Mel Levine Seminar Summary

THANK YOU Helen…I have not read his books — I have ‘skimmed’ one and read a couple of chapters but did not like his approach at the time (Educational Care) — however, based on your summary I should perhaps take another look…I still don’t see him as a ‘guru’ but we have more in common than I thought at the time.

I have one question, tho — what is ‘autoimmunization’ referring to?

Thanks for posting this!

It should be automatization; the spell checker changed it. Automatization is making recall automatic such as math facts.

I’ve been a fan of Mel Levine for years so it was great to hear him live.

Helen

If we could count on more parents to help with the hours of practice that are required to acquire automatization, then we could get so much more “from” these students. I often lament the number of hours I have to sit with a child and do certain things over and over again, just to get it automatic. I spend time with my upper graders working toward automaticity of decoding multi-syllable words. If I would send a list of 25 or so words per week home that include patterns I have taught and IF I could guarantee that my students would practice on these words nightly, then I could deal with teaching different concepts during my RSP time and test weekly for mastery. Instead, I must be the one, or my aide, to spend the time on the repetition, so I find it very difficult to “get to” all the areas I must get to to cover all IEP goals for my K-6 caseload. This is very typical in CA to have one RSP per elementary school. I could do so much more, but I can scarcely get most of the parents of my students to stand by and enforce 5 minutes per day of spelling homework.

I’m amazed that so many parents don’t work with their kids. But in defense of ‘some’ parents, let me share my story.

When my dd was in Child Find, the teacher put together a nice packet of ‘things’ to work on at home. I admit, I was one of those parents who didn’t do it. Here’s where the problem was. It was not mandatory - it was optional. It was not explained WHY and what results to expect. It was not intuitive to me and not laid out to where I could implement on my own. In otherwords, I had to be very creative and it just didn’t work for me. I’m way too tired after a full days work to come home and have to be creative to make up my own program.

If you are working on decoding multi-syllable words and working toward automaticity, the MTC program worksheets are awesome. Very mindless for parent to implement(my husband can even do it). In other words, if our resource teacher sent home something that said ‘try to practice these word patterns at home’- I may or may not be too excited about doing it, because I may or may not really know how to practice these at home and view it as optional, and how much work would I have to make up on my own?( Most parents don’t even know what it means to ‘decode’ a word.) But if she gave me some training (like they did with MTC) and sent a word pattern list home at beginning of week, with a guide that made it mindless for me and with mandatory instructions to do x number hours and had a progress report to turn in.. I would have no problem doing it- esp if it was explained to me the type of progress to expect from doing it.

I actually have his book, “A Mind at a Time” right here in my growing stack of things to read.

I am facinated by the idea that he thinks APD and language pd’s are the same thing and that APD doesn’t exist. I am pretty involved in the APD world, so it surprises me to hear him say that. But I can see it to a certain extent. My child’s memory and integration issues carry over to areas besides just the auditory, so perhaps it is just cognitive but shows up in auditory testing. There is so much yet to be learned about the brain.

Janis

Anitya,
You sound like a wonderful teacher! I WISH my son’s reading intervention teacher would send home a list or something for me to help him at home because I’m left creating these things on my own (which is probably okay because his reading intervention teacher doesn’t even know what Ortin Gillingham is!!! And the material she uses is something I’ve never heard of — not specifically for LD kids). I’m in So. Cal. and the schools here only have one RSP teacher.

As I said, I’d be thrilled to have a reading teacher send me extra stuff once a week to help with developing automaticity.

Have you tried getting parents to help? Maybe start out with a short list and a recommended practice time (like 10 minutes a day) and see how it goes. You might not be able to get every parent to help, but there might be at least one thrilled to have some direction.

My son’s integration issues also are much broader than auditory. It affects the whole way he processes information. He is able to do things for awhile but then the effort to hold it together wears him out. In some ways, CAPD does not capture the broad nature of this disability. It seems to me though that a language LD does not either.

One audiologist told me she thought my son had a general information processing problem rather than an auditory processing problem. Therapy has really helped but I suspect there will always residual effects.

