mamashark
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Posts posted by mamashark
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No, I don't have zometools, we used to have a fort building kit that was similar but huge, and she would spend hours building forts with it... the dog chewed on several of the ball-connectors and she got frustrated because she couldn't make anything with what was left.
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The reading and comprehension stuff I've got updated assessments from last month from the QRI-3, and have her reading fluently with comprehension at 6/7th level. I've given this test to many many kids over the years as a former special Edu teacher and have never given it to a kid who reads ahead of level so that was kind of fun for me.
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So I've been spending some time rethinking each piece of our school day and asking my daughter about each one. I've turned math into a three pronged approach - grade-level skills from math mammoth at an accelerated pace, challenge problems that force her to think outside the box but without the computation piece, and games to reinforce computation skills. She's thriving at this and as frustrated as she gets with the challenge problems, I've never seen her so proud of herself and so excited when she figures one out.
She asked if she could read science herself and have me quiz her and after trying that this week I realized that I was spending far too much time talking about concepts when she could learn them much faster without my chatter. It's time to allow her more self-directed science study I think!
For history, I have no good solution for this year other than to just finish the last few chapters, but I am going to try something new for next year and she specifically asked to go back to ancients, so that gives me a good starting point.
Regarding test scores. Here's a quick rundown of what I've got and my thoughts:
Verbal comprehension: 112
Perceptual reasoning: 98
Working memory: 99
Processing speed: 91
subscore percentiles:
Verbal comprehension:
similarities 95%
vocabulary 75%
Comprehension 50%
Perceptual reasoning:
Block design 16%
picture concepts 75%
matrix reasoning 75%
Working memory:
digit span 63%
letter-number sequencing 37%
Processing speed:
coding 9%
symbol search 63%
He gave her full scale at 102 and when I asked how much any of it might have been impacted by her inattentiveness, he said no more than a few points at the most.
Thinking through this as I type, I can see that she should be able to read and understand texts higher than "grade level" and my application is assume nothing but instead to allow more self-directed learning and check comprehension with higher level questioning.
She has good abstract reasoning skills but poor spacial skills so don't expect her to be an architect but I should allow her to learn in a way that allows her to make more of her own logical conclusions, so more discovery-based learning...which falls nicely in line with self-directed learning.
working memory - all I've got here is that she's capable of learning.. not sure there's more I need from this one anyway.
Processing speed - good at spotting patterns but other than that, this one is probably too far from accurate to extrapolate much due to the massive changes in her attention and ability to focus.
Am I on the right track?
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yeah, I've tried that, but if she feels like she doesn't need to go, she'll fight me and cry, saying she doesn't need to go. Only to have an accident 10 minutes later.
I had success with a timer and asking if her was still dry every hour, allowing her to go when she needed to and giving lots of praise for dry pants, but after a couple good days in a row, she slips back into being wet.
The frustrating thing is this is the child who potty-trained herself, super easy, when she was two and a half.
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I'm pretty sure this is what's going on with my 5 year old daughter who has a language delay. I feel like the anxiety is what is causing the frequent accidents. Sometimes it's fear of a spider in the bathroom, other times I don't know - fear of the bathroom itself maybe? I have a toddler potty seat that I might try putting in the living room to see if she'll use it. I'm at a loss to know what to do to help!
She'll poop in the toilet and has regular bowels, once a day. She says it doesn't hurt to pee, but I have an appointment scheduled with the Dr. to be sure there's nothing else going on physically. I'll literally catch her sitting on her foot, with a puddle of pee under her. I'll send her to the bathroom and she'll change her clothes and clean herself and the floor up. I don't punish her for the accidents but I make her take responsibility for cleaning up but it doesn't seem to make a difference.
So how do I work with her? I have trouble because of the limited verbal feedback due to the expressive language delay, and It's not healthy for her to continue this way though! I'm sure the pediatrician will have advice too, but I'd love to be able to do something NOW, this weekend, to make a difference for her now that I feel like I've figured out what's going on and I thought maybe there are moms on this board who've dealt with this before who might be able to impart some wisdom?
