xpost forgetting simple things

[choirfarm]

I posted it on the other board and someone suggested I post here. I'll paste two of my posts:

 

 

If my child does not go over EVERYTHING daily, she forgets... UGGGGGGG She has embarrassed several times lately.. How many days are in a week? Ummm 5... How many weeks are in a month... 5??

 

She is 10!!!!!!! I remember in 2nd or 3rd grade having her recite things that with FLL ( I think or maybe it was Saxon) 7 days in a week, 365 days a year, etc.

 

What is 1500 plus 1000. I don't know, I have to write it down??? Ok, in the fall we spent weeks adding theses kind of things in our head.

 

What is a verb? Person, place or thing... :banghead::banghead::banghead:

 

You would think I am not teaching her anything!!!!!! So frustrating..

 

Then someone asked who was quizzing her:

 

It is just family.. we re riding home from church and discussing that a missionary that my husband worked with is coming here to shadow him and will be staying with us. My middle son is giving up his room and asked how long and we said May 1-18th. He said, "Oh I thought you said it would be a month." My husband said more like 2 1/2 weeks. My daughter piped up and said, "How long is a month.. isn't it 5 weeks?"

 

I can't remember what we were trying to figure out in the kitchen but it was a real life math problem and my husband asked her that problem... Deer in the headlights look.

 

The verb question happened with R & S 4....

 

Her spelling is horrible and she doesn't write much because of it. She went on a father/daughter retreat and she had to write him a letter. It was full of misspellings. I tried phonics zoo and it was a disaster so we started AAS in January. She hates it and says they are all baby words. We flew through level one. I was going to post here and ask about a couple of problems she has with level two so far. She is getting most of it and she can recite the rules ( as well as all the rules fromlevel 3. We already did this with Saxon phonics.. She can tell me the rules!!!!) But for a word like begin she will spell it bigin because that is the way she says it. She doesn't pronounce it beegin she says it like a short i and so spells it that way. Same thing for magnet..she will spell it magnit. Or she will spell until like untill ( which is the rule, right... that you double s, l or f) Becus... Sigh. Homophones are the death of her. That was the phonics zoo lesson we could never, ever get past. I tried everything.. I have gone over there, their and they're till I am blue in the face and she cannot grasp it.

 

If I have her orally narrate something she can do it beautifully. She cannot write it. For cursive, she can copy it beautifully if she is copying a cursive example. She cannot write it from printing. She says she cannot remember how to form the letters.

 

BUT... she can memorize anything.. She loves music and can play a lot after she hears it. She gave a fabulous speech about Gettysburg for her speech class at co-op and memorized the most of the Gettysburg Address for the beginning and end of the speech that told about the battle. She never even used her notes. She has been in lots of plays and is always the first one to have her lines memorized. When she was 4 or 5.. ( long time ago) she had been listening to Oddyssey in her room. I guess it was the history series. We were driving by the theater downtown and she asked me, " Mom, if Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth in Ford's Theater, what movie were they watching?" Which led to a discussion of the difference between a play and a movie. We were not even studying that. She remembered that fact from the radio theater program she had been listening to in her room.

 

Althought she had trouble learning to read and we did vision therapy, she now reads beautifully anything I put in front of her and with expression!!! She did a reader's theater piece Sunday in front of church and you could hear her in the back and she read everything perfectly and with great expression. She is doing another reader's theater in speech and has a main part because she does so well..

 

In some ways she is brilliant and in some ways her brothers are always making "blond" jokes because of the things she doesn't know..... I feel like it reflects badly on me at church or in front of my husband. People are not quizzing her. It just happens in regular conversations...

 

 

 

[PeterPan]

Sorry if this is a dead tune or has already been asked, but have you gotten her a neuropsych eval? At some point you stop guessing and just go get the answers.

 

There's probably something there. It might be that she just learns really well when things are in a narrative or have connections (the Lincoln story) and disconnected facts go out the window. The eval would give you the answers though on what all is going on. It's only a good thing. If they find nothing, you go oh cool, now I have all this info about how my child learns. And if they find something, you're glad you did it now, not waiting till 5th, 6th, 7th, or later like some of us. ;)

[choirfarm]

Sorry if this is a dead tune or has already been asked, but have you gotten her a neuropsych eval? At some point you stop guessing and just go get the answers.