I also have noticed in reading the CAPD boards that many of these kids seem to have other disorders as well. Makes you wonder how often CAPD exist by itself.

Beth

You know, I was thinking that Anna was one of those pure APD kids, but I’m really not sure about that since memory is probably always more than just auditory when words are involved. You know, they often say that APD kids do okay with music. That would tend to support the language processing theory, I think. In addition, those APD tests used words. So how CAN you separate language from auditory processing? Just thinking out loud, really.

Beth, I’d appreciate it if you’d look at my post under teaching reading as you are familiar with some of the things I mention.(I remember what you told me about Audiblox). Thanks.

Janis

Anitya,

As a suggestion you could do a night-time training(I know more time from family for all} and show the parents how through modeling they could help their child do the exercises with their child.

Being in an upper income area our elem. RSP had parents who came in and worked with children one-on-one. I did it once a week but I didn’t want to work with my own child.

Helen

Anitya,

I had the opposite problem- my son had a resource teacher that did not give us anything to work on at home, hence I created the speed drills et.c. to keep him going. I also requested to get decodable readers that we read every night.

But I totally agree that for a child like my son, the amount of time that is needed for repetition to get things automatic cannot really be granted at school.

However, in my experience it works better if the parental involvement needs to be assigned by a teacher. For my son any reading activity was so hard, that unless it was coming from school he really resisted doing it; when it comes as a homework, not general assignment read 20 min. each eve., but specific- read 3 times this page of words, he does it without much fuss.

Many of these kids struggle in school so much, the LAST thing they want to do at home is any more schoolwork. There is anger and resentment just waiting to be spilled at SOMEONE

Yes, I understand that no kid enjoys homework but, trust me, I have two non-LD sons who display typical minor homework apathy. The LD boy’s resistance is of a different type and magnitude. As parents we sometimes feel we are sacrificing our relationship with our kids for a spelling list!!!!!

Like the above poster, my 5th grader responds better to a specific assignment -those ‘read 20 min’ every night just dont get done because WE have to intervene too much-time the 20 minutes, help them choose reading material-we become the focal point of their resentment and the family as a whole suffers. But my son will do worksheets or reports without even a reminder!

I agree, we need structured programs that require that the parent and teacher work together at very specific goals with with a specific set of instructions.

I would love to see schools implement a program that requires the parent sign on and that the teachers and parents truely work as a team sharing feedback and helping each other gain understanding of the child’s needs with both the parent and teacher seen as equally important contributors.

Some parents really don’t have a clue what it takes to remediate a child. They just don’t see it as their job.

As I stated, we have extreme difficulty with a large number of parents just getting short and simple (I can vouch for that) homework assignments done. Many of our parents in this neighborhood don’t do the minumum and years of nagging doesn’t make it change. We just give up and do the best we can with what we have. Yes, a few parents do help.

It is not lack of knowledge, it is lack of willingness. When they don’t even sit and administer a practice spelling test of 10-12 words on Thursday night, etc. this issue is NOT whether or not they understand, it is their parenting skills that are not what they should be. They don’t come to parent meetings, either. On back to school night and open house they don’t even bother to come see RSP.

I don’t know if this helps, but my son’s vision therapist who does balancing, sequencing and alot of OT type exercises says that she sees some kids who have speech problems improve with this type of therapy.

My son has language difficulties. The vision therapist we’ll be starting with in two weeks does similar “OT-like” VT. It will be interesting to see if this helps with his langauage, visual processing and reading.

Laura,

My older son does not have language difficulties but my 4 year old is very quiet and sometimes I wonder about him.

He takes gymnastics and I think it is so funny that after gymnastics he is talking up a storm. My friend noticed this as well because she often drives him home. She said, “He just won’t stop talking the whole way home.”

Makes me wonder about SID—do you have the book The Out of Sync Child? I recall something similar being recalled in there.

