Loses non practiced skills

[MistyMountain]

Dd did not have trouble learning concepts in math and was working above grade level but I am realizing she needs regular spiral practice or she will lose skills she had. What I am noticing though is sometimes when she is relearning something it can take longer then the 1st time. It happens in math and with motor skills. One example is she took just a little over two weeks off of swimming lessons and forgot one of the skills she learned but has not gained it back and it took her less time to learn it in the first place. I know it is typical to lose skills of you take time off but I am wondering why it was learned easier the first time and what to do for that.

[Lecka]

Okay, this is what I was told when my son lost speech sounds (or didn’t lose them but he would have more errors!!!!!!).

When you only know one way, it’s automatic to do it that way.

When there are 2+ ways to do it, you have to experience figuring out how to know when to do it one way, and when to do it the other way.

This is a new process.  

It involves self-monitoring.  Self-monitoring is hard, because it is adding a new task, the task of self-monitoring.

I don’t know your child’s age, but my understanding is self-monitoring improves with age, and especially from about age 7.

And what about the kids who are fine, they aren’t needing to do any kind of self-monitoring because they are just doing it.  But if your child needs to self-monitor as part of learning until it becomes “established” (and then it’s just automatic I think), then — it is very “two steps forward, one step back.”

They see it as a sign of progress in speech therapy because it shows the child is trying to use one or the other.  If they are just applying the new thing and not doing the old thing — well that is good too because they are working on the new thing.  

They were always very positive with me 😉. 

Anyway — what I was told.  I would be SO frustrated.  

Edit:  his last months in speech therapy his main goal was self-monitoring, because he was making a lot of errors but he could do things in general.  They said they taught him self-monitoring strategies but I never really knew what they were, I was with my little kids at that point.  

Edited February 16, 2019 by Lecka

[Lecka]

Okay, what they said was like:  now he doesn’t just have to properly say “x,” he also has to NOT say “y.”  When you are only doing x, you don’t have a step of NOT doing y, doing x instead.  It can be a separate step.  And then you have to go back and figure out how to know when to do x, when to do y, and it takes time.  

[Pen]

Is it currently harder to learn things whether new or old?  Or is she learning new things  now much more quickly than she can relearn old ones?

There are certainly things that come more easily when younger, foreign languages and physical skills both often have that.

 I am surprised though by a two week break in swimming resulting in losing ground so much and it taking longer to relearn a swimming skill with just a two week gap.  What was the skill?

[MistyMountain]

That makes sense about learning more then one way to do it and the need to self monitor and know when to use which skill. She is learning new methods in math so maybe that is what is going on there. Wtih the swimming she does have dyspraxia and certain motor skills do come hard but not others. The skill was a side glide which she originally learned really fast.

Edited February 16, 2019 by MistyMountain

[PeterPan]

13 hours ago, MistyMountain said:

Wtih the swimming she does have dyspraxia and certain motor skills do come hard but not others. The skill was a side glide which she originally learned really fast.

The instruction or support may have been different the first time. They may have helped her motor plan the first time or used words and this time only modeled. Also she could have been in a different place with her body (more tired, less omega 3, whatever). You could watch how the instructor is presenting things. Typically with praxis we're going to expect ability to imitate to be affected. So if they do hand over hand or put weights on so she can feel it or use language to explain, she may do better. If she did some mindfulness before the other session or maybe had been doing something with weights that improved her awareness (even housework, moving books from one bookcase to another, rearranging her room), that might affect it. 

She might decide she would like to have a dry-land plan, maybe doing a teen intro to the weight machines class or something. If you believe the book Beat Dyspraxia, 80% of the dyspraxia symptoms will improve with modest work on strength training. 

[PeterPan]

14 hours ago, MistyMountain said:

sometimes when she is relearning something it can take longer then the 1st time.

The other issue is brain structure. Have you read Dyslexic Advantage? The Eides go into MRI studies looking at the spacing of the mini-columns, etc. I don't think they've told the end of the story by any means (that's a different discussion) but it's just interesting to ponder what happens if someone tries to make a neural connection for learning and those columns are widely spaced. Maybe there's a connection made but it was in a totally unexpected direction. Or maybe her mini-columns are CLOSE and she makes connections quickly but not in a way that generalizes or hits the farther away thing. So then to make that more typical connection (even though she already learned it and has a connection) she may have to do it again till she gets ALL THE WAY to that other connection you're wanting her to make. 

We'll also talk about generalization, where it clicked here but not all the way to big picture yet. So it's ok to keep exposing, cycling back, doing the skill or info in new tasks and concepts. Almost everyone needs that but some people need it MORE. 

