Can we talk about Barton?

[ByGrace3]

My almost 11 year old was diagnosed with Dyslexia in March. We started Barton in May and I have not been as consistent as I should be (because she and I truly can't stand it) but we are plugging along. She blew through levels 1 and 2, did level 3 with little difficulty, and is now in level 4 (I think lesson 5?) I am feeling a bit stuck. The rules are getting almost overwhelming. They are definitely helping. I can see that. (her issues are primarily with spelling but she is not a fantastic reader either) 

Is Barton truly worth it? Do I stick it out? All 10 levels? The temptation to put it away and try Apples and Pears which is already on my shelf is incredibly tempting. Our local tutor is astronomically expensive and not a possibility for us. 

I just need some advice or encouragement to keep going? I almost feel like I will be failing my dd if we don't do Barton . . . is that true? Do I need to just buck up and do it?

I think part of the problem is our last lesson we were both in tears because I didn't understand it myself so how could I teach it to her? (it was about doubling the consonant in the middle of a word-- but both dd and I sound out the syllables and can hear the consonant twice so we are not doing something right here). I can dig in, work it out and come back. We took this week off because we both needed a break. I am planning to go back and watch training videos this weekend and try to work it out. But I dread it. 

[PeterPan]

It's normal to jump after level 4. 

37 minutes ago, ByGrace3 said:

I think part of the problem is our last lesson we were both in tears because I didn't understand it myself so how could I teach it to her?

Did you pass the tutor screening? 

[ByGrace3]

Just now, PeterPan said:

It's normal to jump after level 4. 

Did you pass the tutor screening? 

yes

[PeterPan]

38 minutes ago, ByGrace3 said:

I just need some advice or encouragement to keep going?

Well I think you need to finish level 4 completely because it is building really foundational skills to get her READING. After that there's a shift toward spelling.

What would happen if *you* sat down with your Barton 4 lessons by yourself (not with her) and taught yourself till you really mastered the lesson? THEN do the lesson with her. 

[PeterPan]

Anyone has meltdowns with a new system. I remember first getting WRTR (which is way simpler than Barton and OG, hahaha) and literally THROWING THE BOOK AT THE WALL. I left it there for months, and finally was like ok, it's you and me and I'm gonna wrap my brain around this and I'm gonna WIN.

So I think that's what you need to do. Also, there could be some comorbid auditory processing problems, if you're having that much trouble hearing the parts of the words and manipulating them. 

[PeterPan]

41 minutes ago, ByGrace3 said:

We took this week off because we both needed a break.

Should we remind you it's FEBRUARY? Be extra good to yourself. Take a trip, declare two weeks of made up holidays, anything you want.

42 minutes ago, ByGrace3 said:

she is not a fantastic reader either

Have you done the Barton supplemental readers? Or anything else with controlled text like the (adorable) AAR readers? What about if you just worked on fluency with RAN/RAS worksheets (mine are around here, on dropbox) and read easier, previous level material just to build that fluency piece with what you've already done. Get through February, up your D, wait till the flowers bloom, then go back at level 4 but slowly, like spreading one lesson over two weeks. It's a hard level. 

How is her working memory? You could play games like Ticket to Ride on that theory that they'll help her working memory to make some of the decoding work easier. So break to get through February, making cookies, playing games. It may actually help.

Any chance you can buy a nintendo or do other things that involve environmental print? You don't want guessing, but once she has fluency in what she has done it's time. Just teeny tiny amounts of environmental print that will be motivating to her, like the next instructions and hitting A/B with the nintendo. At that point, Nintendo is reading instruction. Or youtube, or some cute apps, whatever you want. 

It's February. Be good to yourselves.

[PeterPan]

47 minutes ago, ByGrace3 said:

(it was about doubling the consonant in the middle of a word-- but both dd and I sound out the syllables and can hear the consonant twice so we are not doing something right here).

It might be something idiosyncratic about your speech. Sometimes when you try too hard, you end up over enunciating sounds you would actually slide together or leave out in normal speech. 

I wouldn't worry about it. The important piece is to understand the morphology they're teaching you. There's a base, something you're adding. Only the concept is important, not the weeds of how you pronounce it. 

Tell her it's February and go make rice krispie treats till this gets better, kwim? You don't need to change curricula just yet and you may be able to sort it out when you're fresh and not stressed.

Have you tried calling Barton? She's a dear, and she would talk you through it. 

[City Mouse]

It is hard! But it does get better.