Beth

I have that book somewhere! I don’t recall. I honestly just wonder if it has to do with automaticity of underlying sensory and cognitive functions. Speech is a fairly complex activity requiring multiple areas of the brain to work together. Mouth muscles, sequencing, auditory functions, etc. So yes, it makes sense that if you addressed sensory integration you could help speech.

A little off topic but when I worked with spinal chord patients I can remember one guy who had damage at a very high level on his spinal chord. It was a miracle that he was alive. His breathing was affected. He could breathe but he had to think about it. It was not automatic. He was on a respirator most of the day but he was taken off for about an hour a day so that he could breathe on his own. It was exhausting for him but he built up his ability and it became slightly more automatic as he practiced breathing on his own. He could do it for longer periods of time and he eventually just had the respirator at night. Imagine having such a simple activity not be automatic. I think that is kind of what is like for people with LD. Simple things we take for granted are just not automatic and they need to be taught and made automatic.

Anitya,

I spend a great deal of time helping my son and checking homework, gathering some interesting stuff for him to use in reports, he must do the report, but I will try and provide materials of interest.

I have also had him tutored for the previous two years and it was expensive. I don’t mind doing everything possible for my son. O.K. I am fortunate I have a great husband, both of us have good educations and our family is moderate income.

Not all families are like ours I know many people who work two jobs. There are many single parents who have several kids and other problems. Maybe they just don’t have extra time or for that matter the education themselves to help.

Yup, this is the case in my area — 10% of kids in school from ‘middle class’ homes right around school, and 90% bussed from lower-income apartments near the shopping area in our town — many ESL, ESD and ‘economically disadvantaged’. To give the parents their due, many are working nights and just scraping by as it is, no time to worry about school when you are trying to get established and bosses DON’T wanna know you need a night off to go to the school…plus how do you make do without the cash?

Unfortunately, the teachers are so socialized to be ignored that they commonly take me as a PAIN and think I’m criticizing when I ask for explanations or assistance ensuring son brings home unfinished work, etc…sigh…and up here in Canada, we ‘got no FAPE’! so we get what they give us…

In the end, Anitya is RIGHT — nothing will change, except that good teachers such as herself would become more demoralized and have less to give to their students.

YES…if it is written in his planner, I get little hassle. If it is MY idea, I must threaten to cut off the cable! But teacher this year will not help out in this…and she doesn’t ‘believe in planners’! (how she got thru Uni or does her job, I don’t know!)

Anitya,

I think we just need to accept that there is certain % of parents that for various reasons will not participate, but just do not give up on the rest.

As a parent, I would just like to be sure that the teachers are at least trying to reach to the rest of parents- those who would like to give a hand to help a child remediated- and for these parents having well design HWs is of great help.

>those ‘read 20 min’ every night just dont get done

I’m always amused when homework includes “read 20 min.”. My oldest kids who loved to read would have read every day whether it was part of homework or not. My youngest is so exhausted after the math, social science, and spelling that there is no way he can read too.

As for parents who don’t help their kids, it’s good to hear about, so we know what resource teachers have to deal with, but I have the feeling it doesn’t apply to anyone who frequents this board!

One night after I helped him understand his math homework my son muttered, “What would I do without you?”

Sounds exactly like Out of Sync Child. My daughter’s the opposite though, give her a lot of motor planning problems (challenges in OT) and she almost stops talking.

Oh God, I so understand this. My daughter resents anything that has to do with work, reading that comes from me. I try to get her to read 20 minutes everyday but after power studying for a test, she just does not want to do it.
It’s so frustrating for my husband and I as it is for her. I try to work with her teacher who’s response or resolve for this, is to give her more time to accomplish projects. That’s all fine with more time but what happens to our time with our daughter especially during the weekend? We get caught up in scheduling her time to do school work and to read. How frustrating this is for us. I know there are many parents that don’t get involved but those of us that do, need more help. My husband and I really don’t know what to say or how to make things easier for her. Some of us need guidance on what to read or how to get these reports done. I want to help but I don’t know what to do. I know this is rambling but I am having a very hard day today and just needed to vent. My daughter has three homeworks to finish and a Social Studies project. All is due on Monday and to top that off, my daughter feels stressed about the ELS exams next week.