[Storygirl]

It's been awhile since I've read Dyslexic Advantage. I think that may be the book that explains that brain scans have shown that people with dyslexia store the information for reading in a different part of the brain. And then it is harder for them to pull that information back out. Which is one explanation for why the student can seem to be learning fine in the moment of teaching, but then during the next session, seems to have forgotten the previous lesson.

Just pondering here, but if we apply that same idea to the swimming thing, in the first lessons, her brain would be responding to the immediate instruction. Then in the later sessions after a few weeks, the brain struggles more, because it is trying to integrate what it has learned over both sessions. So the brain is trying to process both the current instructions AND the information stored somewhere in the brain. So the brain is kind of divided, working hard to try to remember the previous information, because it is not easily accessed. But also trying to integrate what it is hearing in the moment.

Just an idea.

[Guest]

DD has this for motor skills-except she can actually lose them while still working on them! It doesn’t take a break, only missing it once, and it’s like her body remembers that last way to do it, so if she does it 10 times and misses the last time because she’s tired, that’s it. It takes years for a skill to really become permanent to the point that one bad day doesn’t reset her brain. DD has motor planning issues, sensory processing and relatively low muscle tone. She doesn’t have a dyspraxia DX, but I suspect she has some level of dyspraxia (I have mild CP AND dyspraxia-the latter wasn’t diagnosed until I was in my 20’s.)

This last few months, she is actually taking a break from tumbling and working on conditioning and flexibility and strength. Her coach feels that while most kids can build the motor movements for skills while working on the other aspects, DD needs to have all the other pieces in place so she can just work on the motor component-and that taking a break will actually end up being beneficial. 

[MistyMountain]

That mini column thing always fascinated me and I did want to read more about it but I only found articles. I think she is the closely spaced type. I need to get that book on dyspraxia. She has been doing better overall since she is doing a lot of physical activities but I did not know about the weight training. She is too young for a teen class but maybe I can try to get some heavy work in at home. I think that it probably is a combo of the instructor quality and doing it wrong then ingraining it that way. The instructors are teenagers and most are not great teachers but there is one or two that were really good at teaching (I have not seen them in a while) and the main instructors provide help sometimes and she does learn more when she gets them. In reading she is doing so well now but there are a few words that come up that are similar to other words where she will read it like that old word and it becomes really hard to fix that word.

I am still trying to figure out what to use for math with her that has spiral practice but it more towards the conceptual side which she does well with. 

 

 

 

Edited February 16, 2019 by MistyMountain

[Pen]

Have you tried MathUSee?  It’s usually considered mastery, not spiral, but it does have review problems, and I think it’s more conceptual than often it’s given credit.

[PeterPan]

On February 16, 2019 at 1:09 PM, MistyMountain said:

She is too young for a teen class but maybe I can try to get some heavy work in at home

They will let 12 and up in the big gym at our Y. Does your gym/Y have anyone teaching weights? I would just talk with them. Actually even machines would be good for her. Our Y has a women/youth room with smaller-sized machines that don't have to be adjusted so much. I think that's for ages 10+

Edited February 17, 2019 by PeterPan

[MistyMountain]

She is only a 2nd grader and we do not belong to the Y. The kids take a rock climbing class that offers strength training to kids 12 and up but she is not old enough for that yet. 

I was actually thinking about MUS recently. I just do not like how each level focuses on a narrow topic. I did some Gattegno with her last year and she did really well with it and I was thinking she might do good with rod math again.

Edited February 18, 2019 by MistyMountain

[PeterPan]

16 hours ago, MistyMountain said:

She is only a 2nd grader

Do they have some kind of intro to gymnastics or tumbling class? Our Y has *adaptive* classes for gymnastics and swimming, and you might try to get her into the adaptive gymnastics to start with. Or go and observe and see how you'd think she would do. Just something with a slower pace and more personal attention. My ds needed a lot of help with the motor planning and smaller classes but he could do it.

[Pen]

MathUSee skills really stuck with my ds and he liked its blocks, page lay out etc.

Beast Academy came too late for him, but seems excellent conceptually.

Math in Focus might be a good option.

Critical Thinking Company has an interesting math series, cannot recall name, but it has many different types of problems, balance math, puzzles, etc.

James Tanton has a wonderful approach to math with his basic series.  Explode the dots way of conceptualizing math.  Used to be available as self published I think from forgot name, but something like Lulu.  He’s wonderful so don’t underestimate it just because “self published” and less known.  

I don’t see a book right now— here’s a website link:

 

http://gdaymath.com/courses/exploding-dots/

Edited February 19, 2019 by Pen