Watch Where You're Going!

I've noticed something about children who are learning to ride a bike without training wheels. Some of them focus their vision down toward their feet and hands, and end up tumbling off the bike because they are not watching where they are going and it throws their balance off. Others are so determined not to run into trees or telephone poles that they stare at the object they want to avoid and steer right into it. After a few crashes and spills, most kids get the idea that they have to look ahead to where they want to end up. I see similarities in my own experiences as I've worked with struggling learners. Sometimes I am so focused on what I don't want to have happen that I mentally steer right into it and crash into anxiety, fear, and discouragement. I find myself obsessing over what's not going well and how to fix it. I think for the millionth time that I'm failing at the most important things in my life. I see a cloud for every silver lining. I look down instead of up and lose my balance. The future is overshadowed by the present. If there are good things, they are buried beneath my pile of thoughts about all the mistakes and things I need to work on. I think I need to try harder. Crash! I fear I will never succeed. Crash! I'm not sure I can go the distance. Crash and off the bike I go! When this happens, I need to take a deep breath and make a decision to find the good things. They are there. I may have to push some of the obstacles aside in order to see them, but they are no less real when I'm not aware of them than when I am. Instead of concentrating on the obstacles in front of me and the things that are not going my way, I need to watch where I'm going. Appreciate all the things I love about my kids. Not miss the beauty in life just because there's ugliness, too. I need to lift my head and see where I am headed. Be deliberate. Take in a bit more of the big picture. I love the Bible verse in Psalms 27:13, "I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." I want to see that goodness more clearly than the things I crash into!

Beer?!?

I dedicate today's post to my little friend, Brian. Brian's parents are friends of mine, and I started doing speech therapy with Brian late in August 2008. It has been a privilege to get to know Brian during his first year and now past his second birthday. He is one of the few children I've worked with who attempted to say my name, "Melinda" which came out as "Minda" when Brian said it. I think it's the best nickname ever. To impress me further, the next week he came out with my last name, "Boring", using a good "r" and everything! His parents were great at following through with all the strategies and suggestions I offered them. Brian has made steady gains in his language skills and now frequently imitates words and short phrases that he hears adults using. Imagine my surprise when we met in the community for a therapy session and Brian took one look at my bottle of Diet Pepsi and pointed to it while loudly announcing, "Beer!" It was one of his new words for that week, and in typical fashion he was over-generalizing it to every drink he saw. His mom and I shared a good laugh over the fact that I couldn't persuade Brian to say "pop" and his insistence on calling it "beer". Incidentally, I don't even like beer, so the accusation was even more amusing. I saw Brian again yesterday, and administered a standardized test that confirmed my impression that his language skills have reached an age-appropriate level. His mom informed me that thanks to a news story and the adult discussion following it, Brian has added the word "alcohol" to his vocabulary. I'm proud of Brian and his family for how quickly he progressed in his skills and he can now be discharged from speech therapy. He'll never remember our speech therapy work together. But Brian, I'll never forget you! Super job, buddy, and have a cold one! Milk, that is!

Okay! What?

Sometimes our inattentive kids can be a bit impulsive as well. When that happens, you may ask them a question or tell them to do something and get an immediate answer. They learn to answer right away because we train them to respond when spoken to, and we don't tend to respond well when we feel they are ignoring us. So our kids get used to us telling them things to do or asking them questions, and they sometimes respond automatically without thinking about what was said. Once I was administering a test to a boy and I explained the instructions for a subtest and asked if he understood what he was supposed to do. He immediately replied, "Okay" followed by a brief pause and "What?" because he hadn't really been tuned in to what I was saying. This happens a lot at my house. I say something and get the reply of, "Okay! Wait! What did you say?" Usually the repetition helps, but I'm not always patient about having to repeat myself. For those of you with a distractible spouse or if you are easily side tracked yourself, you know this "Okay! What?" type of answer is not limited to children, either. If you give in to your ornery tendencies, you can claim that your child or spouse agreed to doing something they don't even recall responding to and would never have conceded to doing if they had been paying close attention. I don't recommend that, no matter how tempting it may be. Taking advantage of that weakness will not help you become the person you are intended to be. Instead, continue to work on strategies that promote "Think before you speak"... and pray for patience.

Some Big Pants to Fill

My daughter is finishing up finals at college this week. She is planning to become an occupational therapist, but for now is still doing her undergraduate work in special education. About a month ago, she told me that many of her friends think she is going to be a speech therapist and she keeps correcting them that she wants to go into Occupational Therapy. I told her that I thought she would make a good speech therapist if she wanted to pursue that, and since I'm already a speech therapist I could teach her a lot about it. She was in a typical college student sleep deprived state, and replied, "I could never be a speech therapist like you. The pants are just too big to fill." While that statement is definitely true in that my pants would be far too large for her, it cracked me up. I still think Beth could be a great speech therapist in her own right but I want her to follow her passions and not try to reproduce mine. Have you ever noticed that no one is as good at being you as you are? I pointed out to Beth that most people talk about SHOES being too big to fill, but I got her point. She of course knew that, but in our case what she actually said might be more accurate since our feet are closer to the same size.

Socialized Into A Rut

This weekend has been packed with seeing relatives who were in town for the state high school track meet, graduation parties, church, and my kids' friends coming and going at our house. It's been fun and we all enjoyed it, but it has to be a bit over the top for my introvert son at times. Josh has to work harder than most to read and regulate nonverbal signals, and he really doesn't require a lot of time with people in order to be content. My daughters are extroverted and love being around people - the more, the merrier. For introverts, a little goes a long way. I really admire how Josh has learned to take in stride the invasion of my daughters' friends coming to our house, often without any warning that they are coming over and frequently resulting in overnight guests. This weekend, Josh joined in many conversations and even initiated several with people he doesn't know well or had just met. He pushes himself and he's getting increasingly better with his social skills and conversational exchanges. I had to smile when he went to a "Young Adults" social time at our church recently in an attempt to make some new friends his age. He wasn't gone as long as I'd expected. When I asked him if things had gone o.k. and if he had talked to anyone his reply was, "Sure, but I realized that I'd pretty much socialized myself into a rut. I was starting to repeat myself because I'd run out of things to say." And so he left. He had a goal of talking to three people he didn't already know, and he accomplished his goal. Upon realizing he was in a social conversational rut, he departed. God bless Josh for pulling himself out of the rut and being willing to keep working at it. He did great this past weekend, and I'm proud of him.

Less Expensive Communication Device

I recently learned about a more affordable option for children and adults who could benefit by using communication devices to help them convey their thoughts. Specialized augmentative communication devices can give a voice to non-verbal children or those who have unclear speech, but unfortunately can be expensive with some of them costing $8,000 to $10,000. In addition to the expense, they are often large, heavy and cumbersome. Now there is a more portable and less cost-prohibitive option with the iPhone or the iPod Touch. There is an application that allows the user to touch icons and the device will voice commands, comments, and questions that are programmed into it. It's small and lightweight enough to be worn strapped to the arm or kept in a pocket or waist pack for easy accessibility. The application is called Proloquo2go and can be downloaded from iTunes. This tool is being used by individuals with cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, Lou Gehrig's Disease, autism spectrum disorders, and stroke survivors. The Proloquo2go application costs $149.99. The iPhone and iPod Touch are available at Apple stores and even Best Buy. I just searched on Wal-Mart's site and they have the iPod Touch, too. It is probably available more places, but I only did a quick search. Basically this is a readily available device that has tremendous communication potential for a variety of people with disabilities. For the cost of the device and the application download, you can potentially open up a world of communication opportunities for about $500.00. As a speech/language pathologist, I get excited when people who cannot communicate effectively through verbal means nevertheless find ways to express themselves and interact successfully with others. I love that a Penn State doctoral student named Samuel Sennott has developed the Proloquo2go app so that people can use a tool they can buy at a local store, download the app, and help someone have a voice to express their thoughts. Imagine the frustration of knowing what you want but being unable to convey it in a way that others recognize and understand. For some, this application has the potential to alleviate that frustration as thoughts are expressed simply by touching a selected icon.

A Challenge and "I didn't do it!"