Do watch the training videos if you haven’t done that yet, or rewatch them. I tried different programs with my DS, but nothing gave us the same success as Barton. The Spelling Success games (not directly Barton, created to follow the Barton program) are a slightly more fun way to practice the skills and break up the regular lessons. If a lesson is particularly difficult, don’t be afraid to repeat the lesson, or take several days to complete one lesson. 
 

My DS stayed enrolled in Public school while we did Barton, and we only made it through level 6 before high school requirements took too much time and effort to continue Barton. While I wish we could have finished all the levels, but that did not work out. He has successfully completed college courses without any accommodations from the college.

That being said,if you really don’t want to continue Barton, High Noon Books has a reading intervention program that might work. https://www.highnoonbooks.com/detailHNB.tpl?action=search&cart=161315176842497707&eqskudatarq=S8271-8&eqTitledatarq=High Noon Reading-Level 1&eqvendordatarq=ATP&bobby=[bobby]&bob=[bob]&TBL=[tbl]
I have another program at home, but I don’t remember the name of it off had. I will edit this with a link when I get home. I got it to use with my students at a public school. It seemed to be OG based but without the multi-sensory stuff in Barton.

[Kanin]

There's been a lot of talk about syllable division rules on the Spell-Talk listserv. People have been semi-arguing about it - apparently it's a heated topic 😄 The consensus seems to be that syllable division rules (and spelling rules in general) CAN be helpful, but are not helpful in ALL circumstances. We say so many words differently than where the "rules" say they should be divided. An example is "rapid." It would be divided rap/id (to keep the first vowel short), but we SAY raaaa-pid. In speech, we keep the first vowel short, but the p is heard in the second syllable. The goal is to have kids try a method to decode a word, and if it doesn't work (i.e. if the word sounds "nonsense"), try a different way. 

I was fascinated to hear the technique of pausing at each vowel, and words into dividing syllables that way. I'll quote from someone at Spell-Talk (who is in turn quoting an article!) because they said it better than I ever would: 

"Here's an excerpt from the Problems with the Six Syllable Approach article: 

https://www.ontrackreading.com/perspectives/multisyllabic-decoding-problems-with-the-six-syllable-approach

 Instead, a child should be taught the code, i.e., the viable pronunciation options for any particular spelling, and then taught a simple method of progressing through a word, from left to right, following simple rules that a six-year old can learn to apply, while testing the various options for the spellings that have more than one possibility. He should also not be taught traditional syllable breaks, but rather to break words into "chunks," tending to stop (with a few key exceptions) after the vowel sound in each chunk. Armed with enough code knowledge he will be able to easily learn to march left-to-right through words of many syllables, testing the vowel sounds and retesting as necessary, i.e., when his first attempt fails to yield a recognizable word.

A few examples: "Growling" is chunked "grow-ling." If he's reading "the growling dog" and pronounces "grow" to rhyme with "blow" he would get a nonsense word and then instead try "grow" to rhyme with "how," simply applying his knowledge that the "ow" spelling can represent either sound.

Now consider the two words discussed earlier, "rapid" and "vapor." He says "ra-pid," testing the first option for the letter "a" and immediately recognizes the word. He then says "va-por" (using the same short-a sound) and gets a nonsense word. So he tries the second option, the long-a sound and gets the word. Essentially he's being trained to do exactly the same thing most adults do when faced with the name of a new drug name that they haven't heard pronounced before, i.e., trying various viable pronunciations for the vowel and consonant spellings to see what sounds reasonable. Maybe they even finally realize they've heard it, but not seen it spelled before, as they recognize a familiar pronunciation from a radio advertisement."

 

 

 

 

 

Jan Wascowitz wrote on Spell-Talk:

"I can lose weight by running, but running isn't necessary for me to lose weight. Running can help me lose weight, but it doesn't build my upper body strength. Even though I can lose weight by running, it is not a good option for me because I have plantar fasciitis.  

 It’s like that for memorizing rules based on letter patterns to divide a word into syllables.

 I can divide a word into syllables by memorizing rules, but memorizing rules isn't necessary for me to divide a word into syllables. Memorizing rules can help me divide a word into syllables, but it doesn't leverage my oral language system for phoneme-grapheme mappings to develop long term storage of lexical word forms in my long term memory in the same way. Even though memorizing rules based on letter patterns can help with dividing some words into syllables (there are quite a few exceptions!), it's not a great option for many language-impaired students.

