Standardized Testing

Recently my AD/HD daughter, age 13, took her annual standardized achievement test. The certified teacher who administered the test worried that my daughter was rushing through the subtests and although she was finishing with time to spare she was reluctant to go back and check her answers. She seemed to be answering impulsively, and was confident that she was doing well in every area. Despite repeated prompts to slow down a little and review her work in the time remaining for each subtest area, my daughter persisted in going at her rapid pace and only skimming through her answers to recheck them. I got the test results in the mail today, and the girl did great! In fact, these scores are the best she's had over the past few years. So maybe instead of trying to get kids like my daughter to perform the way we were taught to, we should accept their methods and find different ways to support them.

Forgetting

This week, my 13 year-old daughter had more than the usual number of "I forgot" responses. I think she really intends to do certain tasks, but if she doesn't do them at the moment she is thinking about them she forgets until they are brought to her attention again. Often, this occurs when we need to be heading out the door and she doesn't have the material she needs or the pets still haven't been fed or she didn't return a phone call and now there's not really time to do it. Earlier this week I was surprised to discover one of my daughter's friends in my living room. It's not unusual to have extra kids around the house, but this particular friend lives 4 hours away! My daughter had made arrangements through an email correspondence to have this girl come to our house for the day. Not only did my daughter forget to tell me about her plans, she herself forgot that her friend was coming that day. She basically lives forgetfullness as a lifestyle. When things like having a friend show up from out of town happen, it is a nice surprise for her. When she finds an overdue library book (and there are more of those than I want to think about) she thinks it's serendipitous because she can read it again. When the cat poops on the floor because the litter box hasn't been changed, she gets mad at the cat, even though she's been reminded to take care of the litter box repeatedly. I'll concede that there are definite advantages to living in the moment, but this frequent forgetting is happening at a time in my daughter's life when the stakes are still low. I worry about how she will do when she has more responsibilities. We've tried written schedules, visual charts, planners, verbal reminders, but she "forgets" to use them. I've thought about making it so that she has to take action as soon as something is brought up, because if there is a time delay she will forget. Somehow that seems a little disrespectful to expect her to drop whatever she's doing to do something else that needs done. Yet if I let her wait until she's finished with her activities, she's often moved on and become involved in something else and all other things have completely slipped her mind.

Our upcoming schedule

We are catching our breath and preparing for the busiest part of our conference season.

May 5 & 6, 2006 - Lansing, MI for the Information Network for Christian Homes (INCH) convention. HUMom will be presenting two workshops: Helping the Distractible Child, and When Socialization IS an Issue.

May 11-13, 2006 - Harrisburg, PA for the Christian Homeschoolers Assoc of PA (CHAP) convention. HUMom will not be presenting, mainly because they have no facilities for workshops, unless you hold them in your booth in the exhibit hall.

May 25-27, 2006 - Kissimmee, FL for the Florida Parent-Educators Assoc. (FPEA) convention. This will be our first year in Florida. We are very excited, but it is a very long drive for us.

June 22-24, 2006 - Columbus, OH for the Christian Home Educators of Ohio (CHEO) conference. Our own back yard. Didn't think we would get to speak this year, because I fell asleep and didn't get our response back in time, but a couple of spots opened up, so we will be doing two workshops.

We will also be in Chicago for the CHADD convention on Halloween weekend.

If you happen to be at any of these events, stop by our booth and say 'Hi." We will be glad to meet you.