When you are parenting a struggling learner, you may find that you are having to correct or redirect them more frequently than other children. As a homeschooler, you have to work on academics throughout the day and behavioral issues can pop up constantly. It's not necessarily negative behavior or willful defiance from our kids, but inattention and impulsivity can cause problems that need to be addressed often. Have you ever felt like a "NO!" machine? Or a verbal "STOP" sign in your child's life? I know I have, and it saddened me to realize it because it wasn't the Mom I wanted to be or what my kids needed. But in a way, it seems necessary to keep them safe, prevent damage to property, and teach them how to behave in acceptable ways. It's especially important for kids who don't learn and remember easily, since they may have to experience something multiple times before it begins to sink in and true learning occurs. Having two children with working memory problems, I sometimes slipped into correction mode and automatically prompted my children without really keeping track of how often they were hearing negative or just neutral comments from me. I think they were probably hearing corrections about nine out of ten times when I spoke to them. Unfortunately, this would be difficult for an average child and can be devastating to a special needs child or struggling learner. Those kids need to hear encouragement and positive remarks more frequently than most, but often hear them even less than their typically developing peers. I knew I was in need of a "Mom check" when I started to hear my son say, "I didn't do it!" before he even knew what I wanted to talk to him about. If a car backfired on the street, Josh was conditioned to shout, "I didn't do it!" just to be sure his innocence in the matter was clear. If dirty dishes were left on the table and I wanted someone to put them in the dishwasher, Josh would respond with "I didn't do it!" and then he would comply with my request. Whoa. That's pretty sad, isn't it? The thing is, often Josh did do things that needed to be addressed. He didn't learn from just an experience or two, and often took up to six months to remember three simple rules. So yes, he did have a lot of Mom input in his life. And it's valid to say that he truly needed that level of intensive input. Where I dropped the ball was in not recognizing that he also needed the same level of intensive encouragement. Learning was harder for Josh, but he really tried to please and it's not like he struggled on purpose. I needed to acknowledge that more, and had to make a very concerted effort to include praise as part of my Mom skill set with all my kids, but especially with my struggling learners Josh and Beckie. So here's a challenge for you. If you are ready to take a closer look at your own Mom responses, get a couple of golf clickers or maybe a couple of row counters like knitters use. Keep one clicker in one pocket to track the number of negative, corrective, or neutral comments. Put the other clicker in a different pocket and use it to track the number of positive and encouraging remarks you say. You could track it for 15 minutes, an hour, or for one full day. At the end of your tracking period, compare the number of positives to negatives and see how you did. A general rule is to aim for 3 positive comments for every negative one. It's not easy to do for some of us, and like any new habit will take effort and repetition to develop. I'd love to hear how this goes for you!

Auditory Processing Train of Thought

My son, Josh, needed increased response time when he was younger. When asked a question, he took longer than most to formulate his responses, so often he was skipped over in a group setting. The teacher or coach would ask him something, get no response for several seconds, and move on to someone else. Part of the problem was that Josh gave no indication that he'd heard the question. He did not change his facial expression or otherwise let the speaker know that he was actually thinking about what had been said. It was frustrating to Josh to know the answer but have such a limited window of opportunity to express it that he often was unable to reply in the time allotted. I worked with Josh to develop a few strategies to let the speaker know that he had heard and was processing what was said to formulate a response. The first strategy was to hold up one finger in the "wait a minute" pose, to indicate that he needed a little more time. This was probably the easiest to implement, since it did not require an oral response when Josh was already struggling to formulate a verbal answer. The next strategy was to actually say something like, "Give me a minute, please" or "Could you repeat that?" (This was much preferable to saying, "Huh?" which happened so frequently when he was younger that I screened his hearing multiple times!) This strategy let the speaker know that Josh was intending to answer, and the repetition often helped him and gave him a little more time to process. Josh also learned the strategy of asking for clarification, by simply asking "Are you saying ____?" or "Is this what you mean?". It's also important to teach our auditory processing strugglers to use verbal strategies when they are on the phone, because obviously visual cues like the upheld "hold on" finger won't work. Once when I was on the phone with Josh I asked him a question and he was quiet for so long I wasn't sure he was even still on the phone. I asked if he was still there and he told me, "Yes, Mom. But my train of thought is still boarding." I've also noticed that Josh's train of thought will sometimes derail entirely if he is interrupted during the boarding process. When that happens, often by well-meaning people trying to help him out or speed things along, Josh's train has to go back to the beginning and start all over again. So instead of moving things along more quickly, it actually backfires and takes even longer. This is where it's helpful to teach our kids the gestural cues as well as verbal scripts so they will be less likely to be interrupted and the train of thought can actually leave the station.

The Suspect

Yesterday morning I walked out my front door and down the porch steps and discovered that there was a critter in the trap set by the company hired to remove whatever had busted into my attic. Here are some pictures of the alleged culprit. It's possible that this hapless opossum was just doing it's nocturnal food search and ended up in the trap, while the real attic dweller is still on the loose. I'm hoping that's not the case, but the trap has been reset until we know for sure. I'm counting on the professionals here to determine when the attic has been truly vacated and it's safe to block up the hole the varmint created in order to gain access to the attic. It may look kind of cute in these pictures, but when it hissed at my son it lost major cuteness points.

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black?

In a family where three out of five members have been diagnosed with AD/HD, it is not unusual to hear frequent reminders back and forth. These prompts are necessary, since forgetfulness and becoming distracted are daily (if not hourly) occurrences. What's frustrating is when the distractible person is reminded to do something he had actually remembered that time, and he is reminded anyway because there's no way to know if and when he will actually recall something on his own. There's no consistent clue to indicate when something has been received and retained or if it has evaporated before being acted upon. During busy times, the distractible members of my family get even more forgetful and sometimes need multiple reminders about a single task. Sometimes they try to help each other remember things, but forget that they've already reminded the other person. My two AD/HD children don't like to lend money to their non-AD/HD sibling, because they know they are likely to forget a.) that she's borrowed from them and b.) if she's paid them back if they do happen to remember. Other times I prompt my children to do a task, only to be assured that they will...but they don't follow through without further reminders. So I found it amusing when I heard my distractible Beckie indignantly tell her distractible father, "I'm not YOU, I'll do it!" when he reminded her again about something that needed to be done. The reality is, sometimes she does remember. Often she does not. I guess it was harder for her to be reminded by someone who also is distractible and forgetful at times.

The Tipping Point?

Do you ever wonder if something is the last straw, or possibly the second to last straw? I thought I was coping with things pretty well, but then something else happened and I'd think I was at my maximum capacity for dealing with things. Then something else happened on top of that, and now I'm feeling stretched tight as if I'm held together like surface tension at the rim of a water glass and one more drop will cause an overflow. It started with a headache, which is now in its 10th week. The pain makes it harder to function, but I was getting by. Then last Friday I was at a conference in Pennsylvania when I got a phone call informing me that my Dad had a heart attack and was in the hospital. He seemed to be doing well by the time I got the call and both my parents value what I do at conferences and didn't want me to make the drive back to Ohio and leave the conference early, so I stayed in touch by phone and plan to drive to see my parents tomorrow. Dad's had a few more minor medical issues but they seem to be resolving at this point. I'll feel better when I actually see him in person. Anyway, after a long drive home on Sunday we arrived about 9:00 at night. I unpacked until about 11:00 p.m. and was feeling exhausted and ready for bed when my cat helpfully indicated to me that she heard something in the ceiling of my bathroom. Sure enough, there is some sizeable varmint living up there and from the sounds of things it is installing indoor plumbing and a bowling alley no doubt in preparation to give birth up there. Last year a racoon moved into the attic and had 3 babies, and we hired a company to block the entrance to keep them out. The current varmint broke into a new spot, so we called the company back and they are trying to trap whatever animal is trying to move in with us and will then block off the new hole and the other possible areas for critter breaking and entering so this does not become an annual event. It will cost a lot and of course we didn't budget for "animal-in-the-attic removal", but we really don't want to co-exist with wildlife in our home. Those things are cute in Disney movies. They are definitely NOT cute in my house. Is it the last straw yet? Nope. When I went out to go to work this morning, I found that my GPS had been stolen out of my vehicle. In addition to feeling violated, there's another unexpected expense to replace it. So that was the last straw, right? Not exactly. When I got home from work, I'd gotten a statement in the mail that my CAT scan cost $1,600 and...it didn't help determine the cause of my ever-present headache. I now know that I don't have anything readily treatable or any accute sinus infection, but I don't yet know what I DO have or how to treat it. Maybe things will settle down for awhile now. Maybe what I perceive as straws are really more like stir sticks and I shouldn't be so overwhelmed by them. I have a sneaking suspicion that deep down inside, I'm a wimp and should be handling things better. I'll think about this some more as soon as I come out from under the covers.

