Homeschooling 7yr old w/ADHD, Mulitple Developmental Delays

Please send me an email at [email protected] and I’ll send you my tutoring notes with the next batch (sorry to others for the long delay, system is being fixed.)

If any of the OT issues are in the area of visual-motor integration, I would get a developmental vision evaluation. Problems with visual efficiency can usually be remediated with vision therapy, although some children then need cognitive skills training in order to fully develop lagging visual processing, sequencing, etc. skills.

Unremediated sensory-level deficits (vision lags, auditory lags, vestibular system development lags) can interfere greatly with academic learning. If there is some way you can identify and remediate underlying sensory deficits first, and then do cognitive skills training, you will find that academic remediation goes much faster and easier.

One of the advantages of homeschooling is that you have the time to work on reducing underlying deficits first. Schools can’t do this, and end up wasting a lot of the child’s time trying to teach academics that don’t “stick”.

Nancy

There is some visual difficulty. We had a complete psych eval with hearing test and OT testing. When they did the OT testing, they said he doesn’t see things the way he should. They did one test where he was to look at the picture of a shape and then draw the shape as closely to the picture as possible. He got the circle although it was much smaller when he drew it. He drew a perfect square under the triangle and was bragging on how well he did. He didn’t have a clue that he had drawn the wrong shape. For the rest of the shapes on the test he just drew squiggles like he didn’t have a clue, but again he thought he was doing it right.

They say that the fact that he doesn’t realize he is behind his peers is a good thing. I think it has to be explained to him that he is doing things differently so he will understand why he will be working so hard on correcting the problem. I’m just really not sure how to approach telling him because he is seven but he functions on a five year old level. Any ideas?

Given what he did with the shapes, I would definitely get him in for a developmental vision evaluation. Is he astigmatic, by any chance? Astigmatism can cause a person to see a straight line as a squiggle. Also, a shape can look entirely different to an astigmatic depending on the angle at which it is viewed. Even if he doesn’t have astigmatism, visual efficiency problems can cause similar visual perceptual distortions.

I would go to http://www.covd.org and email or call all of the developmental optometrists in your area. Look for one who is willing to design a primarily home-based program of vision therapy, to keep costs down. Or go to http://www.homevisiontherapy.com to find an optometrist who offers VT software. Costs for pre- and post-testing, and the software, usuallly are less than $300.

In my opinion, you don’t need to tell a 7yo he is behind his peers. Children develop on different time scales anyway.

Nancy

As a matter of fact, he does have astigmatism in both eyes. He has been wearing glasses since he was 2 years old. He had his glasses on the day of the testing, but at his yearly eye exam about a month later we found out that his prescription had changed again. We are currently waiting for his new glasses to get here. He has Alabama Medicaid and they are backlogged on making glasses.

Thank you so much! I never would have drawn the correlation between his astigmatic eyesight and his misforming shapes when trying to reproduce them. I will have him retested when his new glasses arrive. And I will be checking out the sites you’ve recommended.

For shapes, what I would do is get him a geoboard and rubber bands (or just make a board yourself with nail heads). Instead of having him visually copy a square, I’d have him form the square on the geoboard with rubber bands. Then give him paper with dots on it, and have him draw the square by connecting dots. That way he is getting the concept.

I believe Jerome Rosner’s books have that kind of exercise in them.

This won’t help the visual perceptual problems, of course, but it’s a way of getting around them in order to work with basic shapes and figures.

http://www.criticalthinking.com has two workbooks on visual perception. These would probably be helpful, although he may be a bit on the young side for the first one in the series. Again, this wouldn’t help any underlying visual efficiency problems, but might help to work around them.

Astigmatism itself can be responsible for problems with visual efficiency. This is because the shape of the eyeball is distorted from round, requiring the muscles to work harder in order to achieve convergence and focus. If it’s too difficult, the muscles just won’t do it and so never get the chance to develop — so the eyes never learn to work together completely, and/or change focus too slowly. The exercises involved with vision therapy work those muscles so they finally start to develop. Once they are developed, it’s often a good idea to follow up with a program such as Audiblox (http://www.audiblox2000.com ). Audiblox exercises work on developing the next phase of skills — things such as visual attention to detail, pattern recognition, visual sequencing, etc. — which are essential to learning academics easily.

Nancy

Thanks for the info Nancy. I have severely astgmatic eyes myself and they were worse than his are currently when I was his age. And I didn’t get my glasses til I was 15 so I’m thinking that the astigmatism may not be the only problem with his eyes. I will be making a board with the nails and I already have a pack of rubber bands to use, once again I just hadn’t thought of it (thank you).

We have been accepted by our cover school of choice. The only requirement they make is that attendance records be turned in twice a year. That is all Alabama state law requires of them. They will keep any other records sent by parents on file as well.

I need more advice if no one minds. Just exactly what records should I be keeping just to cover my butt? I have been doing testing in basic areas to see where we need to start and I am of course keeping a copy of those. I did a sort of activity log on that day with the time we started, the activity we did, and a reference to the title of the test done. Should I do this for every day?

Thanks again.

Does anyone know anything about the Oak Meadow curriculum? It sounds like a good one to use with Daniel because it doesn’t seem to put so much pressure on the little guys and seems to let them work at their own pace. But it seems a bit expensive and I dont’ want to spend that kind of money without knowing a little real life experience with it if I can find it.

Oak Meadow uses a lot of Waldorf approaches. Especially in the early years, it can be a very gentle and encouraging approach to academics. However, I know from experience that traditional Waldorf is very weak in reading and math in the early years. My bet is that Oak Meadow reading and math will not work well with an LD child.

What I would recommend for reading instruction is the book “Reading Reflex” by McGuiness. Your library may have it, although you would have to purchase a copy (under $20 at most bookstores) in order to use the manipulatives.

For math, I would recommend RightStart. RS provides daily lesson plans and offers *fun* games and activities that most children really enjoy. Website is http://www.alabacus.com

For handwriting I would recommend Handwriting Without Tears, which was developed by an occupational therapist and is used by many OTs. Website is http://www.hwtears.com . Instead of buying the very expensive wooden letters, parents often purchase inexpensive compressed sponges and create their own letters that way.

If you can purchase Oak Meadow without the math, reading instruction, and handwriting instruction components, it would probably be worth the money. If you have to buy the entire package, it’s probably not worth the money.

If you decide not to go with Oak Meadow, there are many other homeschooling resources. Try the bulletin boards at http://www.welltrainedmind.com or http://www.vegsource.com/homeschool/

Nancy

Thanks again Nancy. You always come through, don’t you :) I will be checking out the resources and sites you have suggested.

For math you might want to look at Singapore Math.
Handwriting without Tears is a very good program.

God Bless