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ok, I'll see what I can come up with, thanks for the encouragement!
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If you ask her, "is it challenging enough," what is her response?
Boredom is a huge tell, but it could mean over placement just as easily as under placement. If she is missing basic societal concepts, history won't have purpose. It's quite common these days, particularly with the internet allowing us to stay remote.
For math, calculation skills may trail abstract ideas by quite a ways. Does she like building toys? Does she love algebraic concepts but hate tables? DS can do high school math at 9, but still makes basic arithmetic mistakes. It will correct itself.
Interesting thoughts on History - I need to ponder that some.
Math - yes, that's a great way to describe her except that I have trouble figuring out how to give depth conceptually without making things too difficult algebraically. I've done poorly at helping her develop math interest, and I kind of feel like I've killed some of that eagerness. She used to LOVE math, but now she has an attitude and fights me over it every day. The in-between time has been me trying different curricula to figure out how to address the fact that her computation skills are lagging behind her conceptual skills and I didn't know how to handle that. And the focus the past couple years has been so heavy on math fact mastery.
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that's an interesting thought process, I'll have to ponder that some more...
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The pond ripples is a neat idea, I've never seen that before!
Yes, she's 8.
Thanks for all the ideas, I'm going to check into those books too.
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ok, that's a valid point.
Subjects that are working for us:
Language Arts - Michael Clay Thompson, Island level and she loves it.
science she is enjoying but we tend to put our own thing together. we are learning earth science this year.
Spelling - we are doing essentials of spelling and it's a quick lesson each day so she's willing to do it, and she seems to be improving her spelling, at least some, so I'm ok with it.
Art/music - we are enjoying these this year, we finally found a way to get to them each week.
Subjects that we are not satisfied with:
Math - she doesn't like math. so I've dumped the McRuffy 3rd and am filling in with some math mammoth and zaccaro and plan on doing beast 3 next year... but math is such a fight. She is super quick at all new concepts, but takes a long time with computation. she has learned to avoid thinking mathematically and thus has trouble with problem solving.
History - totally boring, she doesn't get the point and only puts up with it because she loves coloring and can color a corresponding history page with the chapters in SOTW2. That and the maps are about all I can get out of her for history. I'm trying to look for a "big picture" history program but not sure what direction to head for that.
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OK so I'm still thinking through this, even as I type... Is there a way to get a big picture overview and then study the parts more in depth? Over several years?
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I guess it does kind of sound like I want to rush it, really I guess it just seems the timeline is not sinking in at all, like she's not getting a picture of what happened even just this year in our history studies. For that matter, I can't get the picture either. Maybe just working with a time line is the best and hopefully over the years it will sink in.
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We are nearing the end of SOTW2 and our eyes are glazing over. What started at the beginning of the year as interesting, has quickly become a timeline that is too long and complicated to keep in our heads as visual spacial learners, and so nothing is sticking.
I would love to be able to do a 1 year overview of history that allows us to get the timeline into our heads in a way that we can see the patterns and retrieve chunks at a time to understand the impact of an event/person.
Right now everything seems to be taught as dates/names/places and while we try to connect everything and are putting the events that seem most important into our timeline book, I'm realizing that right now the only benefit we are getting from history is a moral discussion of what is occurring and map reading skills. My daughter loves the coloring pages and can answer the comprehension questions...but there's gotta be a better way to do it. Before I try to invent the wheel all over again I thought I'd see if anyone knows of something that already does this?
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Hi all, I'm relatively new on these boards and have spent a great deal of my time gleaning wisdom for my middle children, but I have a question now about my eldest. She is 8 years old, and at age 6 she was tested with the WISC-IV and another test for ADHD and was diagnosed as average intelligence and severely ADHD. The Psych we went to blew off my questions about her academic achievements and at the time we were in the middle of a difficult pregnancy so we put her on the recommended medication and basically survived the school year.