Lessons from our Moms

Happy Mother's Day (a little late, but still heart felt) to all of you mothers, and all who have mothers. There! That should cover everyone. I was thinking about the kinds of things I wanted my children to learn from me as their Mom. I wanted to teach my children some rules they could utilize throughout their lifespans, thinking something along the lines of, "Mom always said..." Here are some examples of principals and ideas I hoped to pass on to my children:
1. It is better to take responsibility for your actions than to weasel out of things.
2. If you don't learn about your freedoms and rights it will be easy for others to take them away.
3. Your friends may move away or stop being your friends, but your siblings will always be in your life so you need to learn to get along with them.
4. If you don't learn to discipline yourself, others will be willing to tell you what to do.
5. Hard work almost always pays off.
6. Decide who you want to be and start acting like him/her now.
7. Learn to deal with boredom while you're young - you'll be ready to handle mundane tasks as an adult.
8. If you use the last of the toilet paper roll, replace it.
9. Make decisions about how to respond to others before you are in the heat of the moment.
10. Give others the benefit of a doubt when you can, and choose to forgive.

Here are some of the incidental things I know my kids learned from me:
1. Mom doesn't like finding empty milk containers in the fridge.
2. Mom needs more sleep than we do.
3. When Mom is tired, she's not as patient.
4. It's better to tell Mom we broke something than to leave it for her to find later.
5. Sometimes even Moms cry.
6. All people should be treated with respect, especially Mom.
7. Mom doesn't give up on us.
8. Mom is pretty funny sometimes.
9. When Mom says "No", she means it even if we take turns asking her.
10. It takes a while to get her there, but when we make Mom blow it's an impressive show.

So some of the things I've taught my kids aren't exactly the kind of ideals I'm proud of but I think I managed to get some good in there, too. My kids' lists of what they learned from me might be interesting to see. Perhaps someday when I'm feeling particularly strong and resilient I will ask them to write it down for me. Until then, I'll keep working to develop the wisdom I intentionally try to pass on to them.

Travels

I have been on the road and have pictures to share! I've met many new people and re-connected with some old friends. In the lower picture, I am with Jamie. We met in Cincinnati. The picture at the top shows me with my good friend, Carol Barnier. We are kindred spirits in many ways and Heads Up will soon be offering Carol's wonderful books for sale. I saw Crystal briefly in Cincinnati. I think we originally met in Indiana, didn't we Crystal? I suspect that some people who have heard me share stories over the years come to my sessions to find out what my kids have been up since the last time they heard me speak. Also, somewhere along the way on my homeschooling journey, I became one of the veteran homeschoolers. Now, people with kids who are like my Josh was when he was little look at me with awe as if I'm some kind of survivor. Which, frankly, is a pretty accurate assessment for both Josh and me! I hope that people are encouraged and think, "If she did it, maybe I can do it, too." As overwhelming as it was to work with a struggling learner while wondering if I was doing everything I should in the right order, at the right time, with the right child...it worked. When people found out I was homeschooling they'd ask me if I intended to homeschool my kids through high school. That was too much for me to think about. I was more of the mindset that I would homeschool for the next minute, the next day, at least the rest of this year, etc. until gradually two of my children did complete high school at home. I'm honored to share with you, my fellow travelers on this homeschooling journey. It has been humbling and memorable, and I'm glad I didn't miss it by giving up too soon. My children have truly made me into a better teacher than I ever wanted to have to be! But "easier" is not always "better", and so we travel onward.

Shocking Gun

I have been on the road speaking at conferences while my husband runs the "Heads Up" booth. While packing up at the end of a convention recently, I came across a small, toy gun. It reminded me of the toy revolvers that were around when I was little and kids played at being cowboys or good guys and needed to be armed. This gun was much smaller, though, and I saw it in our booth and asked Scott about it. He practically yelled, "Don't touch that!" and quickly explained that it would give me a shock. Aha! So it was a trick gun, and being the loving father that he was he planned to take it home to our young adult son. Knowing that Josh has sensory issues, I intended to warn him and let him decide whether or not he wanted to experience the shock. Well, we got home late on a Saturday night, and on our way to church the next morning I told Josh that his Dad had picked something up for him and it was in my plastic file case amidst various business cards and papers needing to be sorted out. I heard Josh rummaging around, but he didn't make any comment to indicate that he'd found it. The next thing I heard was, "Ouch! It shocked my hand!" As Josh shook his hand a bit I told him that I was going to warn him but he'd pulled the trigger before I'd even realized he'd found the gun. No sooner was this said than Josh once again said, "Ouch!" because he'd once again pulled the trigger, this time knowing what would happen. (This is what occurs when impulsivity is strong!) A minute later Josh said, "Huh. It says right on the gun 'Shocking Gun' and there are lightening bolts painted on the barrel. I guess if I'd looked at it first I would have figured out something was going to happen." But before he looked at it closely he had already shocked himself again to see if it would keep happening with every trigger pull. He and I have often joked that his approach is "Ready...FIRE!...Aim?...Oops!...um, sorry..." After a brief examination of his new shocking gun, Josh turned to his sister, Beckie, and urged her to try it out as if the shock would come as a complete surprise to her. Keep in mind that Beckie had been sitting next to Josh this whole time, and although she is inattentive at times she wasn't oblivious to what had just happened to Josh. Gee, thanks big brother, but no thanks! Josh didn't give up entirely on sharing the fun, though. A few hours later he saw his other sister, Beth, and greeted her by handing her the shocking gun and urging her to try it. Beth, who is not impulsive, was immediately suspicious. "Is this going to explode?" she asked. Josh assured her that the gun would not explode, and again pressed her to try it out and pull the trigger. Beth also didn't notice the "Shocking Gun" and lightening bolts printed on the toy, and pulled the trigger. Ow! I guess this is one of those gifts that keeps on giving...shocks!

Answering Questions

I've noticed something interesting about the way my AD/HD guys (husband and son) answer questions. Their approach to conversation is sometimes a challenge for me, the mere "neurotypical" that I am. When I was first getting to know Scott, I would ask him questions to see how he thought and to learn more about him. I am pretty logical and sequential and so is my communication style. We didn't know back then that Scott had AD/HD because he wasn't diagnosed until after our son was and by then we were in our early 30's. So it puzzled me when I would ask Scott a question and he would answer by asking me a question. This was not a matter of repeating back what I'd asked for clarification purposes, but would be a different question that could change the course of the conversation. I might ask something like, "What was your favorite vacation while you were growing up?" Scott's response might be to ask, "Do you like to travel?" It wasn't a matter of Scott's evading the question, and there was still a connection with what I'd asked. It's just that his response didn't answer the question. Scott's amazing brain just works in a way that allows him to connect with one topic and from that topic quickly make connections with many related thoughts that shoot off like the spokes from the hub of a bicycle wheel - only probably not as organized and predictable as the spokes. If I really needed a definitive answer, I learned to come out and say, "You can't answer a question with a question." This forced Scott to slow down and give me something definitive to work with so we could reach some sort of conclusion. Often he would ask me out and have no plan in mind for what we would do. I didn't know him well enough yet to understand that he was tapped out in the planning category just by setting up an exact time to be with me. So he would pick me up, and I'd ask what he wanted to do. Then he would ask me what I wanted to do, etc. We have since learned how to communicate when I need specific information even though it still does not come naturally to Scott. I've noticed with my son, Josh, that he often doesn't answer a straightforward yes/no question with "yes" or "no". Today his dad asked him if he'd had enough pizza. Josh responded that he'd had five pieces. So, does that mean "YES, I've had enough," or "NO, I'm still hungry"? I've learned to communicate with Josh to narrow things down for him in very specific ways and eventually I can usually pull the answer out. Sometimes with Josh it's a matter of distractibility or making excuses rather than just saying "yes" or "no". For example, when asked if he liked a certain movie he might give you enough information that the answer is implied even though he doesn't come right out with it. Other times, I'm still unclear even after his response so I just have to try again and ask, "So does that mean you DID or DID NOT like it?" To me this way of communication seems like it would be much more work for Josh and Scott than just responding with a simple reply or an affirmative or negative response, but to them it is natural to answer questions in a more circuitous way. What comes naturally to us does not feel like hard work, and as long as it's working for us that's what we'll tend to do.

