The tenacity and resilience of dyslexic children and adults never ceases to amaze me! I was doing a radio interview this morning and the host, Christina Nitschmann said, “If only I’d known you when I was in school!” She went on to say that she was dyslexic and couldn’t read when she entered junior high. Her parents had been told that she was probably retarded, but Christina knew she was smart. She realized that no one was going to teach her to read, so she’d better try to teach herself. She asked her teacher for every book she could find…
Last weekend I saw a mom and her two little boys at the counter of an ice cream shop trying to decide what flavor to choose. And there were so many choices! The little guys were so excited! It made me think about a breakthrough that one of our students had a few years ago. She was 11-years old and had never, ever chosen any kind of ice cream other than vanilla when her family went to Baskin Robbins, which they liked to do. She was on the Autism spectrum and very afraid to branch out and try anything new. …
Raquel was a third grader reading at a first grade level when she was diagnosed with ADHD. Her parents were not sold on the diagnosis or the suggested “solution” of medication so they kept searching for answers. When we tested Raquel, we found that she actually had dyslexia. Her weak ability to process the sounds in words made it very difficult for her to learn and use phonics for reading and spelling. She tended to add, omit, and substitute sounds in words, making it look like she wasn’t really paying attention. Raquel also experienced visual disorientation when looking at the…
As a parent, when your child is struggling, you may feel like you can hardly breathe. You search for answers and will do almost anything to help, if only you knew what to do. When we got to the end of our parent night last week, one of the moms said, “Now, I can exhale!” We had talked about how smart kids who struggle in school are not lazy, or unmotivated, or, most importantly, not doomed to a life of continued setbacks and frustration due to learning and attention challenges. Traditional tutoring and help at school, while supportive, does not…
My mom is always on the lookout for articles from my hometown newspaper that she thinks I’ll be interested in. A few weeks ago, she cut out an article for me about Bonnie Landau, an Ojai mom who wrote a book for parents of special needs kids – Special Ed Mom Survival Guide: How to Prevail in the Special Education Process While Discovering Life-Long Strategies for Both You and Your Child. Bonnie tells the story of her young son being misdiagnosed and she and her husband being told to start saving because her son would need to live in a…
I could tell that this teacher was a good one. She had a real heart for her struggling students and provided accommodations and supports to help them be more successful in her classroom. But she wasn’t talking about her students. She was talking about her daughter. When it came to her daughter – smart, social, and probably dyslexic – she felt like she knew nothing. Because in spite of her best efforts, her daughter was still struggling in school, and at 12, really didn’t want her mom’s help. So many parents of struggling students feel alone and confused. They feel…
We were working on reading in phrases and she was going along well, when her face started to crumple, her eyes filled with tears, and she began breathing very quick, shallow breaths. The stress reaction was becoming full-blown very quickly. Just as quickly, when distracted from the task, 10-year-old Serena recovered and became her friendly, precocious self, able to briefly continue the task. This pattern repeated itself on most tasks involving reading or spelling. So what happened? Was Serena putting on an act to get out of work? Well, yes and no. Serena was defaulting to an old coping strategy…
REAL Changes for Struggling Students Have you ever fallen short on a New Year’s resolution? Yep! I know I have. New Year’s resolutions usually fall by the wayside because we don’t have a strong enough reason to make the change, or we don’t have a plan to get us through the tough parts of creating a new habit. Our students with learning and attention challenges have a very strong reason to make a change. They are smart, but struggling – working harder and longer than their peers day after day. It affects how they feel about themselves; it may affect…