Why we do this

What Happy news for your son. And hooray to a terrific mom for her perserverance! I have a question though. What did you do about DS’s add. Did you work around it or use medication? I suspect my son may have innatentive add and I am trying to work with him this summer. But he really resists me. Just wondering. Thanks…. FM

Flynn’s Mom,

We did put him on medication for ADD, but only when things got very desperate in fourth grade when he said he thought it would be better to kill himself than to have to keep doing homework—he pulled out a letter opener as he said this. (Needless to day, this made the choice to use medication very easy.) Even then, managing the meds was quite difficult—he stayed up late and the school was not prepared to give him a dose at midday. We switched from Adderall at one point to Concerta and I am not sure how we lived through that, the side effects were so bad. He now takes Strattera, and we are very pleased with the lack fo side effects and improved sleep and appetite.

It is often hard to get your child to work with you, especially during summer when he thinks he shouldn’t have to do anything remotely resembling school. I have become a believer (despite the way I was raised) that bribery is very helpful in getting a child to do this kind of work for his or her parent. I bought things he wanted (mostly Eyewitness books—he now has a vast collection), scanned them and printed a picture that I cut up into puzzle pieces. I gave him a piece every time he completed a required bit of work. He got the book when the puzzle was complete. (Naturally, this is a lot more work than just giving points, but he didn’t respond to abstract points. Few things about these kids are easy.) Now that he’s nearly 13 he really doesn’t want to work with me, so I am trying Read Naturally, a computer program he can for the most part do on his own.

What a confirmation of all your hard work!! I am very encouraged to hear how things have come together for him. One of my son’s audiologist told me that there is a burst of brain development in early teens—and that what you have at 13 is what you have as an adult. Another audiologist told me that she thought some LD kids were just on a slower track—and this burst could occur much later.

My son today asked me if I really wanted to do this (work with him). I said “well, maybe I would rather be at the beach.” He said, “let’s go then!” But we didn’t.

I am bribing my son with bagel bites. He had them at a sleep over but mom said “too expensive.” He gets four if he cooperates and does not whine. My younger one gets three if he doesn’t bug us and does Handwriting without Tears without whining !!

And he is getting some Lego toy at the end of the summer. He wants to go shopping so it is in the closet.

I find bribery is most necessary in the summer—the rest of the year, when he actually has less time—he is a pretty good sport.

Beth

Thanks Moms for the input. I was feeling very anxious and guilty about bribery. You guys have given me some terrific ideas for new ways to bribe! It’s also nice to know that my DS is not the only one whining, and complaining about having to do extra work. I was worrying that I was going to damage our relationship. He seems not to hold a grudge, and once we get through the work he’s fine. Another thing, I was concerned about was that maybe all this grief over handwriting/spelling practice was some sort of symptom of innattentive ADD. I’m still trying to sort stuff out. Thanks for “listening”. FM

Marie,

good job! Makes you want to look up some people who told you to lower your expectations doesn’t it? :lol:

Socks,
No kidding. He received one particularly pessimistic dx at the end of second grade. The whole summer I would wake up at two or three o’clock every morning and ruminate the rest of the night out on my porch about how I could have missed signs in his earlier eight years that he was so obviously a basket case. (This stopped at the end of summer when his neurological disorder was finally pinpointed and dxed, giving me hope that something could be done.)

About bribery—we started this when he began cognitive behavior therapy—this is so awful for the kids (and the mothers who have to administer it) that bribery (known as rewards for not engaging in undesired responses to exposures) is the medical standard. (Bribery as the medical standard of care—something to think about!)

Interestingly, last year ds told me he no longer wanted to receive rewards, but rather wanted to do things on his own for himself. I had to really work hard to convince dh this was okay, even if some of his grades fell. Some of them did, but he really worked superhard in science to get an A he could call entirely his own and succeeded. I think his performance in this subject has been a major confidence builder.

There comes a time when you just have to let them see for themselves if they can sink or float on their own.