Hurry Up and Slow Down

Last week was standardized testing week for my daughter, Beckie, who is 16. My friend who is a certified teacher and fellow homeschooler administered the test to Beckie while I administered the test to her son. We have teamed up to do this for several years now, and although the test is different as the kids progress other things remain the same. For example, Beckie is impulsive and likes to do things quickly and get them over with so she can do something else. She is a "big picture" and "close enough" kind of kid. When careless mistakes are pointed out to her, she is quick to point to all her correct responses and as for the error? Well, she knows what the answer should be, and that should be good enough in her opinion. Her attitude tends toward, "Oh, well" and she quickly gets over it. My friend's son is very focused and meticulous about his test responses. He is detail-oriented and methodical. When told to "make your marks heavy and dark" on the bubble answer sheet, he does so with the result that the back of his scoring sheet has raised bumps that you can feel as you handle the paper. My friend and I teach our children the usual test-taking strategies: read the directions carefully, eliminate wrong answers to narrow down your choices, skip hard questions and come back to them if you have time, if you have time left at the end of a section go back and review your answers, and so on. Both of us still feel that these are good test-taking strategies, so we review them every year prior to testing. Our children can parrot the strategies back to us because by now they have them memorized. Yet every year during the test, we find ourselves telling my friend's son to hurry up a bit so he will finish a section before time runs out. Then we tell Beckie to slow down and take her time. And every year Beckie finishes every section early, and her friend is working through the final minute to complete his section. My friend urges, exhorts, and begs Beckie to go back over her work in the time remaining and make sure she has not missed any important detail. Since Beckie reads at a rapid rate, I worry that she will skim over a small word like "not" and won't realize that she missed a vital piece of information. Gentle reminders prior to each subtest result in Beckie's demanding question, "Do you think I'm dumb or something?" I also don't want her upset while she's taking a test, since strong emotions can also interfere with her performance. The "Hurry Up" friend and the "Slow Down" Beckie both completed all the sections on their test within the time limits given. The scoring sheets have been mailed in and it will be a few weeks before we get the results. I anticipate that my friend's son will do very well as he has in years past. Beckie will probably be okay with her test results, and will tell me "I told you I did well" to further her case for proceeding with her own method of test taking. Stay tuned!

Just got back from the TLC meeting in Mansfield. Special thanks to Ken & Grace Johnson for inviting us to speak. Our one remaining home-schooler is 16 years old; it has been quite some time since we have been involved in a HS Support Group. Tonight I saw just how much such a group can help a family with struggling learners. While not everyone can relate or empathize with having a distractible child, I was pleased to see that everyone was listening attentively - I believe with the purpose of gaining better understanding. Hopefully there was content for everyone.

Thanks to all our new friends for a warm reception.

If You Are In These Areas, Come Say Hello!

Conference Appearances
Tonight I will be in Mansfield, Ohio presenting "Helping the Distractible Child" to a homeschool support group at The Bookery. This Thursday through Saturday, April 16th - 18th, I will be speaking at the Midwest Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati. To see my workshop topics check out http://www.cincinnatihomeschoolconvention.com/ and then it's off to Missouri where I will be presenting workshops at the Southwest Home Education Ministry (SHEM) Home Education Convention at the Springfield Expo Center on April 23rd through April 25th. In May, I will be at the Heads Up! booth at the Christian Homeschool Association of Pennsylvania (CHAP) convention from May 7th through May 9th. I will be presenting workshops for the Information Network for Christian Homes (INCH) in Lansing Michigan on May 15th and 16th. Please stop by the Heads Up! booth and say hello! I would love to meet you in person.

For those of you who won't be at any of these gatherings, as well as those who do plan to attend them, I'd appreciate your prayers. I am currently in week six of moderate-severe headaches that are not responding to treatment. Since last week I also seem to have a sinus and lung infection, and am seeing another doctor about that tomorrow. My doctor has decided I need a CT scan of my sinuses, but it will be a challenge to fit one in around the conference schedules for the next several weeks. I truly desire to help as many people as I can and to let God use my experiences (the good, the bad, and the ugly!) for the benefit of others. Please pray for relief from the headache pain and for healing, energy, and endurance for me at the conferences. I will be doing a lot of talking, and lately my vocal resonance has been off and I am coughing quite a bit. I'm also afraid that the ongoing headache pain is making me a bit kooky. So then I wonder if I lose cognitive functioning, will I even know it?!? And so I pray some more and solicit your prayers as well.

Love Your Peter Rabbit

Today's post has been inspired by The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. Before I had children of my own, I was of the opinion that Peter Rabbit was kind of a brat. He didn't listen to his mother, got himself into trouble, lost articles of clothing, and left messes for someone else to clean up. Then I had my own "Peter Rabbit" kind of child. With my highly impulsive son, I saw similarities with the little rabbit who didn't listen and got into preventable and unfortunate situations on a regular basis. Even my daughter who is 15 months younger than my son recognized at an early age some unfortunate parallels from the Peter Rabbit story and our own family. Being the compliant, "neurotypical" child, she identified with Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, who are described as "good little bunnies" who follow directions and do what they are supposed to do. As a side note, if all of my children had been like Beth, I would probably be giving parenting workshops at conferences instead of the topics I currently present for struggling learners. I also have a sinking feeling I would be judging all the parents with kids like mine! So God spared me from myself by humbling me with my challenges. In The Tale of Peter Rabbit when I would get to the line, "But Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away to Mr. McGregor's garden, and squeezed under the gate!", Beth would say, "Just like Josh, right?" At this point, Josh would sigh, but I think he was secretly rooting for Peter to somehow be able to get away with it this time. Now, before we judge little Peter Rabbit too harshly, let's consider a few factors that may be in play in his situation. Peter may have inherited a tendency for some of his behaviors, since we are told his father "had an accident" in the very garden Peter ran to as soon as his mother left for her errands. Plus, there is mention of a cousin who apparently has had a run-in with cats. There is a family history implied here. Now, consider the lack of strategies throughout this scenario. Did his mother get his attention before giving her instructions? No. Aren't her directions long and wordy, making it more difficult to process them? Yes. She didn't have Peter repeat back what he'd heard to make sure he understood it. Even her parting words, "Now run along and don't get into mischief" seems almost like an expectation of trouble to come and puts a negative tone on the situation. Peter may have stopped listening after "Now run along...". All things considered, it doesn't sound like a good idea to leave Peter alone! How irresponsible of Mrs. Rabbit, come to think of it. Her approach works with her other bunnies, but Peter clearly needs more support. So now I've gone full circle from thinking Peter is a brat to defending him, and I know it's because I've felt protective of my oft-misjudged son. At the end of the story, when Peter makes his way home and is dosed with medicine and sent to bed, his sisters get to have a treat of bread and milk and blackberries for supper. The "good little bunnies" get the reward. My pre-Josh attitude was "Serves Peter right! He made bad choices and maybe this will help him learn to do what he's told next time." Now, I think if I were Mrs. Rabbit I would hold back some of the yummy blackberries to make sure Peter got to have some when he was feeling better the next day. And as he was eating them, we would talk together about what had happened and how to do things differently in the future. I would reassure him that I loved him just as much as I loved his sisters, and tell him he was every bit as special as they are to me. My advice is, if you have little Peter Rabbits in your life, love them. Support them. Teach them. Teach them again when they forget. And when people give you a look or misunderstand your child, remember that they are probably not blessed with a Peter Rabbit of their own and don't understand because they haven't experienced what you have. And then love your Peter Rabbit some more.

He Wears The Chain

My son has never had a good internal sense of time passing. When I said it was time to work on a certain subject, my son always wanted to know how long it would take and how much more work we had for the day. He also is forgetful and inattentive, so even though the answers rarely varied he asked the same questions daily because he didn't remember from one day to the next. I thought it might help if I gave him a visual and tactile depiction to represent what we needed to accomplish for school each day. I found some interlocking links and selected one link to represent each school task for the day. I told Josh he could remove one link each time he completed a subject. That way, he could see and touch a visual representation of how much more schoolwork he needed to complete. I thought he might even become more motivated when he saw the chain getting shorter as the day went on. One day, Josh was having a particularly "off" day. We all have off days, but when my struggling learner has an off day, it's really OFF. Josh just couldn't seem to focus or sustain his attention to anything. By the end of the day, he had draped the links around his shoulders to help himself remember what he was supposed to be working on. All I could think of was Marley's ghost from Dicken's The Christmas Carol when Scrooge asks about the chains Marley has and the reply is "I wear the chains I forged in life." Poor Josh! He looked like he was wearing the chains he forged during the school day, and that was just for one day. Imagine if we carried over all the unfinished links to the next day and the next. Soon, Josh would buckle under the weight of so many unfinished tasks. We had to start each day fresh. I am reminded of the Bible verse in Lamentations 3:23,23 "The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness." Each day is a new day, with new challenges and opportunities. Let's try to help our kids without dragging any chains from unfulfilled tasks from the past and focus on each new day as a chance to try again.