 

There's probably something there. It might be that she just learns really well when things are in a narrative or have connections (the Lincoln story) and disconnected facts go out the window. The eval would give you the answers though on what all is going on. It's only a good thing. If they find nothing, you go oh cool, now I have all this info about how my child learns. And if they find something, you're glad you did it now, not waiting till 5th, 6th, 7th, or later like some of us. ;)

 

Where do you find that?

[ElizabethB]

:grouphug:

 

There is also the possibility that because of the late reading and vision problems, there are gaps and deficits...my remedial students have lingering problems that also need explicit remediation and time building up reading hours to fix.

 

Years of lost reading results in a lack of vocabulary and spelling development. Also, the vision problems may have contributed to problems with handwriting.

 

For my remedial students, regardless of what the underlying problem was, after they are remediated I usually suggest things to build up any missing skills. I typically suggest the 1879 McGuffey readers for building up reading skills and vocabulary, and Spelling Plus with Dictation for building up spelling skills with the most common 1,000 words. Some also need explicit help with handwriting and writing basics, my writing and handwriting recommendations vary depending on the need of the child and the teaching skill of the parent.

[LaughingCat]

To me this sounds like a retrieval problem, she "gets" it when "in context" of a story but can't pull out the relevant facts when needed on their own. I'm reading a book called "A Mind at a Time" and he talks about a child like that - loved dinosaurs, knew everything you could think of about them, could tell you a million facts about them, but failed a school test on dinosaurs because he couldn't retrieve the facts on demand. FWIW I'm not enamored with this book so far, mostly because it doesn't seem to have much as far as suggestions as to what to do - but your description reminded me of that story.

 

Also the "Dyslexic Advantage" talks about a subtype that is more narrative style and has a section at the back that has suggestions for remediation.

[PeterPan]

Where do you find that?

 

Sorry, I've been in and out, busying myself with a purely hobby board that has NOTHING TO DO with homeschooling. Bliss. :D

 

You're asking where to get a thorough eval? You want a neuropsychologist. We will say neuropsych on the board, but it's a neuropsychologist. (as opposed to neuropsychiatrist or something else) As with all of these professions, there are (thinking up a polite word here) and gems. Don't do it till you find someone who's a gem. Don't waste your money on someone anti-homeschooling if you're paying the tab. I actually searched for about a year before I took the plunge, partly because I was in denial (yup) and partly because I didn't know who would give her a fair handling and not just slap some stupid label on her perfunctorily.

 

I ended up going with a man who is on the board of the dyslexia association in our state. Her symptoms and profile line up *so* well with DA, and her presentation at a young age was so spot on that I think, prior to VT and if we had never done anything OG, she would have qualified. As is, she doesn't have a "reading disorder" (thanks DSM), just everything else. So whatever. I'm over labels. What I got was precise mathematical information about how my daughter's brain works, and that's what I needed. Then the blessed man spent HOURS with me, allowing me to go through every single subject and ask him questions till his eyes bled and his throat was parched. Not really, but you know me. He was a gem and very patient. :D

 

There are some really cool neuropsychs out there and some who will take your money but be less than helpful. Take your time, find someone you like, and just do it. Google neuropsych plus a label you like plus your state name and see what pops up.

 

To me the eval, if you get someone good, is just a win-win. If there's nothing wrong, HURRAY, there's nothing wrong! Then you get all this awesome information and can stop worrying. And if there's something wrong, HALLELUJAH you finally have answers. Then you can take that information, and shift from worrying to DOING something about it. But you can't make those decisions without information, kwim? I don't get what the deal is with practitioners blowing us off or acting like we aren't qualified to realize our kids need evals. Or our own self doubt to think we don't DESERVE to have this info. There is no reason (aside from money obviously) a mom should flounder in the dark, beating her head against rocks, wondering WHY xyz isn't working. The evals can give you that information. Not perfectly obviously, but it's such a huge start. After that you go back and watch your kid and go "Oh, now I see why you do..."

 

It's a win-win, highly recommend. But take your time to search and find someone you really like. The wait will probably be a bit (1-4 months isn't uncommon), but it will be worth it.