I think it is monumental that your son wanted to do things for himself. My son does things because I either make him or reward him!!!! I keep telling myself if he doesn’t have the skills he won’t ever want to do things….and your story reinforces my sense of how to do things.

Beth

Now, if someone would only provide ME with a nice bribe, for sitting there trying to “help” a resistant Kiddle! (How ‘bout a week in the Caribbean!)

Hi,
My son is 6 and we just got the report back from the Neuro Psyc. Boy the words on those pages are so powerful but I know that my son is a very bright child. He was dx with receptive/expressive language disorder, phonological disorder and learning disorder Not otherwise specified. He has avery low working memory. They are saying that his results are similar to a child that has brain trauma/injury. He also has been recieving speech therapy for 3 yrs for apraxia. i’m wondering if he has auditory processing disorder. They all have a lot of similarites.

I have started PG. I am considering Homeschool but feel that he needs all the verbal input he can get. I have found a parochial school that has a very experienced resource teacher. She will only have 11-13 kids a day. And in his K class around 12 kids. He will go to resource for academics and return to K for everything else. I’m so torn on what to do.

What types of curriculum worked for your son? Do you have any tips for me that may make this journey a little easier and effective?

Also his non-verbal IQ (95) came back average. but the Stanford-Binet score was 69. His lowest was for Short Term Memory it was 52 which is in the 1st percentile ranking.

I know I probably gave you way more info than you wanted to know but I’m still kinda shell shocked at the moment. :shock:

Thanks
Diane

First, don’t flip out over the neuropsych’s report. I lost a summer of sleep over my ds’s and it wasn’t worth it. Many of them believe that what they have tested is what you have. But the fact is that kids with language LDs do very poorly on IQ tests (including often the performance subtests) until their problems are remediated. Back in those days, I found posts by someone who pops in here from time to time, Shirin, the only thing that gave me the slightest shred of hope. She told her own story of being tested as educably mentally retarded at around six, to an IQ of around 150 in adult hood. IQ is not immutable, particularly for language LD kids but you need to work on the language problems to get improvement.

My ds was 8 when he got his discourging dx, and I declared war. With no leads or help from the neuropsych, I got my son tested for CAPD and enrolled him in a summer FFW program (the neuropsych pooh-poohed it). If he had been younger and I had known what I know now, I would have taken a different tack as around 8 is a good age for FFW. In your spot this is what I’d try—see if the parochial school would take him for half the day and spend the other half remediating him at home. (Parochial school can be good places for kids with problems that are helped by plenty of structure and predictability. Also, they are less infected with whole language than the public schools.) Get your son tested for CAPD.

For home remediation, I’d look seriously at audiblox (you need to devote at least an hour a day), The Listening Program (about 15 minutes), and Earobics (I personally don’t see how a child his age could do much more than 20 minutes of this a day unless he’s terribly infatuated with computers in general). I’d also play a lot of games with him. A very good one for young kids with language problems is Mystery Garden—as he gets a little older you can try Blurt Jr. and Tribond kids. Also for memory try some matching games—there are many kinds of these and it would be easier if they are based on a subject he likes. We have one where you match different kinds of dinosaurs, for example. I also really like Set, which is great for visual discrimination, but could also help short-term memory.

Don’t forget the usual puzzles, mazes, dot-to-dot things, as well as simple card games (even Go Fish helps with memory). Simon Says and Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, as well as rhyming games you make up are great for language. Even Snakes and Ladders and Hi Ho the Cherry-O if you can stand them have value at his age. (Get his father to play some of these things with him.) Check out linguisystems for other language game ideas. I’d try to get him listening to books on tape as often as possible—while playing legos or drawing or whatever quiet activity he enjoys doing. (And of course, read to him every night.)

I’d probably do this for a number of months before starting more formal reading work. I’d gradually introduce Reading Reflex to get him ready for first grade. (I didn’t use this—my ds was blessed in parochial school with a first grade teacher who had a 40 year track record of teaching all her kids to read, so we didn’t have the decoding problems I’m sure we would have had otherwise.) And I’d start Saxon Math first grade—the teacher’s manual has an uncanny knack for pinpointing math language problems and giving practical, multisensory techniques for getting the kids to understand the terms you need for math.