Use Fixations To Make Learning Easier

Research has shown that strong emotions make memories stronger. Likewise, if you can connect something familiar and chain it to new information it will be better understood and more likely to be retained. For a child with Asperger's or any child who has a particular area of interest, you are probably finding ways to tie the interest to many areas of learning already. If a child is fascinated by Thomas the Tank Engine (and there's something about that train that especially appeals to many on the autism spectrum) then you could use train cars to represent the components of a multi-step direction. The train cars could be used as manipulatives in math, or to demonstrate how to connect ideas in a writing assignment. For a child with a short attention span who's always asking you how much schoolwork is left to do, the train could have a car to represent each subject and as the subject is concluded the car is removed so the train gets visibly smaller as progress is made throughout the day. As an added bonus, your child won't have to keep asking you if they are finished for the day since a glance at the train will tell them the answer. A train could be used to represent minutes earned on the computer, for example, so each car earned for a desired behavior equals five minutes of computer time. If you can't figure out how to use your child's areas of interest, ask your child for ideas. It's likely that they can come up with something and you can tweak the ideas to find something that will work satisfactorily for both of you. As with any new strategy, you will need to give it some time to see if it's helpful. Once you get past the novelty stage you will have a better idea of how to enact your plan. Keep in mind that children with learning challenges perform inconsistently from day to day - even minute to minute on the off days, so what works one day may not work the next. In a week or month it may work again. Not all children have a particular interest area. Some, on the other hand, are downright obsessed. This fixation may change from one thing to another in phases, or it may be lasting. Your child will show you, over and over, what they like and are seeking. The general strategy of using what the child is interested in will stay the same. Some people are hesitant to encourage their child's passion about a given topic, and that's understandable. Yet with many less-desirable behaviors we can't merely remove them or they will just be replaced by something else. My own son has always been fascinated by weapons. Of course I'm not going to look for ways to include that in our school studies or incorporate weapons as reinforcers no matter how engaging that would be for him. Since he also hyper-focused on Legos we could use those. Try to think creatively and be more flexible than your teacher's manual instructions. If you know there is something that will engage your child, try to think of a way to use it. When my daughters went through their "Pretty Pony" phase or the "Teeny Beanie" era they were included in many academic realms. Now my girls are beyond that phase, but I'll fondly remember teaching them as they included their ponies and encouraged them to boldy go where few Pretty Ponies had gone before.

Memory Problems? Make A Movie In Your Mind

Do you have a child who can tell you (in great detail) about a movie he saw months ago, but can't remember what it was that you sent him to get from his room? Can your child quote lines from a movie she's seen one time, but can't recall what you just told her to do? Hmmm... I don't think I'm the only one with kids like this! For whatever reason, my struggling learners are wired to remember what they see in movies but struggle to retain auditory information long enough to act on it before it evaporates. And that's assuming they were actually listening in the first place. So, I suggest taking advantage of this stronger visual recall by pairing visual cues with auditory cues when giving directions. For example, if you send your child to get a pair of scissors, make cutting motions with your fingers as you tell them to go get the scissors. Okay, that may not be the best example since with our kids we also have to bombard them with various safety reminders and we certainly don't want to act out what might happen if one runs with scissors. But you get the idea. Another technique that is especially effective with our creative and drama-loving children is to teach them to "Make a movie in your mind". Tell your child to picture himself doing what you have asked, and encourage him to make his mental movie in color and with details. The more detailed the movie, the better the chances of recall. I'd tell my children that I was going to give them some instructions, and to make a movie to visualize themselves doing the tasks. Usually if I told my kids three things to do they would not remember all three things. Besides the working memory issues, they would get distracted along the way and lessen the likelihood of recall even more. With the movie technique, they could stop and mentally "watch" the movie again to remember what they had been assigned and picture themselves performing the tasks. In the movie, they could see themselves doing what they needed to and could check to see if they were missing anything. It took some practice, but this strategy made a huge difference for my kids. They went from being able to follow one simple direction at a time to being able to follow multi-step instructions. Just as athletes can improve their performances by visualizing themselves doing things correctly, our struggling students can improve their recall by taking advantage of their visual and creativity strengths.

Jesus and My Parenting Skills

Yesterday was one of those gray, rainy days. As Beckie and I were finishing up our schoolwork for the day, the phone rang. We typically don't answer the phone during school time, so Beckie checked the answering machine when she went downstairs a few minutes later. There was a message that her usual ride to her part-time job at the martial arts school was unavailable, so Beckie needed to make other arrangements. It had stopped raining by then, but was still very wet and it looked like the rain could start up again at any time. Beckie called out to me, "I need a ride to work." Since it wasn't a direct request to me, I playfully called back, "I hope you find one." Here's how it went from there:
Beckie: "Mom!"
Mom: "I hope you find a ride with a really safe driver."
Beckie: "M0-0m!" (Pretty sure there was an eye roll here, but couldn't see her from where I was)
Mom: "It stopped raining. You could probably walk."
Beckie: "Mom. There's no one else here to get a ride from."
Mom: (speaking with benevolent wisdom) "If Jesus were here on earth right now and had a car, I'm sure He would give you a ride."
Beckie: (Seeing her opportunity, with a huge grin and without a moment's hesitation) "If Jesus were here right now, He would be disappointed in your parenting skills for not giving your daughter a ride when she needs one!"
Geesh! I certainly don't want Jesus disappointed in my parenting skills! Although I know there are far worse things He could be disappointed about, here at least was something preventable. Beckie knew I would be giving her a ride, and that I was playing with her, but it made me wonder how many times she has thought the same thing but didn't mention it to me. I bet she's even prayed to complain about me a time or two! Next time you are giving your children a ride somewhere and you're tired and busy and have a lot on your mind, you can comfort yourself with the thought that at least in this Jesus won't be disappointed in your parenting skills!

Do Your Kids Hate Tests?

Some students hear the word "test" and have an immediate negative reaction. They may feel physical symptoms including headaches, stomachaches, general tension, and more. Many students undergo a change resulting in irritability, angry outbursts, and surly speech that is not (hopefully) typical behavior for them. Many of us who are adults now can recall similar reactions we had in childhood when we learned there would be a test. As one who prayed during every quiz and exam I had since the time I became a Christian in college, I understand the anxiety that even the thought of a test can evoke. Since I homeschooled my children, I didn't think they would experience test anxiety. Somehow, possibly through hearing other children's experiences with testing, they began to view evaluations as a negative factor in their schooling. Timed speed tests can cause a different type of reaction than competency tests, so I'll save that for another day's post. I set out to help my kids recognize testing as a part of the educational experience. I wanted them to recognize that testing was unavoidable to some degree, but I didn't want them to be intimidated or fearful about it. Basically, I wanted to help them make a mental paradigm shift in their thinking about testing. The first change I made was to use the words "test", "quiz", and "exam" frequently throughout the school day. Used often and for small tests as well as lengthier ones, the words helped desensitize the students' reactions and become common occurrences. I didn't save tests until Friday, but rather offered them on different days so there would be no conditioning to dread a certain day because it meant there would be a test then. I also concluded some of our informal question and answer sessions by telling the kids they had just completed an oral examination. I explained that I viewed tests as one of many ways they could show me what they had learned. I shared my belief that the exams helped me determine what I needed to review or emphasize more, and it was a reflection not just of their learning but of my success in teaching them. I also told them that the nature of a test is to sample learning, but it cannot possibly reveal all that a student does or does not know. It is a tool to help measure knowledge, but it can only offer a glimpse of information about the student as a person. I told my kids stories of people who are very bright but don't do well taking tests. We read biographies of incredible adults who had not done well in traditional school settings. For the first few years of homeschooling, I had a certified teacher do a portfolio review to assess my children's work. By the time my Josh and Beth were in third grade, I thought they were ready to take a standardized test. Still, I wasn't sure how distracting a large group setting would be, and since I wanted accurate results I hired a teacher to come to my home and administer the test. I had talked to my kids about the test, and they were a bit nervous but felt prepared. After only the second or third subtest, things started to unravel. The teacher had forgotten to bring answer sheets so she had given the kids lined notebook paper to write their answers on. Using a testing strategy I had taught her, Beth had skipped a difficult math problem with the intention of returning to it if she had time left after answering the remaining questions. Unfortunately, being a new test taker and not having the regular answer sheet with the "fill-in-the-bubble" option we had practiced, Beth had not skipped a line on her notebook paper responses. She didn't realize that nearly all of her answers were on the wrong line until she had finished the section and wanted to go back to the problem she skipped. By then, time was almost up and she realized she could not correct everything in time. She cried with frustration and despair because she thought that all her hard work was for nothing and now she would not pass third grade and would have to do it all again the next year. Josh became quite upset seeing his sister so distressed, and I came in to try and calm them down and reassure them that we would figure out which line should have been skipped and grade accordingly. The teacher I had hired offered to quit the testing right then. She suggested that another year of portfolio reviews might be in order. I knew, though, that it was critical that my kids finish that test. Not because of the test itself, but because this was their first experience with a standardized test administered by someone other than myself. If we had stopped at that point, I am positive they would have believed they had failed and were not capable of doing well on a test. I couldn't let that happen! If I had stopped at that point, they would have been extremely resistant to any testing in the future. That one experience was all they had, and I determined that they would not end it at such a disheartening point. So we took a snack break and I persuaded my children (and the teacher I had hired) that we were going to finish the test and that I believed everyone could do it. After about 20 minutes (which is what the brain needs to reabsorb all the chemicals released in a meltdown, by the way) the kids settled down to the next subtest. They were able to finish the test, and my children and the teacher all appeared relieved but significantly more relaxed. When the results came back a few weeks later, they had done just fine. I think this was a key experience that could have greatly increased the natural aversion to testing, but we didn't allow that to happen. We have to do what we can to keep the dread of tests from looming over our kids while allowing them to provide us with some information about our students. If we keep our perspective about testing in balance, we can help our children to do the same.

