2E teen with language processing delays can't learn grammar

[Misty]

Okay, so my daughter was diagnosed with high functioning autism, very highly gifted IQ, slow processing speed, and figure-ground auditory processing disorder when she was younger. She has come a long way over the years and really would just *barely* be considered on the spectrum today at age 14. She is a great student at co-op, a talented musician and artist, and totally gets math and science as if she were born with these subjects already implanted into her brain somehow.

 

And then there's grammar and writing.. She is a decent reader and she reads daily without prompting, though she reads more slowly than her sisters do. She missed the vision therapy boat (I think her high IQ was overcompensating for her shortcomings and we just didn't notice.. she began reading at age 4 despite a mild speech delay). She absolutely despises any type of grammar or writing program. She cries and whines and complains that she doesn't understand it. I have to remind this child even what a pronoun is.. at age 14!! That's how much she just isn't absorbing it. She processes language slowly and she still has significant social issues because of this. She is 100% verbal and speaks fluently with great receptive and expressive language at home, but she still lacks social language. I think her social anxiety slows down her processing speed or something because she seems to do fine at home. Or maybe it's because she's more used to family interactions and so she processes us more quickly than she does other people?

 

Anyhow, the other day she pleaded with me, "Mom, HOW am I going to learn grammar!?".. She is getting desperate to figure out how to learn this stuff, knowing she's high school age now. She is a great student who is eager to learn, but she just isn't getting it. And with me sucking at math and being a word brain (her sisters too).. I just don't know how to help her get this stuff into her brain. She is currently working on Writing With Ease level 4 and having a very hard time with it. One problem she has is she focuses too much on the little details and misses the big picture. For example, on the last lesson, she was to name three things (from the passage) that Leonardo DaVinci designed or wrote about in his journals.. well, because she knew there were more than three things, she couldn't complete the request because she was only to name three and she didn't see how it was possible to name only three when there were about 10 different things talked about in the passage. This just didn't make sense to her and she felt overwhelmed and started to have a mini meltdown over it because she didn't know which three to name (and she sort of acted like she couldn't think of any of them too.. like it was all jumbled in her brain). This entire lesson was like pulling teeth. She didn't know what to say so I had to do a lot of prompting and practically hand her the answers on a platter before she said it. I then dictated what she (really me) said back to her and she wrote it easily using proper punctuation. It's like all the information was jumbled in her brain and she couldn't make sense of it. Words make no sense to this child! It's a wonder she has any language at all!

 

She was using Easy Grammar for a long time without much progress (she can progress through the book, she just needs help and she doesn't retain any of it).. I think she was doing grade 5 last year. Then I tried reading Grammarland to her and she hated it.. What else can I try? She is college bound and I can't let her go to college without writing skills!! (my worst homeschooling fail nightmare!). My 17yr old daughter is a fantastic writer with plans to get an English degree. She wants to be a writer and editor.. How can these two girls be sisters!?

 

If there are any new and wonderful programs out there that I don't know about.. Please tell me! I have been off the homeschool boards for a few years so I don't know what people are using these days to help kids like this. I hate to go back to First Language Lessons for her since that's what her little brother uses.. But I will if I have to. I think she can do the WWE books with lots of help. Any other ideas? Thanks for any feedback!

 

 

[MomatHWTK]

I'm not familiar with any of the programs you've mentioned, do any of them teach grammar via diagramming?  I would look for something that takes a more formulatic approach than a creative one. 

[Heathermomster]

There used to be this totally awesome mom on the boards with a DD that sounds very similar to yours, maybe with the exception of dysgraphia.  Anyhoo...

 

The mom is an English prof.  Basically, her DD wrote brochures and stories about places.  Her DD loves theatre so they attended many plays.  Afterwards her DD wrote about the plays, and how they compared with movies.  Her DD was very particular in that she wrote everything in her head first.  I'm not sure real writing output progressed until she was 15 yo and then whammo, out the writing came.  She scored an 800 on the SAT in two areas tested.  Maybe explore writing about things that your DD knows and cares about. This mom felt strongly about talking to writing.  She also stressed that these kiddos don't follow the usual developmental timeline, so throw out any preconceived notions about what she should be doing.  That is hard to do.