We also did language therapy privately for 2 hours a week for couple of years and in general found it very helpful. But we saw much greater progress with FFW. Definitely do it, but wait a while. Other things you might consider down the road: IM and PACE. Finally, if you happen to be in an area that offers it, think about Neuronet (Beth from FL is the resident expert on this) as your starting point.

One final suggestion—there are people on this board who could give you lots of insights on your ds’s scores. This Board’s format has changed recently, and a lot of the frequent visitors haven’t got the hang of it. Start a new thread entitled “Need Score Help” and post all his scores (including subtests). Give the standard scores (SS) and the percentiles if possible.

This is all overwhelming at first—particularly when the neuropsych says things like the child tests like he was brain damaged. Ours used the expression “It’s like he has holes in his brain.” Don’t despair—there are many things out there. Go at them one by one—give each a fair chance, but if something isn’t working move on. Keep checking on the web for things others are using that seem to be working and those that aren’t. Stay alert for other possible problems that may need to be addressed, like vision problems or attention deficit. Another forum that is very good that you should check out is vegsource.com. Go the to the Homeschooling Boards and check out especially the one entitled Special Needs. Good luck.

About bribery;

How old is your son,Marie? Mine now want to do things for themselves,for the reward of grades,or the reinforcement of the teacher.(Anything for DR. Stark!:-) But it wasn’t until they were older that rewards could be extinguished. Flynn’s mom,it is interesting to me,but generally it doesn’t have to be much,it is basicly anything tangible that signifies,”good job,you succeeded at _________”. Pokemon cards worked when they were in early elementary school. The other thing we had to remember was their incredibly shorten attention span. Sometimes waiting until the very end of the homework session was too long for reinforcement. So we shortened it to every 5min when you focus on that we will give you xxxx. We had a kitchen timer and we would set it. Other times I had to just walk away,because it would drive me insane to sit and watch how long it would take them,because this is HOW slow they really were!In other words tried to not impose my desires, or my idea of speed,know what I mean? BUT when the time went off,they took a break,or got a reinforcement,or what ever was decided on. We also gave 5 min breaks as a reinformcement,so sometimes it doesn’t have to be tangible. it is more the idea of it ,rather then what it is.

You are right when you say it is a blessing is disguise that the school didn’t know much about LD. I have found the school’s knowledge in this area so behind the times that their “help” is more damaging than useful. I have had to ask them to just stop helping us.

I have the same situation. A very bright boy on the inside frustrated that he can’t always express that to the world.

Marie you a tribute to all moms. Who else but a mom would believe? That is what we do, believe.

You should post your message as a new post—this new format makes it difficult to have conversations about any thing but the intitial post.

Marie has given you tons of ideas. I just wanted to tell you my son was identified as speech impaired at age 3, and LD at age 7. I didn’t have the kind of evaluation you did at age 6. If I had, I am sure it would have been just as devastating. He has since been diagnosed with a long list of disorders—dyslexia, nonverbal learning disaiblity, SID, CAPD, and word retrieval. All have improved with therapy. I guess all I wanted to say is that a number of our kids have serious issues but have made a lot of progress with tons of involvement from mom.

My son is 10 now and doing amazingly well from where we started three years ago. I didn’t start working with my son until he had finished first grade. That is the advantage you have—two years ahead of my game. My son has asked me more than once why I didn’t start working with him in K.

Beth

Hi, FM,

I, too, applaud your efforts to help your son and his excellent achievement!

I juts wanted to add that I do not really feel that rewards or incentives for doing extra work are really bribes. These kids already work harder than most, and to ask them to do extra work deserves some incentive, in my opinion. If my employer asked me to work over the summer, I would expect to be paid. A pat on the back and the words, “good job”, are nice, but how many of us would work full-time for that! ;-)

Janis