Geese!

Today I was driving home from church with my two AD/HD offspring, Josh and Beckie. Sometimes we think of them as twins who happen to be five years apart in age, because they are so similar in so many ways. There's no missing the physical resemblance, but at times it seems like they have some sort of brain connection that only the two of them share. With Josh riding in the back seat and Beckie riding shotgun next to me, we were enjoying some mild spring weather and long-awaited sunshine. As I pulled to a stop for a red light, suddenly and in unison at the top of their voices Josh and Beckie yelled "Geese!" At first I thought this must be an inside joke from a movie or video game, to yell "Geese!" at a traffic light or something. Beckie was looking out her window, and I saw a pair of geese in the grass nearby. Josh was looking in the opposite direction, where another set of geese waddled through the grass. I asked them why they yelled "Geese!", wanting to be in on the joke. But that, I guess, was another joke on me because there was no story behind this particular choral outburst. Although they weren't looking in the same direction, they both saw geese at the same time and were calling out to inform the other. Since it's not typical to see geese within our city limits it's kind of the city kid version of a wildlife spotting. For some reason known only to their brains, it made more sense to yell out the single word than to make a comment in the form of a full sentence such as, "There are some geese in the grass over here." When further conversation helped me realize that this was not related to any previously shared experience, but that both of their brains had them shout "Geese" at exactly the same time, Josh and Beckie just laughed and couldn't really explain it. Fortunately, with each other, they don't have to explain.

Show That Can Opener Who's Boss!

I think it's important to teach my kids life skills in addition to academics. I have taught them how to do laundry and iron their clothes. They have basic cleaning skills, although admittedly they don't apply them nearly often enough. They know how to cook and have learned the basics of measuring, mixing, reading directions, and using the stove or oven. Each of my three children has a recipe box. The box contains recipes they know how to make or hope to learn how to prepare. Over time, the number of recipes increases. My plan is to have a recipe box with many of their favorite meal items written on recipe cards for them to take with them when they live on their own. I'm sure they will still call me with questions from time to time, but that's fine. I just want them to have the basics mastered and they can expand their cooking skills from there. When I have my kids make a recipe for the first time, I coach them through it. I'll do portions of the preparation to demonstrate certain aspects and have them do part of the preparation so we can work closely together. The next time we make that recipe, I have them do all the preparation while I stand nearby to provide clarification or reminders. The third time they prepare the recipe, I take a more passive role and may even go to an adjoining room. I'm still within earshot but they are learning to prepare the item independently. Once, while working with Beckie, we needed to open a can. Our can opener can be touchy, and sometimes I have to manually wiggle the sharp blade into place. It works, but the can has to be aligned just so. Since I gave the manual can opener to my daughter to use at college, the electric one is our only option. I made sure the can opener blade was in position and handed Beckie the can to open. She had trouble getting it to line up, and the can opener made a few whirring sounds without coming into contact with the lid. I encouraged Beckie to keep making adjustments until the position worked, but she quickly became frustrated and wanted me to do it for her. I knew she could do it with a bit of practicing to learn our can opener's idiosyncrasies, so I told her she shouldn't give up so easily. "You just have to show that can opener who the boss is, Beckie! Don't let it win!" Beckie answered immediately with, "I tried that already, Mom. I told the can opener I was the boss and it had to do what I said. But it said, 'Then I quit! So you're not the boss of me anymore!' so I can't make it do what I want." Well. What is one to do with such a recalcitrant can opener? I decided a compromise was appropriate under the circumstances, so I got the opening started and had Beckie hold the can and finish opening it. You have to show the can opener who's boss, even if it takes two of you to do it! Also, I think they can smell fear, just like copy machines that are prone to paper jams, so try to stay calm and present a brave face.

Hey! That's MY Underwear!

There are some things you just don't want to hear your kids say, especially in the presence of relatives who are seen infrequently. As graduation parties are already being planned, it brought back a memory of my niece's graduation from high school. My sister and sister-in-law are both teachers in public schools, so it would be nice if my home-schooled sweeties made a good impression when they see their Aunts and other kin. My niece's graduation party included grandparents, cousins, relatives and friends, and we drove to their hometown to be a part of the festivities. My kids were thrilled to discover that in addition to massive quantities of food there was also a trampoline set up in the backyard. It wasn't long before all three of my kids were headed for some jumping fun. They had a blast! I took pictures, and got some nice action shots. They thought of different jump moves to try and wanted me to capture every single moment with my camera. I should probably mention that I had the kids dressed up a bit for the occasion. Beckie was in a dress and Beth was in a skirt. They were jumping artfully while maintaining their modesty, and everything seemed fine until they both jumped at the same time and bonked their heads together. They both fell backwards while holding their heads, and Beckie's dress got flipped up a bit when she flopped onto her back. Beth, recovering first from the head bump, suddenly forgot about her injury when she made her discovery and subsequent announcement of, "Hey! That's MY underwear!" Beckie, quickly feigning underwear amnesia, weakly asked, "It is?" with such an air of innocence that most people would have found her believable. Big sister Beth is not most people, however, and she wasn't buying it. After a few increasingly heated accusations and denials culminating in an apology from Beckie, I jumped in with "Don't take it off! Beth, she's just going to have to wear them until we get back home." While Josh and I were recovering from laughing so hard at Beth's first declaration of underwear ownership, I suddenly had the horrifying thought that Beth just might demand that Beckie return the underwear immediately, and the more horrifying thought that Beckie would actually do it to keep the peace with Beth. Wow! Now wouldn't that impress all the relatives? I can almost hear the chatter in the background... Isn't it quaint how the homeschooled children negotiate with each other? Do you think all homeschoolers share underwear with their siblings? I wonder if they'll get a special pair if they go to a prom? Probably they make their own underwear anyway...

Writing It Down Would Work Better

Today's blog is a message of hope for all of you with distractible, inattentive, and forgetful children. It may also, in a way, be making a case for attempted brain washing used totally in the sense of "for the greater good." I'll let you decide. Yesterday my daughter Beckie and I were talking about things that needed to be done. Beckie has ongoing issues with managing her schedule and her possessions. She usually gets places on time, but often leaves out food that needs refrigerated and leaves other unfinished tasks that are sacrificed in order for her to get where she needs to be at the right time. She always thinks that she'll have enough time, or can get "one more thing" done before she has to go. Like many distractible individuals, she loses track of time and rushes out the door at the last minute leaving a trail of partially completed chores in her wake. Yesterday, I was reminding her of something she needed to do, and she was reminding me that she never remembers it at the right time when she could actually do it. I had just been working with her on history, having her visualize events so that she could recall them later. So I said, "Put it in your brain," meaning that she should visualize herself doing the job. Beckie's immediate response was, "Writing it down would work better." Whoa! Isn't that exactly what I'd been telling her for years? Just for kicks, I asked her to repeat what she'd said. She repeated her statement about writing it down, which thrilled me and gave me hope. I've probably told her that thousands of times over the years, but this is honestly the first time I've heard it come back from her own lips. Maybe, just maybe, all the things we say to our kids sink in. It's possible that with enough repetition, our oft-repeated bits of wisdom gradually ease their way into our children's long-term memory where it serves them when we are not physically there to prompt and remind. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I must say that this will probably not become a habit for some time. I've found that my non-AD/HD child can learn a new rule or skill in about a third of the time it takes my AD/HD children. The AD/HD kids need a lot more repetition and practice, along with more direct supervision and support along the way. But we can't let that minimize the successes we do see, even if they are longer in coming. As I've mentioned, I have been nagging (I mean "coaching") Beckie to write things down on the calendar when she has something planned. When she mentions an event to me, I prompt her to write it on the calendar so she won't forget and we can all see what is planned on any given day. I also have a dry-erase board by the phone, and about 40% of the time she remembers to write down when someone has called for me. This may not seem impressive, but we are up from 0% of the time so it is an improvement. She also writes things down on the calendar, but again we are not up to 100%. Not yet. But we are making progress, and sometimes the natural consequences of not writing things down increases the incentive to remember to do so in the future. For example, last weekend Beckie had remembered to write down her evening babysitting job. Then in the afternoon she got a phone call from a friend about a birthday party they were going to that night. Oops! Since it was not on the calendar and all the planning had been done between Beckie and her friends, I knew nothing about it. What followed was much scrambling around to get a gift, card, arrange transportation with her Dad and to let her friend know they would have to leave the party early to get back for Beckie's babysitting job. In Beckie's unreliable memory, the party was the following weekend. This made the case for writing things down on the calendar better than any of my theoretical examples could. So when I heard those sweet words, "Writing it down would work better", I felt like perhaps I can help my child develop strategies that will serve her throughout her life. For her sake, I hope so.