 

SRA sells a Corrective Reading Comprehension Package that is expensive and supposedly very good for teaching pronouns and inferences.  You may not need that.  I'm just throwing that out there.  For parts of speech, we used Winston Basic.  With Winston, you cover maybe three sentences per day and use cards that are colored to represent parts of speech.  I think the slow steady coverage using the colored cards was very helpful to my DS, but he is not Aspie.  The advantage of Winston is that it is relatively cheap.  My DS types his work so relies heavily upon his word processor to detect mistakes.

[hornblower]

a lot of this sounds like my 2e kid so fwiw, here are some things that helped us...


You mentioned she doesn't know parts of speech well. For that, I think I'd make a chart of basic parts of speech, stick it in her binder & review it regularly & play MadLibs and then do some diagramming. Perhaps Rex Barks? Maybe Analytical Grammar (though I find it too.... big.... )

The issue in clear writing is first, clear thinking  and secondly, getting those thoughts out and on paper.

It sounds like her thinking is clear, and furthermore you said she is expressive and verbally adept at home -- so one thing I'd really encourage is getting her to record things.  Record and transcribe, &/or use speech to text software & help her see how her thoughts are coherent and how they can be converted to words on paper.  For various reasons, my kids is really resistant to this which is a shame, because I think it would help an awful lot.... but maybe your dd will be willing to try it.

I'd separate out mechanics of punctuation, and go over basic English grammatical errors - and frankly, the biggies almost always come down to sentence fragments or run-on's.   It's sometimes easiest to do this by practicing spotting errors, ie. playing editor. Once you do that for a bit, you can catch it in your own writing, either as you're writing or when you're editing/proofreading.  There is a curriculum/workbook that I remember seeing on this but I can't remember what it was - maybe someone else can chime in?

Killgallon's Sentence Composing has been very helpful here in terms of teaching my kids to write varied sentences. The parsing, scrambling, combining exercises were really helpful. Both my writing phobic kids started with the elementary book when they were in high school.

Dd went on to do the Killgallon high school sentence composing book & then straight into Michelle McLean's Essays & Term Papers (homework helpers series) which breaks down academic writing into concrete steps.

You may also want to spend some time working on various outlining & brainstorming methods - bullet point outlines, thematic organizing and help her develop her own method of getting a grip on what she wants to say & in what order. 




 

[OneStepAtATime]

When she speaks does she use proper grammar?  When you say she cannot learn grammar does that mean she cannot recall the labels or that she does not know how to apply grammar in her writing and speech?

[kbutton]

I am going to tackle the grammar question--my thoughts on writing are that writing plus ASD is torture. :-) We're working with a tutor on that, lol!

 

So, I am going to strongly, strongly recommend the book Different Minds by Dierdre Lovecky--it's all about 2e kids with ADHD, ASD, or both, with tons of item by item details about gifted kids on the spectrum. So worth your time. I have used parts of the book and simply need to sit down and order it (had it from the library), but it put words to a couple of my main frustrations with my 2e ASD kiddo. 

 

1. Generalizing skills across domains. So, he can understand grammar today in the grammar book doing lesson x. Encounter grammar in context y. "Huh, what is a pronoun? What is an adverb?" Basically, it doesn't matter how well these kiddos understand a concept in isolation, it must be introduced in other contexts over and over again. You have to turn every single concept in, out, up, down, and put it in new places before you can call it learned. With 2e ASD kiddos, this is most likely to show up in weak areas, but it can show in strong ones to a lesser degree.

 

2. Big picture vs. step-by-step. I have always had a hard time figuring out if my son is a big picture or step-by-step learner. The book described him perfectly and said it's pretty typical of 2e ASD kiddos. They need the big picture first, and then you have to go back and fill in every single step that makes the big picture idea work. If you neglect one style or the other, they lose confidence. My son makes amazing leaps conceptually, and then freaks out because he had NO IDEA how he got where he finds himself.