One clarification I want to add to what you wrote below – and this applies generally, not specific to this thread – is that we don’t want this to be misinterpreted as a free and open license to teach whatever we think works, or whatever we’re most comfortable with because that’s what we’ve always done, or…

Yes, “the best teachers will be ready for the moment” and what they do in that moment must be grounded in science and research, be matched to a student’s specific needs, and be efficient because our instructional minutes are limited and precious. To be effective in our teaching, we need to truly understand the ‘why we do what we do’ (based on current research!!), we need to accept that reading (and writing!) really is rocket science with all sorts of layers and complexities that require depth of knowledge, and also diagnostic teaching, dynamic decision-making based on real time error analysis of the student’s performance, flexible thinking and problem-solving….  "

 

[PeterPan]

54 minutes ago, Kanin said:

The goal is to have kids try a method to decode a word, and if it doesn't work (i.e. if the word sounds "nonsense"), try a different way. 

Yes, and fwiw that's what Barton says. 

So then I want to suggest that what they are hitting on and don't completely acknowledge is the deeper language processing issues here. There are some cross-trained SLP/Audiologists on SPELL-Talk and they go into the APD connection. I haven't been following there in a while (got busy), but there definitely were in the past. So if you go through methods of APD intervention that focus on language processing, they spend an OBSCENE amount of time working on ... drum roll... SYLLABLES!!! 

So the ability to hear the syllables (or phonemes or pitch) is all LANGUAGE processing. Dyslexia is a language processing disability. And the dyslexia targeted materials make the assumption that if you teach 6 rules and allow for some inference and flexibility (it didn't sound right, flip the stress and see if it sounds better), the kid will get there. 

Then you have kids who, as Pudewa described of one of his sons in a recent webinar have "the worst dyslexia I've ever seen." Those kids aren't even discriminating syllables accurately. They might not be hearing sounds in words distinctly. They're processing chunks (whole words, whatever) instead of processing from the bits up (pitch, phonemes, syllables, base words, morphology). An audiologist would diagnose that as APD and if an SLP ran the tools they have, like the TAPS, it would flag as APD.

So then, with that in mind, look for samples of https://www.therapro.com/Differential-Processing-Training-Program-Acoustic-Tasks.html  It's a three book series, and they literally spend THREE BOOKS going through things like can you hear syllables, can you hear stress, can you manipulate phonemes, can you change a phoneme in a word and say what it would change into, can you listen to two words and say what changed.

Calling it dyslexia may not get the client/dc there. The person may need more detailed language processing intervention. Barton is only OG, she's not an SLP, and she says upfront that it's not going to be your end stop if you have a language disorder, that you need to be screening and going farther. Reading disability is not a single faceted thing. There's a LOT of language stuff involved and you have to KEEP GOING and get MORE MATERIALS to address the problems.

54 minutes ago, Kanin said:

A few examples: "Growling" is chunked "grow-ling."

Oh man, are they REALLY quoting Rodney Everson??? I swear, this is why I gave up on SPELL-Talk. I just don't have time for stupid debates with people who have lots of degrees and still don't know stuff. What are his qualifications to speak to language development? What are his qualifications to speak to linguistics and morphology? He lists NOTHING on his professional listings (lulu, his own website, etc) and usually people who have degrees list them. 

So he's just wrong here. You might, in some circles, SAY it that way, but there is a school of thought that when we TEACH syllabication we should teach it with morphology in mind. So I go back to my point about language development. Pitch, phonemes, syllables, base words, morphology. The chunks are GROWL which is the base word and a morphological chunk ING. So please tell me why in the WORLD we would teach someone with a known language disability to chunk incorrectly???

Whatever, like I said I just got really grumpy reading these "experts" go in circles. 

54 minutes ago, Kanin said:

but it doesn't leverage my oral language system for phoneme-grapheme mappings to develop long term storage of lexical word forms in my long term memory in the same way. Even though memorizing rules based on letter patterns can help with dividing some words into syllables (there are quite a few exceptions!), it's not a great option for many language-impaired students.

Bingo. So now we have someone with a phd in SLP talking, and what does she say? Teaching those 6 syllable rules TO GET THEM READING is PRAGMATIC. I did it just enough to help my ds get there. But when you actually say hello, the way the dc brain stores and processes language has issues and ask whether he's thinking in terms of all the steps of developmental language (pitch/stress, phonemes, syllables, base words, morphemes), those rules are not going to be where it's at. It's why they wrote their own program (SPELL-Links) to try to be more comprehensive.