This summer we used an intense OT regime, went off meds, and everyone was blown away by the improvements. The pediatrician still has trouble believing that we don't have her on meds. So we maintain a sensory diet and she would not qualify as ADHD if we were to pay for retesting, I'm sure of it. In the meantime, I read David Sousa's book "How does the Gifted brain Learns and I'm left unsatisfied again with the test results that I have. The extreme attention issues we were dealing with when she was tested make me feel like I can't trust any of the scores. She showed some strengths and some weaknesses but I don't know how to even guess at what her true strengths and weaknesses are now that shes's able to focus.
I don't care about having a "gifted" diagnosis. I don't want her in anything that requires it, I just wonder if the subcategories would help me as I try to meet her potential academically. I have little doubt that she's gifted, and she fits the description of a visual spacial learner o a T.
I don't have the money to get her retested formally, but I wonder if there's a cheap or free test I can administer that would give me some idea of her specific intellectual strengths/weaknesses? Or should I focus my time and efforts on learning more about the visual/spacial learning style and focus on synthesis level learning?
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So would it help in this case to put letters and words on red or green paper?
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So a question. Let's say the issue is processing, where the brain just doesn't translate letters/sounds properly. What is the other way into the brain? Or is there? How does a program, like Orton-gillingham for example, or Barton, work with these kids?
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If I want to use Ronit Bird as a K level math curriculum for my daughter who struggles (It was recommended here a little bit ago and I'm just now getting around to the math portion of my research!) do I want to start with the Toolkit book? And I already have c-rods, is there anything else I need?
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FWIW, this part seems very normal for a 3 year old (insofar as there's such a thing as 100% normal behavior at that age ;-) ). The textbooks put them right in the peak stage for parallel play, and it's typical for them to be more comfortable with siblings. So if it turns out that he doesn't want to play with strange children at the park, that would seem to me to point to absolutely nothing, except that he's probably not going to win the Mr. Congeniality award at the preschool pageant.
At this age, social development has historically taken place largely within the family, so it's understandable that little ones might feel quite literally "lost" without the special people they're attached to. But I do get the sense that some parents and professionals have taken on new expectations that are based on early entry into group care as the default.
When these sorts of issues come up, my children remember the boy in Patricia MacLachlan's "Three Names," who cried on the first day of school because he was only seven years old and had never been away from home before.
Also -- if you want to get a sense of how your son is doing in terms of developing fundamental social awareness and motivation (vs. just meeting certain cultural norms), this older RDI book is very good, whether his current difficulties turn out to be diagnosable or not. I wish the authors were able to promote their findings more widely, as I'm sure that they could help many families with challenges other than ASD. The normal developmental process they describe is basically the "stage two" that the attachment parenting books never talked about. Which is quite a big omission, since it starts within the first year of life.
interesting, thanks for this resource!
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OP's son certainly needs extra support in doing what OP needs him to do. But the idea that there is one "truth" to the matter of labeling, diagnostics, and developmental norms rankles me. Choosing to get help via diagnosis is fine but that is not "the truth" of kids who are sensitive and high-strung, nor is my family's choice to live with ourselves and not seek labels but seek functional solutions "the truth".
Framing it in those terms puts an unnecessary moral dynamic of "ignoring the truth" or "being afraid of the truth" which I believe is unhelpful and, when applied to those who don't have the same cultural beliefs about developmental norms, can be harmful.
Thank you for this comment!
And thank you to all who have given me great strategies and ideas. I have a lot of info to think about and process and in the end, regardless of what decision we make as a family, I have learned a lot and appreciate each person's input!
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I don't know whether celiac ever manifests as abdominal pain.
Yes it can. And we have a family history of celiac, so it's a possibility. I never thought about abdominal pain being a possible cause for not liking pants - and if the pants are at all snug at the waist, he refuses to let me button or snap them and I never could figure out why.