 

We use Michael Clay Thompson for our big picture grammar, and we are using Daily Grammar Ultimate Series (like Easy Grammar but a different level with more precise terminology) for the step-by-step. I would like to find something different for step-by-step grammar, but it's doing okay for now (it's a good spiral book). MCT doesn't get into a lot of punctuation, capitalization, etc., but it's good for the big picture. It provides everything you need conceptually so that you can constantly refer back to it and bridge to the details of grammar. It basically gives you a flowchart (called four-level analysis) for making decisions about grammar. You might have to start with Town level or something pretty early. He intends for the book to be used in a month and for you to analyze a sentence every day or so the rest of the school year. We take as long as we need. I would think that it would pair okay with Winston cards, but I have not used Winston (I'm considering it for my second kiddo). 

 

I want to work toward a hierarchy of getting my son familiar with the nitty gritty rules, but not worrying about memorizing them. When he understands the overall stuff from MCT really proficiently, I'd like to teach him how to recognize what he needs in order to look up the details in a book (capitalization, etc.). But, he needs enough exposure to recognize instances where he can use the reference books (or charts he makes himself, etc.).

[PeterPan]

One, you might want to work more on flexibility and anxiety, as that seems to be more of a problem than the grammar.  Grammar doesn't matter.  (says the woman who took plenty of advanced grammar and linguistics classes in college)  

 

Writing, yes Heather does well to remember TippyCanoe's stories of what she told us about writing.  I suggest for you 180 Days of Writing.  It's something TippyCanoe used very happily around that age iirc and I think you'll find it couple useful on a couple levels.  The writing activities are short (yeah!), and they're ideal for team writing.  So you write, she writes, then TRADE papers.  180 will do fun things like having a day where you purposely introduce errors into your writing, hehe.

 

Does she do any copybook?  Does she have dysgraphia?  Is she able to get out her thoughts comfortably in some fashion?  Can she type or use dictation software?

 

My dd's writing took off the year we did heathermomster's metronome homework.  Since you can do the protocol for FREE, I highly recommend it.  You basically can't go wrong at that price.  :)

[bluedarling]

:bigear: She sounds a lot like my 14yo! (no diagnosis, but she has an ASD brother, and a lot of similarities.)  He is a wonderful writer, and good with words.  She is not.  She is so frustrated with language (written and spoken!)   

 

I'm off to look at OhElizabeth's suggestions!!    We're using Writing Strands right now, and we both dislike it (for different reasons.)   Easy Grammar is ok (most days), but we've had some struggles there, too. 

[Misty]

Thanks everyone for your wonderful feedback! I have read through this a few times, trying to absorb it all and figure out which direction I want to go. Some very good recommendations in this thread and some of the stuff we have done in the past (like listing parts of speech and putting it in her binder).. I think diagramming will be a good move for her. Easy Grammar has its own way of diagramming, but I think she really needs to do the old fashioned way. 

 

As for dysgraphia, she does not have dysgraphia, but she does have poor penmanship. She writes fluently with her poor penmanship and she keeps up in her classes without supports in this area (she's in two full-day academic co-ops). She is still learning to type.

 

As for her grammar when speaking.. Yes, she uses proper grammar when speaking.. But I don't think she could write her words down. So maybe she does have some level of dysgraphia.. My oldest daughter has motor dysgraphia and I always had her type everything. She was able to write with ease as long as she was typing. 

 

She can do copywork and even dictation (if I repeat it enough times). I guess her main problem is she can't remember the labels (parts of speech, etc).. I'm probably more concerend with this than I should be.

 

Thanks for all the recommendations. I will read through this thread again and take notes and look at the recommended books. I think her learning style is just so different than mine and my other girls that I just didn't know how to teach her properly. My other girls just absorbed it without even trying.