So the point is, if you have further areas that need intervention or need to be diagnosed, those need to be dealt with. The problem is not usually the materials. The problem is more going on and your explanations are not complete. And JW there would say use SPELL-Links, but I think even the SLP community is slow to get on board with the DIRECT INTERVENTION that can and needs to be done for the language processing or what audiologists will diagnose and separate off as auditory processing. They overlap, OG is not enough, and there is explicit intervention to be had.

Edited February 13, 2021 by PeterPan

[Kanin]

3 hours ago, PeterPan said:

Yes, and fwiw that's what Barton says. 

So then I want to suggest that what they are hitting on and don't completely acknowledge is the deeper language processing issues here. There are some cross-trained SLP/Audiologists on SPELL-Talk and they go into the APD connection. I haven't been following there in a while (got busy), but there definitely were in the past. So if you go through methods of APD intervention that focus on language processing, they spend an OBSCENE amount of time working on ... drum roll... SYLLABLES!!! 

This is pretty interesting. I just read a study - briefly, need to re-read - that looked at how good readers and poor readers perceive sounds. I'm not an expert, but I think the gist was that poor readers perceive the differences in sounds less specifically that good readers. The phrase they used was "unstable representation of sound."

This fits with what I've observed about dyslexic kids, which is that they have a super hard time linking the printed letters to the sounds, automatically. All of my poor readers had extreme trouble even linking short vowels sounds to the corresponding printed letter. My personal hypothesis has been that these kids have never been able to perceive the sounds very distinctly from each other, so they get the vowel sound wrong about as often as they get it right. The result is just epic confusion. It's definitely possible to fix - using LiPS, other methods - but it takes a long time. It has to be done though! I think a lot of "reading programs" miss these kinds of things, these language processing things as you say.

The article is called "Unstable Representation of Sound: A Biological Marker of Dyslexia." You can read the whole thing. I'd love others' input!

https://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/8/3500

[Kanin]

3 hours ago, PeterPan said:

Then you have kids who, as Pudewa described of one of his sons in a recent webinar have "the worst dyslexia I've ever seen." Those kids aren't even discriminating syllables accurately. They might not be hearing sounds in words distinctly. They're processing chunks (whole words, whatever) instead of processing from the bits up (pitch, phonemes, syllables, base words, morphology). An audiologist would diagnose that as APD and if an SLP ran the tools they have, like the TAPS, it would flag as APD.

Yes. Seems that dyslexia is a malfunction of many systems in the body. That's why reading research comes from so many avenues - neuroscience, psychology, etc. It's very cool! And a lot to take in. There's just SO MUCH!

It's also why each kid needs to be taught differently. It aggravates me so much when schools say, "We do THIS for RTI, and we do THIS for SpEd," and that's the end of it. Not so "individualized," huh? The school I left over the summer has apparently gone over to the dark side in that respect. If you'll believe it, they're doing now "standardizing instruction" to use Fountas & Pinnell for ALL RTI and SPED, with the exception of Wilson for some "really serious" reading problems. (MIND EXPLODING NOW, pardon me while I freak out AGAIN!) My heart breaks for these kids. 

[PeterPan]

55 minutes ago, Kanin said:

so they get the vowel sound wrong about as often as they get it right. The result is just epic confusion. It's definitely possible to fix - using LiPS, other methods - but it takes a long time. It has to be done though! I think a lot of "reading programs" miss these kinds of things, these language processing things as you say.

My ds has ASD, and what I find is I "fix" things with one program and it files in the brain under that program. Then you walk over to another place and it didn't GENERALIZE. 

Or put another way, what I realized during the APD eval was that we had done phonological processing where we were working on manipulating phonograms for READING and always connecting it back to READING. What we didn't spend a ton of time doing (we did some, but not a ton) was pure phonemic manipulation. So when you look at the APD interventions, that's what they'll call it, phonemic manipulation. And they'll have whole chapters in the intervention materials. Look at Buffalo Method, the stuff I linked, any product like that marketing, and it will say phonemic manipulation. 

So that's one thing that I think happens, that you do phonemic manipulation with tiles, with text and sorta get that link, but then when you want phonemic manipulation without text support, the person is screwed. Imagine that. And maybe it is enough for some people, but not everyone.

And you could say the skills are a parlor trick and don't matter, but they DO. They matter because they reflect whether the person is processing language at the bits of words level. We're meant to learn language parts to whole. If you glitch those parts, the person's brain will just do what it can. So then you have people not understanding dialects (where certain sounds are changed) or foreign speakers (where certain sounds are changed) or with distractions or background noise (where some of the sounds are being missed) or with poor phone connections or whatever. And it's all the SAME. You have to process language as being made up of (repeat mantra) bits to whole: pitch, phonemes, syllables, base words, morphemes, and so on.