My son used to be like that too. Too many things to integrate at once. Logically, that makes a lot of sense to me. Harder for me to intuitively understand how moving around gets one talking, but seems to be the opposite side of the coin.

Beth

I don’t know why it is my son never quite fits the mold, but when I think his SID was at its worst, his speech was actually very good (at least for his age). We used to think he wasn’t moving because he was “absorbing sound.”

When my son was 9 months old he could barely roll over (my husband had to teach him how to do this! About all he could do was lift his head). But he started speaking at 6 months old (I remember him saying things like “cheese”) and he had a huge vocabularly by 12 months. He was receiving services from a state funded child development center (mostly OT) and the speech pathologist needed to document his vocabularly. She stopped counting words after 100 words.

Over time his motor planning and proprioceptive skills improved, but it seemed like his speech didn’t follow the same linear path. In fact, this early ability “threw us off” in recognizing any type of language problem until he was much older.

Although, looking back I realize a lot of his early speech was “echoing” what he heard. Problems with sentence development, word retrieval and general language development were not noticable until 1st or 2nd grade. And by then his SI and motor planning were in a realtively “low normal” range (with only a couple of minor areas below normal..i.e. tactile defensiveness).

Your son certainly has his own brand of development!!

Yesterday I wanted my son to do Neuronet therapy with me. He told me he was too sleepy from watching TV and that he didn’t to go swing on the swing or ride his bike first. I let him.

Beth

Beth,
The thing I’ve learned is that sometimes problems and difficulties are not so obvious. Never assume and look at everything fully and throughly.

It’s a little upsetting to realize that something we thought was a “strength” was actually an area of difficulty…and that we didn’t realize this sooner.

Well, we didn’t have any areas of strengths but still I totally misjudged the severity of my son’s problems. In his case, it is deficits in multiple areas that are so devastating. I read the book a mother wrote of her journey through auditory processing difficulties. Her son, at age 3, was much more severe than my son. He couldln’t understand the simplest command and hardly spoke. .But at age 8, he had caught up—he was an average student. I cried and cried when I got to that part.

Because of his severity, he had got help earlier, which I think makes a difference. I also don’t think he had as many other issues as my son.

Beth

Was this “like sound through water”?(not quite sure about the title)…

I liked that book a lot - gave me some hope and also some peace fo mind that I was nto teh only mother who missed some signs in early childhood.

My son was not that bad either, but we ask his pediatrician for help since he hardly talked at the age of 3 and we were suspecting he might have a hearing loss. Little did I know at that time that was all language processing. I wish however the pediatrician had directed us to SLP. Well he did not and it took another few years before I learned about processing disorders…

Yes, the book is Like Sound Through Water by Karen Foli. Couldn’t remember the name yesterday—middle age seems to have made my own word retrieval problems worse!!!

I really liked the book but it also depressed me because, at the time I read it, my son was in third grade (when her son was caught up) and all sorts of new defieciencies were popping up right and left. It was a very difficult time for me because we had been working very hard with him for several years and we seemed to be going backwards rather than forward. In reality, school changes in third grade and some of my son’s deficits weren’t apparent until then.

Karen’s son got the CAPD diagnosis in K, my son was in first grade—and I think the year difference in intervention makes a difference. But I also think my son has more global learning disabilities—he has right brain deficits as well as language based disabilities.

Beth

Beth,
you are still at least threee years ahead of me and my son :-), but I can relate that I also had no idea how many problem areas my son has.

Karen Foli was supposed to be a speaker on some conference- IDA?, I cannot remember- I am curious to know how her son is doing now. As you said many times- even smaller deficits but in various areas are much harder to remediate, so if her son was just missing the auditory piece, once she worked on that he might have been ready to perform without much more problems.

My son is by all means “hands on” , nonverbal learner and I know that no matter how much would we remediate some of his deficits, he will not do well in regular school, in “learning from books”, language based approach.