Today my daughter who is in the 5th grade on an IEP came home in tears.She has Aud. processing and when she gets overwhelmed,an anxiety attack or focused on grades only will proceed to close down.She calls it blacking out or not able to process any information(new or old).She tried to explain this to her math teacher but the teacher walked away.A boy from the back yelled out..I get that too..He is also on an IEP.I will speak to the school but I am interested is this common among children with LD? Do they close down for a span of time? My daughter can bring herself back but it takes 5 to 25 minutes.
Re: overwhelmed
Sue,
You are such a wonderful teacher. I am forever amazed at the teachers that come to this board.
Just had to say that.
Linda
Re: overwhelmed
I would imagine that Sue’s response is the way to go first. If you’re still having trouble, consider this. Blackouts - even for a very short time - can be epileptic seizures. A neurologist can help you determine if that’s going on. If so, medication can help.
It’s not just an LD thing. Just about anybody who’s put in a highly stressful situation will either go on “hyper alert” — or be like a deer in the headlights, frozen. The thing is, it’s LD kids for whom school *puts* them in that stressful situation so much mroe often than a kid wtihout LDs. Every once in a while, though, you’ll get a kiddo being tested for LD when the issue is anxiety — she’s not learning because she’s too anxious… if she’s not anxious the “LD” disappears. (I have a niece like this - she gets accommodations like untimed tests in quiet settings, and teachers not putting her in stressful situations. She did the whole battery of tests for LDs. )
Sometimes this is really tough for teachers to comprehend (especially when the kid doesn’t look or act upset). It’s rather excellent that she knows when it’s happening — and knows that she’ll come back from it. I reckon the next step is to figure out how to tell it’s coming… and then what to do about it (which of course would depend on some of the outside forces causing the stress). It’s probably most common in Math — LD or no LD. I’ve seen it with the college students I work wtih — at a certain point all those symbols are just heiroglyphics, totally meaningless. At that point it’s time to STOP. Sometimes it takes real creativity for me to sneak around the anxiety-producer (because if the “math anxiety” is bad, then basically seeing a bunch of equations will trigger it) and sneak up on the math concepts and then go back and show that “do you realize, you’ve been doing MATH?”