You have to both know the word and understand it is being made up of lots of bits in order to be able to manipulate those bits. And it's stuff I look at and go ok BUT WE DID THIS WITH TILES! And what good did it do? That told him to notice WHEN HE'S LOOKING AT TEXT. It didn't translate into how he was processing auditory speech alone. 

https://www.northernspeech.com/echolalia-autism/natural-language-acquisition-in-autism-echolalia-to-self-generated-language-treatment-level-2/  This is my favorite thing to toss out on the whole to parts vs. parts to whole language learning. My ds had echolalia, so his was such an EXTREME presentation that it was glaringly obvious. I don't know what parts apply to other DLD and APD and dyslexics and people in general. I'm just saying for him, that was how he got there. And to me, I'm just looking at his severe presentation and working backward, saying what parts are missing in these kids and what happened. It's why saying someone is OG trained is not good enough. It is if the OG is enough. But once it's not enough, it's because there are more significant language issues going on that need to be addressed. You just keep moving up the big guns.

Language issues are funny. We're running fresh testing on my ds and I have two SLPs separately running things, each picking what they own that they think would communicate areas where there are issues. The one has worked with him 3+ hours a week this school year, and she still picked things (subtests of a much larger language test) that turned out to be total misses, with standard scores ranging from 100-120's. (median is 100 with SD of 15, meaning no disability with those scores, not for those areas, hahah) But then ONE SCORE in ONE SECTION she ran HAPPENED to be 40, and she's like WHAT??? And unless you have a really OCD brain that inventories grammar (like mine), you really have no clue where his expressive language and syntax are and you just THINK you know. That 40 was in sentence expression, so now she has to go back and run hours more testing in areas she hadn't anticipated. Go figure. And had the wrong treatment goals ALL YEAR because not data. These SLPs are like OH I've talked with him, I KNOW. 

So you see how I get to my make data, trust know one... Been around the block a bit. 

Edited February 13, 2021 by PeterPan

[Kanin]

3 hours ago, PeterPan said:

You have to both know the word and understand it is being made up of lots of bits in order to be able to manipulate those bits. And it's stuff I look at and go ok BUT WE DID THIS WITH TILES! And what good did it do? That told him to notice WHEN HE'S LOOKING AT TEXT. It didn't translate into how he was processing auditory speech alone. 

That's so interesting about generalizing. I completely agree. It's strange to think of generalizing applying to letters and sounds and reading words.

I listened to a FB live with David Kilpatrick a couple weeks ago. He said something like, how do we know that phonemic manipulation is important to reading? Because every kid we've ever tested that has trouble with reading, has trouble with phonemic awareness and manipulation. A 3rd or 4th grader is as good as an adult on the tests they do. He said, if someone finds a kid with reading problems who does NOT have a problem with PA, send that kid our way! Because we'd like to study that kid. Because so far, we don't know of any kids like that. 

[Lecka]

My older son still scored lower on phonemic awareness (low 90s) even after he was considered remediated — at least in 4th grade when he had neuropsych testing.  It was so disappointing to me.  But he is a good reader now, and he was a good reader at the time in 4th grade.  

[PeterPan]

3 hours ago, Kanin said:

how do we know that phonemic manipulation is important to reading?

But ironically, the amount of phonemic manipulation you do in a scripted reading program, even Barton, is pretty low and always focused on reading. In the APD materials it's totally about the phonemic manipulation. It has been revolutionary for my ds. Before, when we would do spelling, it was like this parlor trick for him. So he could memorize spelling, spell with tiles, but it was completely disconnected from meaning and language. After working through the APD stuff, *he* started asking about spelling and realizing it existed. He finally realized words were made up of parts because he was processing them. I guess you could say it's the PROCESSING of APD. So if they called it "oral language processing disorder", then maybe people (SLPs not doing intervention for it) would get over these humps. It was certainly never about sounds and blips and beeps, that's for sure.

My ds has had 2-4 hours of speech therapy a week since he was newly 2, and he STILL had these holes. I'm gonna have beefs for a long time with the therapy community, lol. It's not one thing or one profession. It's that it's complex and that I'm just ranting. It's like the stupid dental stuff. We did the phase 1 orthodontics they told us too and now they come back and say it's all ruined, that serious myofunctional (chewing and mouth function) issues got missed. I mean it just happens EVERY SINGLE TIME. I kid you not. You think you've done everything and there's more.