Only One Shoe

Think for a minute about taking your shoes off. Some of us remove our foot attire as soon as we enter our homes. Others may leave them on all day until bedtime. But as you picture yourself taking your shoes off, I'd like you to think about whether you take one off followed by the other in quick succession, or just kick off one shoe and walk around with the other for awhile and then slip off the remaining shoe. Although I've never seen anyone have a significant time lag between removing the left and right shoes, that's the only explanation I can come up with for why my children can only find one shoe. Personally, I always remove my shoes together and almost always put them - together - in the same place. I can usually find my shoes, but if I've misplaced them I've always lost both shoes not just one. My children have repeatedly been able to find only one shoe, usually when we are in a hurry to get out the door to an appointment. We have a designated spot for shoes when they are not being worn, and usually ONE shoe would be there. When the dog was a puppy, I thought maybe he was running off with them. But after his puppy year he really wasn't interested in shoes anymore and stuck to his own toys for the most part. I can imagine my children beginning to take off their shoes but then getting distracted after the first one and bounding off until it registers that they still have a shoe on, so they remove it wherever they happen to be. The children are usually baffled as well. Josh, who is my only son, would stand with one shoe in his hand and announce that "Someone took my other shoe." Since his shoes did not fit any other family member, it did not make sense that any of us took his shoe. Is it possible to go sleep walking and hide shoes ( or should I say "shoe") while being totally unaware of doing so? That seems about as feasible as taking off each shoe at a different time and location. Perhaps that's just another reason that the sports my kids were involved with were a good match for them. Swimming and martial arts are done barefoot!

Ask First - Purr, Ya Varmint!

Children with AD/HD are often impulsive. Sometimes, this adds to their charm as they blurt out amusing observations and thoughts. Other times, it gets them in trouble as they...blurt out their observations and thoughts! One positive aspect of impulsivity is that I rarely have to wonder how my daughter feels or what she really thinks about things. Especially when she was in the preschool and elementary years, I rarely had to ask for her opinion because she made it readily apparent. Actually, I do want to know what my children think and how they are feeling but with Beckie I didn't usually have enough time to ask before she was announcing her thoughts to all within earshot. Some of the "This could get you in trouble" (and hopefully also teachable) moments happened with regularity. Beckie was an avid reader and a very verbal child, and frequently she would use words she'd heard or read without knowing what they meant. Sometimes I could tell when she was trying out a word she'd read by the way she pronounced it such as when she used the phonetic pronunciation of the word "ballet". Other times, she just picked up words from various sources and tried them out. When we got our kitten, Wesley, she was eager to hear him purr. Beckie held him in her arms, stroking his fur and crooning to him, "Purr, ya varmint!" This was immediately followed by, "What's a varmint?" My refrain became, "Ask first, then try out the word if it's appropriate for what you're trying to say." Then I would tell her what the word meant. Beckie has gotten better at suppressing her impulsive tendency to say whatever she is thinking, though it still happens sometimes. In a way, I miss hearing her developing her vocabulary by trying out new words on me.

Listening Skills

Two of my children have difficulties with auditory processing, attention, and working memory. I have been working on their listening skills for most of their lives. I officially started "speech therapy" activities with Josh when he was 2 years old, although as a speech/language pathologist I was basically using communication strategies with him since birth. (Ah, the joys of being the firstborn, right?) By the time Beckie came along five years later I was basically incorporating therapy techniques throughout our daily activities. Whereas my daughter Beth would listen and respond the first time I said something, the other two often seemed to tune out or mis-hear what I'd said. (This happens with my husband as well, but I never approached him about working on it!) We did many activities together over the years to address the auditory processing difficulties, but one of our favorites was to read a familiar story together but alter it as we went along. I would begin the story, but change a key feature to see if the children were listening and paying attention. For example, I'd start out reading the traditional story of the Three Little Pigs, but when the wolf came to the door I'd have him huff and puff and threaten to take all their macaroni and cheese. The children would giggle and tell me that wasn't what happened, and then we worked on oral language expression as they told me how the story should go. We did similar activities with flannel board stories, and I would deliberately change the story and put the flannel pieces on out of order to see if the children noticed. Sometimes the changes to the story were subtle, and other times illogical to help the children develop their ability to sequence events and make logical predictions. Another favorite activity was to listen to recorded stories. The children liked following along with the audio books and turning the page when they heard the beep, but I also had them listen to stories that did not have books accompanying them. That way, they had to just tune in to the auditory piece and visualize what they were hearing without visual cues to rely on. The ability to visualize is important to reading comprehension and was a fun way to work on auditory skills. Just be sure to listen to the recording yourself, first, to make sure the narrator is animated and interesting to listen to or your child may become bored and tune it out. I enjoy listening to audio books as I do various tasks, and I know firsthand that having a good narrator is key to enjoyment and the ability to attend to what's being said. For young children or those with a short attention span, a collection of short stories might be best. Older students, even those who can read by themselves, may enjoy an entire audio book. To check comprehension, stop the recording periodically and ask a few questions. I always asked my kids how they pictured different characters and what they might look like. The more details that children visualize, the better the chances that they will remember what they've heard.

Of Ferrets and Men

Back when Josh was in high school, we studied Steinbeck's novelOf Mice and Men. It was a bittersweet portrayal of the friendship between two men named George and Lennie. Lennie is a large man with a mental disability who is very devoted to George and dependent on him for guidance. Although others consider Lennie to be limited in most capacities, he proves himself to be a strong and tireless worker for even the hardest of manual labor jobs. Lennie likes to touch things, and has a love for petting small, furry animals. He dreams of one day living in a house with George and tending rabbits. Lennie is a big guy with a soft spot for little animals, who is only appreciated by those around him for his ability to utilize his size and strength as he works alongside George. After Josh and his sister, Beth, finished the book we discussed the plot and concluded that literature unit. It was a month or so after that when Josh told me he identified with Lennie. My son is a big guy, 6'3" now and was probably over 6' at the time. His shoulders are broad and with his AD/HD he has always had more energy than most. His learning disabilities have caused some people to conclude that he just isn't that bright though he comes in handy for reaching things up high and for carrying heavy loads. As Beth pointed out, Josh is really smart but he just doesn't have the kind of smart that shows up very well. In any case, it saddened me to see the similarities that Josh recognized between Lennie and himself. Josh also works a job that requires a lot of manual labor, and, like Lennie, he loves animals. We have three pets that he dutifully helps tend to, and he volunteers with the cats at our local humane society. He adopted an abandoned ferret from the humane society, and with all the animals he has been gentle and attentive. His ferret, Tabitha, had been abandoned in an apartment closet when the previous owners moved out. When Josh got her, she was an adult of undetermined age and he had gone out and bought all the supplies needed to care for her. He had sole responsibility for his pet, so when she got sick we found a vet who treated small pets. Josh found out that Tabitha was having seizures, and he had to give her medicine twice a day. The medicine needed refrigeration, so Josh bought a small refrigerator to keep in his room near her cage. Tabitha quickly learned to turn her head away from the medicine syringe and to clamp her furry ferret lips closed, but Josh never grew impatient with her. He talked to her and persisted until he got the medicine she needed into her. Despite this care, Tabitha developed new health problems, and Josh made several more trips to the vet. Tabitha was losing fur, was having seizures, needed medicines to counteract the side effects of the other medicines, and was often up during the night disturbing Josh's sleep. Through all of this, Josh never complained, but continued to buy the medicines and special food the vet recommended. He crooned to Tabitha and held her, telling her she was still cute despite having lost most of her fur. Last week, Tabitha was in obvious pain and returned to the vet to see if she could be helped but to no avail. She died on Sunday, and Josh was not surprised but was saddened to lose his Tabitha. We don't know how old she was, but Josh had been her owner for the last couple years. He brought her home to bury her, and I watched out the window as my big, strong son carefully tended to his ferret for the last time.

