EF. And I have a melting-down toddler so I need to wrap this up. :)

Has anybody used the new paid version of Wee Folk Art? We used the free version the fall ds1 was five, and loved the books and activities. What is different in the paid version? Do you use the ebook version or the printed version? My second son is 5 this year, and I am looking forward to using WFA again. :)

We use LiPS, but I'm not sure how helpful I will be because my son uses it backwards. lol We did it by the book for the first few months and got frustrated, so we use it a bit differently now. I bought the manual and a big magnetic whiteboard, then copied the mouth pics and letter tiles from the manual, laminated them, and put magnets on the back. We use some generic colored tiles we had already for the colored squares. We probably spend about 35-45 minutes a day on LiPS, in one or two sessions. My son can do one long session because there are so many different activites to do in each session--matching letters to mouth pics, labeling sounds given orally or with letters, sequencing consonant sounds with pics, colors, or letters, building word chains with pics, colors, or letters, reading word chains, etc. When he starts getting squirrelly with one activity, we can switch to the next thing. P likes to talk, so the back-and-forth as we figure things out keeps him engaged.

Epipens are such a racket. If I bought an ampule of epinephrine and an empty autoinjector it would cost less than $25. Autoinjector-filler must be a very highly-paid job. :glare:

I am sorry. What I meant to be an attempt to lighten the mood with some self-deprecating humor came across as passive agressive or outright hostile. I guess I'm the only one who thinks I'm funny. :) I have contacted my son's psych for more testing. I had such a good meeting with the IEP team that I guess I thought they would be more helpful than many here have experienced. Maybe I have more faith in credentials than others do. I don't know. I think I need to stay off teh internets for a while. :)