[*****]

ByGrace3, hang in there, Barton can and does work!  I have tutored now for 6 years. In comparing my students to where your daughter is in the length of time that you started, she is moving along very well. I would guess her dyslexia is not as severe as it is for many.  

I have 3 students in Book 4, 1 who has moved along quickly as your daughter has. Her reading is really not that bad, I see more of a problem with the spelling. If you remember, the spelling may always be a difficulty.  But especially the doubling rule, it seems the kids have a hard time hearing that open syllable. Then remembering, oh, it is a short sound, I need to double the next sound. And to top it off, hearing the accent has been introduced (or if not, will soon be).   So yes, there are a lot of things going on in this area of the book. They are not used to pausing and listening for all of this.

So I would continue to keep moving on.  Make sure she knows the spelling rules well and throw in a few of these types of words for extra practice, just as a reminder of the Happy Rule. And I like how Barton often reviews the particular ones needed for certain lessons   Or she gives clues: Is this word the Happy Rule or the Milk Truck rule?   

I also started to incorporate Kilpatrick's 1 minute exercises because the phonemic awareness is so important.  I hope things will smooth over for you.  I have 1 student weak in PA, who really started to stumble once we hit 2 syllable words. We backed up for many months, with lots of review. He understands the rules well.  He just finished Lesson 4 of book 4 and it was like the planets lined up perfectly for him this week.  He could read the sentences without the usual stumbling!  Spelling for him will always be his weaker area, but at least he is having success now in reading. 

[Kanin]

On 2/13/2021 at 2:22 PM, PeterPan said:

Language issues are funny. We're running fresh testing on my ds and I have two SLPs separately running things, each picking what they own that they think would communicate areas where there are issues. The one has worked with him 3+ hours a week this school year, and she still picked things (subtests of a much larger language test) that turned out to be total misses, with standard scores ranging from 100-120's. (median is 100 with SD of 15, meaning no disability with those scores, not for those areas, hahah) But then ONE SCORE in ONE SECTION she ran HAPPENED to be 40, and she's like WHAT??? And unless you have a really OCD brain that inventories grammar (like mine), you really have no clue where his expressive language and syntax are and you just THINK you know. That 40 was in sentence expression, so now she has to go back and run hours more testing in areas she hadn't anticipated. Go figure. And had the wrong treatment goals ALL YEAR because not data. These SLPs are like OH I've talked with him, I KNOW. 

So you see how I get to my make data, trust know one... Been around the block a bit. 

Yeah.... I'd be nervous to be your SLP 😄 

[Kanin]

On 2/13/2021 at 7:07 PM, Lecka said:

My older son still scored lower on phonemic awareness (low 90s) even after he was considered remediated — at least in 4th grade when he had neuropsych testing.  It was so disappointing to me.  But he is a good reader now, and he was a good reader at the time in 4th grade.  

Interesting! What were his scores before?

[PeterPan]

Just now, Kanin said:

Yeah.... I'd be nervous to be your SLP 😄 

Aw shucks, and I'm so NICE to work for, lol. Not really. I fire people immediately for some things (demanding eye contact is a biggee, do that and you're so out). But I've also mellowed and figured out how (mostly) to work with people and keep it cool. I find people my ds enjoys being with and I let them do what they're good at. I've stopped asking them to do what I think needs to be done, because they usually can't. They just have to do what they know how to do. And again, if they offend me by doing something I think is incompatible with good thought process, I gently correct/redirect and eventually drop.

I've kept some of my people for 10+ years now, so I've learned a bit, lol. It's just tricky and has a learning curve. To me it's all business. I pay you to provide a service and you have a skill I want for my ds or you don't. Sometimes I just kinda close my eyes and don't ask what the SLP is doing, as long as I like the *result*. Like I had one for a couple years who just had this fabulous demeanor with ds and taught him lots of kindness and chill pill skills. LOVED that SLP. It wasn't that she was the most brilliant but she just brought good things out of ds and was a good influence on him. I made her nervous at first, so I started complimenting her a lot, bringing her gift cards for holidays, telling her that I liked the effect she was having on ds. 

So that's how I learned to look for what they bring, not what we want them to bring. Then I try to do the rest, sigh. I fail a lot btw, hence the TRY. Hahaha.

I'll never know if it's that someone else found the "perfect" SLP, or if it's that my dc just had more disabilities and needed more intervention than another dc. 

Oh well, back to your regular channel.