Alternative Literature Assessment

Beckie and I finished reading Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and I wanted to give her a non-traditional assignment in addition to traditional assessment measures. So I went through two week's worth of advertisements from the Sunday newspaper and cut out pictures that could be tied in somehow to a line from the play. For example, I used a picture from an ad for Glade air freshener and paired it with this line from Act 4, Scene 3 when Juliet says, "Shall I not then be stifled in the vault, to whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, and there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?" Beckie's assignment was to tell me the context for the line. The pictures were not in a sequential order, and Beckie surprised herself with her ability to remember details from the play. Her favorite quote was paired with a picture of Yoplait Go-gurt with large letters proclaiming "With calcium for STRONG BONES!" and Juliet's line again from Act 4, Scene 3 asking "And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone, as with a club, dash out my desperate brains?" I chuckled at the picture from the Hamburger Helper ad with the friendly little hand for Act 5, Scene 3 when the feuding families are reconciling and Capulet says, "O brother Mountague, give me thy hand." Beckie had fun with that part of the assessment, and also wrote an essay response and took a multiple choice test. Those were the three components for her final exam on Romeo and Juliet. Just for fun we also watched a movie version, and I found a "Shakespeare Manga Romeo and Juliet" in graphic novel form at the library. Manga is a Japanese art form, I think, and this one portrayed the story as taking place in Japan with the two main families being rival mafia families. Now that Beckie has the idea of using pictures from ads as part of her assessment, she can find the pictures herself for the next time we want to use that option as part of an assessment.

I'll Remember to Forget

Josh and I find ourselves in a new stage of our relationship as mother and son. I am now middle-aged and he is a young adult. My goal, as always, is to encourage Josh to greater independence in his use of strategies to help his weak executive functions. His goal is to use me as his favorite strategy, since Mom can be counted on to have a suggested solution she has already thought of and thus save him the work of coming up with a strategy on his own. Add to that dynamic the demands I have on my brain to work as a speech therapist, run a small business with my husband, homeschool Josh's youngest sister, participate in church and volunteer activities, and keep track of appointments, etc. and I find myself feeling challenged to remember everything I need to keep track of. Usually, when I think of something I need to remember I write it down in my planner or on my calendar so I have a written reminder and don't have to retain it in my memory alone. At this point, I think if I want to try and remember something new I will need to delete some files in my brain to make room. So when Josh and I were driving together on our way to volunteer at our local Humane Society last week, I remembered something I needed to do later that day. Since I was driving, I couldn't write it down. I also sometimes call home and leave myself a message on the answering machine for later, but this particular day my daughter Beckie was home and would recognize my number and answer the phone. Since I didn't want to have to prompt her through writing down a detailed message, I opted to try and solicit help from Josh. I explained that I needed to remember to do something when we got back home, and asked him to remind me of it when we returned home so I could take care of it. He grinned at me and said, "O.k., Mom, I'll remember to forget that, too!" So, just as I want to discourage Josh from using me as his default strategy to remember things he needs to do, I clearly cannot plan on having Josh as part of my own bank of strategies.

Sleep Challenges in Young Children

I've heard that many people with AD/HD have sleep difficulties at some time or other during their lives. When my son was young, even in infancy, he did not sleep as much as others his age. He gave up naps sooner, and genuinely was wide awake in the evenings when I hoped to get him in bed for the night. I eventually came to the conclusion that you can't make a person sleep when they are not tired, just as all of my great parenting couldn't alter Josh's neurology to rid him of his AD/HD and other challenges. If you've ever been wide awake at a time you wish you were sleeping, you know that sleep cannot be forced. There are things you can do to facilitate sleep, however, and that's what I ended up doing with Josh. He rarely had anything with caffeine in it, and never within hours of bedtime though I've since learned that having a stimulant actually helps some people with AD/HD to be able to sleep. We subdued the lighting in Josh's room to one small lamp with a soft glow. We limited physical activities and required him to stay quiet and remain in his room. He could look at books or play next to his bed with Legos. He could draw pictures. That was about it for bedside activities. When he was able to sleep, he got into bed and we turned off the light when we turned in for the night. If he was still awake when his Dad and I were ready to go to bed, we put in a long-playing tape of Bible stories that he could listen to and turned off the light. Josh knew how to turn the tape over if he was still awake after side one was completed. He could have a small sports bottle with a straw for water, but we didn't give him large amounts so that he wouldn't have to wake up to use the bathroom once he was asleep. After experiencing so many battles with his well-meaning parents who tried to insist that he go to sleep before his body would allow it, Josh accepted the new rules of being quiet and staying in his room with no resistance.

Reluctant Writers

I wonder how many school-age children could be considered reluctant writers. I know from my own experience and from talking with hundreds of people at homeschool conferences that reluctant writers are not uncommon. It seems to occur with a higher percentage in boys, and there's a very high correlation in children with fine motor delays and attention challenges. Yet writing is such a fundamental skill for academic tasks, and not just for "official" writing curriculum that we have to help our children attain competency in this area. Students must demonstrate adequate writing skills for math calculations and to provide written responses to questions in nearly every subject area. My son, Josh, was a doodler and picture-drawing fiend from the time he could hold a pencil. That boy loved to draw, and decorated the margins of his workbooks and school pages with detailed artwork. But he hated to write letters and numbers, so the same pencil he enjoyed drawing with became the hated enemy pencil he was expected to write with for school. When you have a reluctant writer, you can end up with a resistant student. There are a few things I tried that helped us get the work done with neither of us becoming too traumatized in the process. First, I acknowledged to myself that boys tend to mature later than girls, and children with AD/HD tend to be 2-4 years LESS mature than their same-age peers without AD/HD. So when I'm working with my 7 year-old AD/HD son, I'm dealing with a maturity level of a typically developing 3-5 year-old boy. Expectations need to be adjusted to fit who you are working with so you can challenge without frustrating as you help skills be developed. The second point I tried to remember was that curriculum is a tool for teachers to measure comprehension and progress. For a handwriting curriculum, that is best assessed by actual writing samples since that is what is being targeted. For other subject areas, I can assess comprehension orally some of the time. I still have written samples of work in each subject area, but I do not need to have my child write down every answer every time when they can quickly and easily tell me their responses and I can gauge their level of understanding. This lessened frustration a great deal for Josh, who was bright and could express himself orally but struggled to form the written words. Writing was a long, laborious process for him and sustaining attention and focus for topics that weren't highly interesting to him was beyond challenging. Sometimes I let him combine his love of drawing with a writing assignment. I found paper that was lined on the lower half and left the top half blank. Josh could write his sentences on the lower half (half a page of writing was less intimidating to him) and he could illustrate his ideas on the upper half of the paper. This was far more appealing to him than writing alone, so he was less reluctant to do the writing task. Today as a young adult, my son who was an extremely reluctant writer back in elementary school has developed such a passion for writing that he has written three science fiction novels and has plans for several more books. Take heart, teachers of reluctant writers! There may yet be an author inside that child.

Would You Survive...Reading?

When my son Josh was learning to read, it was an arduous process. He made steady progress, but had to work hard to remember the sounds represented by print and the various ways they blended into words. At the time I was teaching Josh to read, my next door neighbor had a daughter 11 months older than Josh. This little girl took books to bed with her at night, and basically taught herself to read as her mother read to her. Before long, and without any curriculum or structured lessons, this girl was reading independently. In the meantime, I struggled to stay awake after lunch when we did the reading lesson for the day. Sometimes it took Josh so long to decode a word that I'd start to nod off and Josh would ask if I was still awake. It didn't help that Josh was also hyperactive, and it was not unusual for his head to be on the floor and his rear end up near the book. I decided instead of the "phonetic approach" I was teaching the "bun-etic approach" but it didn't work very well as a way to teach reading! This was Josh and Beths' kindergarten year, and besides the actual reading instruction I was reading over 100 books to them each month. We were regulars at the library, and if merely exposing them to reading and books could have taught them to read it sure should have happened. They enjoyed the books, but they in no way taught themselves to read. It took work. The books that motivated Josh to read on his own were from a series with titles that started with "Would You Survive..." as a squirrel, deer, fox. etc. These books featured various animals in their habitats, and at various points choices had to be made. For example, when faced with a predator, the reader gets to choose if the animal runs up a tree or hides in a hole in the ground. Based on the choice, the reader is instructed to go to a specific page to continue the story. In addition to teaching about the animals, the stories would have different outcomes depending on the choices the reader made. Josh, like most children with AD/HD, loved the versatility of a story that could be different each time he read it. These books really ignited Josh's love of reading, and soon after he discovered the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series which also gave the reader options that influenced the outcome of the story. Finding books that connect with your child's interest and imagination can make a huge difference in the attitude toward reading. The "Would You Survive" series helped Josh see that reading was not just another required task he had to perform for school, but was actually something that he could enjoy.