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Ok, then you have your explanation on why the ASD isn't getting caught. I guarantee you it's because of the PROMPT. The PROMPT is hitting some of what ABA would, and he's learning how to interact with adults. It's the adults doing his assessments, so they're like oh, see, he's fine!
So what you need to do is leave your other kids with grandma (so you can focus) and take JUST THIS CHILD to the park. Take him to the park or the mall or library time to play, and see how he responds. Is his interaction with the other kids age-typical? Does he need to be prompted?
The other thing is that if he had that, he may have some other language issues going on. For instance, because my ds has SUCH a high vocabulary (99th percentile), we had NO CLUE that his single sentence comprehension was so low. He was using his gifts to mask his weaknesses. Without detailed language testing, you don't realize those gaps are there.
Our SLP (also PROMPT, love!!!) was so, so adamant that he could not be on the spectrum. She's like, but he comes in and talks with me! And the psychs and people who meet him are like wow. But that's the point, that he got that skill that they did with him. But that didn't give him the skill to do it with other kids. So then he was 5 and 6 and 7 and I was prompting him. We started this school year, 7.5, with me still making excuses for him in classes. I take him to multiple classes at the Y each week to make sure he gets with a variety of kids and has lots of opportunities to practice social skills. That was where it became apparent to me that he was 5/6/7 and that kids age 3/4 had better conversational skills. This sweet little 4 yo boy in one class has been so patient with him. At the beginning of the year, ds didn't even respond to the overtures of the 4 yo. Now they have nice little times together before and after class.
Anyways, that's one way to see it, to get him with his peers. When he's with his siblings, it might not be as apparent.
I really should do this. My gut reaction is to not do it, because I don't want to see what would happen. He's got two older sisters and a younger brother and he plays nicely with them (well, mostly nicely, typical sibling stuff) and he's especially attached to his closest in age sister. When they have friends over, he plays with them too, but I don't see him directing play, interacting on his own outside of sibling stuff or parallel play. Without watching him play at the park without siblings I can't know for sure, but my gut says he'd play by himself or throw a fit for me to play with him. He'd be lost. -
I think I've definitely mishandled his shutdowns - I always try to get him to come out and respond again, when I might need to just back off and let him decompress. Like he's so overwhelmed by whatever is going on that he can't deal/function and needs time to process/reduce stimuli.
We do allow him to color during church, but we also always try to talk him into his class. I need to just pack a bag with a snack or two, coloring stuff, and not even ask him to go to his class. When he reaches an overload point, I'll just take him to the hall and sit quietly with him. I already get enough looks and comments from people who wonder why I don't just force him into his class. I can sit in the hall with him to help him handle the environment better. Then as he learns to trust me, I can start teaching him coping skills.
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If he's 3, I think you can still call EI. Since part of the sticking point is *paying* for evals, that's a way around it. EI will do some screening for free.
By logging in a chart, you mean food? Fine. But for behavior, you want ABC=Antecedent + Behavior + Consequence. That's the only way to see the patterns of the behavior. So what was he doing before, what was the situation, then what behavior occurred (be SPECIFIC), and then what was the consequence (what you did, what someone else did). So for instance, a mild example would be dc was hungry at 8am and was sitting at the island (antecedent), he began banging (behavior), and you went and talked him through the sequence of getting breakfast, asking whether he would like cereal or eggs, helping him get his bowl, etc (consequence). That's the kind of log you need, and it's actually really HARD to do in the moment, because behavior happens so FAST! What I try to do, when I'm behavior logging, is make little notes and then fill in when things slow down (lunch, etc.).
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How is his developmental stuff? Fine motor? Gross motor? Speech? Potty training?
Yes, that's the type of behavioral chart I am trying to keep and yes, I'm keeping most of the details after the fact.
Fine motor is very good for his age - he's able to focus and work on fine motor tasks longer than I would expect for his age.
Gross motor - right where he should be if not slightly ahead based on questions the ped. asked.
Potty training - he is essentially potty trained, but does have accidents sometimes if he waits too long to go to the bathroom. He wears a pull-up at night and still pees in it nightly. He potty trained fully right about at his third birthday.
