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.

Socialization for ADD/Aspergers/Autistic kids

We just got back from the Homeschooling conference in Indianapolis, where HUMom presented a workshop entitled "When Socialization IS an Issue." Kids with ADD, Aspergers, Autism, learning disabilities or just plain quirkiness often have difficulties relating to others on a social level. This can cause tremendous stress on the family and frustration to the parents as well as the kids.

HUMom suggested many ideas for helping to train social skills, such as role playing, identification of non-verbal communication, recognizing emotional cues, teaching through literature, rehearsal, using photos & videos to study social situations, games that work on social skills (Moods, Express Yourself, the Ungame, etc.) and social stories written together by parent & child. It was well received and there were many questions and good discussion afterwards.

Has anyone else discovered effective ways of training social skills?

Update: Current events

Sorry for the long absence.

Starting last August HUMom has experienced some drastic health problems, which resulted in extreme fatigue. We have been through four doctors, some medical procedures and many treatments & tests to try and find the cause. My neuro-typical daughter had wrist surgery and I had back surgery last week, so we have been having a swell time.

Wish you were here!

Anyway, "Anonymous" posted a comment & article on the last thread and one point stood out to me as an interesting topic. Namely, "Why is ADHD on the increase?"

The article's author maintains that there is no increase, rather we are systematically identifying and labeling children with these behaviors, thus the size of the group is growing because we are looking for them more efficiently.

While this may be partial explanation, I do not buy it totally. Here are two thoughts (not quite random) on the subject, to be expanded upon at some later date.

1) It has struck me that there appears to be a corrolation between the rise in ADHD and the Video generation. I grew up with arcade games Pong, Space Invaders, sitcoms, movies, which rapidly gave way to First-Person-Shooter games on the PC and DDR (Dance Dance Revolution). It is undeniable that hand-eye coordination is stimulated by such activities, but I wonder what effect they have on rapid-eye movement and brain chemistry. I have absolutely zero research to support or deny this idea, but it seems like a great coincidence to me.

2) There is much more scientific research and evidence to indicate a connection between ADHD and Autism, more to the point, that both conditions lie somewhere on a common continuum. The tremendous increase in occurance of Autism is proven fact, and closely follows the growth of manditory immunizations. I have read studies suggesting while vacines are not connected to this rise in Autism, the mercury derivitive used to extend the shelf life of vacines is extremely suspect.

When I get a chance, I will post links to some studies.

Are there any other theories out there?

Open Thread-ADD/ADHD

This is where we got started, and it seems that many, many people relate to the distractible child.
If you have questions or tips / techniques / advice, then here is the place to discuss them.

We're back

Well, we have now had a couple of weeks to recover from our travel schedule. This year has been our most ambitious for exhibiting at homeschool conventions.

Indianapolis, IN Feb 25-26
Frrederick, MD Apr 22-23
Worcester, MA Apr 29-30
Harrisburg, PA May 6-7 (HUD)
Ft Wayne, IN May 6-7 (HUM)
Lansing, MI May 13-14
Winston-Salem, NC May 26-28

We still have Columbus, OH in June and (finally) Dallas, TX in October!

I am still trying to get our website updated with all the new books & products we now carry. I will also put a link to this blog on the website. Hopefully that will get traffic up, and get us started.

Hello, and welcome

I have been intending to do this blog for some time now, but have been too busy to work on it with any concentrated effort.
My hope is not that HeadsUpMom and I will be here to answer all your questions & solve all your problems. Rather, my desire is that this would turn into a chatroom for people having to deal with special needs - in their own lives and their children's.

As we have traveled around the country, we've found that sometimes the best solutions come from "front line" people helping each other. The "experts" often are too far removed, or too myoptic, to see day-to-day realities.

As word gets out about this blog, and as posters refer & recommend it to others, we should build a community - a support group and a valuable resource.

To establish ourselves as something more than a couple of nutjobs, I will present our "bona fides."
HeadsUpMom (HUM) is a speech therapist (BS in education from Miami Univ., Masters from Ohio State University) with 20 years experience working alongside Occupational & Physical Therapists in an early intervention, preschool setting. We also have three children, two of whom have ADHD and Sensory Integration issues; they are aged 17, 15 and 12. We have homeschooled all three for their entire educational career. HUM is an author, speaker & workshop presenter.
HeadsUpDad (HUD) is an accountant & CPA. I also am ADD - diagnosed as an adult. I have learned everything I know about special needs from my wife & children.

That should be enough for now.

I commit this effort to my Lord, Jesus Christ. By His grace, I pray many will be helped.