Speech - he had an odd delay (he would vocalize with nasal sounds in the back of his throat and bring no sound forward). EI evaluated him, said it wasn't autism, claimed it might be selective mutism ... sat on my floor 2x a month rewarding him for simply opening his mouth for them even without sound, and shook their heads and said they had no idea what to do with him. I knew language was there, people could understand his grunting sounds as words even without sounds, he had that much inflection down! His receptive language skills were off the charts good from a really really scary young age.
I got him into a private SLP who had special training (PROMPT) and she had him speaking in 2 weeks. He's now caught up to age-peers. Not sure he talks to others, though, I'm trying to think of a situation where he talks to someone outside of the family and other than grandparents, to know that others understand his speech...oh, he will still talk to the SLP when we go (we see the SLP for my almost 5 year old for a separate issue).
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Can he verbalize what he doesn't like about wearing pants? Are they tight around his tummy, or is he too hot with them on, or something else? What senses exactly are bothering him? As a parent, I'll often make an assumption about why my young child likes or dislikes something, but when I ask what specificially is the issue, it's often completely different than I assumed. And that's when I get a lot closer to to understanding what is going on in their mind and body.
No, he can't tell me why.
Just so you know, you have TONS of red flags here. Issues with pictures, struggling with transitions. These SCREAM the need for full, proper evals. I just don't see how you're going to get a diet problem to explain them, and these are CLASSIC, textbook expressions of the problem. PLEASE get evals.
I get it, really I do! I just don't have the support from my husband for that. I had a long conversation with him last night, though, and got him to understand that even if he disagrees with me that the behavior is "not normal", that I need him to understand that I am not able to continue dealing with it the way it is. That I cannot keep living this way 24/7, because it really is! I get short breaks, but I need more breaks and I need more help and I need strategies to help reduce the behaviors because I cannot cope any longer.
He finally started listening, and as I shared with him all of the ideas from here, and started breaking down the behaviors, he agreed to try several things. He's not willing to spend the money on full evaluations yet, but I at least have the groundwork laid so that if diet changes and sensory diet stuff doesn't work, I feel like I have the room to ask for that to get more answers and help.
I think a huge help will be keeping a chart. I made an easy to fill out chart last night and I think documenting each fit will give my husband a glimpse into my day and help him see what's going on so that he knows it's not just me overreacting to mild behavior. Yesterday was a bad day with one meltdown after another. But my husband only saw a couple of the fits because he had a job to go to and had him one-on-one at the store in between church and the job and I was right - he was an angel at the store. I try to explain the in-between times but I think he might feel like it's being blown out of proportion.
With documentation of what's going on, I'll have more data for the Dr., too, so that when we do get to the point where I can ask for full evaluations, she can see exactly what's going on and why I want the evals. I think a lot of this is people not willing to take my word for the intensity and frequency of behavior because of how sweet and nice he can be in between.
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How do you not put a box around learning?
in Accelerated Learner Board
Posted
Instead of giving the regular history assignment today, I pulled a random biography off the bookshelf that she had not yet read and basically told her to read it, take notes and write a report for me including a timeline and that it was due on Friday.
She's now been working for nearly 2 hours straight, on the last few pages of the book (it was a pretty easy level book for her) and has 3 pages of notes. She's been working steady through her siblings playing without a break in focus except to ask me if I could help her get what she needed to put together the timeline when she was finished.
This from the kid who can't write 3 sentences on a free-write topic of her choice without moaning and groaning.
So how do I take that and not box it in with preconceived ideas on how a report should look? Obviously I want to refine what she's doing and help her learn to put it together nicely, but this was kind of off the cuff and I'm not sure how to guide her.
Is there something I should be looking for to help me (some curriculum or something like that?) or is this just something I need to learn to do on my own and keep giving assignments like this?
I really expected her to read the book and have something like 4 incomplete sentences scrawled across a page and left abandoned on the kitchen table as she ran off to play...