Need help deciding on approach

If he’s already 11 and if he has the conceptual ability to deal with fractions, I’d do a quick five minutes on facts (and tell him you’ll keep it strictly to five minutes, if he will cooperate and really work for that short time) and then maybe fifteen minutes on the fractions. Better a short burst of real attention once a day than a long fight and/or itrregular practice.

It should have occurred to me to just do both and keep it short. It’s not that the two approaches are mutually exclusive though I got thinking they were. Thanks. I am so overwhelmed with work and with trying to cover all bases with my son I have trouble seeing the forest for the trees, when it comes to my own forest at least. (I’m fine with other people’s!)

That’s the trouble with cookbook approaches like PACE; you can start to feel married to them, ignore intuition and the big picture.

Jan,

Is he stuck not knowing his addition and subtraction facts as well as he should?

One thing that helped my son was Quarter Math. It is set up as a racing game where you race against yourself. So you try to beat your own best time. If your son knows most of his facts but not as automatically as he should, it might be a really good way to build some automaticity in a way that doesn’t involve you. You can set the races to deal with which ever facts you want.

Now it isn’t good if he doesn’t know most of them…then you need something like what Victoria is talking about.

I got my son to learn multiplication by bouncing on a ball and doing skip counting first. I found the ball was a really nice addition—better than a trampoline so you might consider that too.

BTW, we got limited benefits from PACE too. It just seemed to require neurological organization that my son did not have. Also, there are NN exercises that focus on math. I credit NN for getting my son out of resource room for math so hang in there.

Beth

Beth,
I have quarter mile for addition and subtraction and had forgotten about it, mostly because initially my son (a slow processor who hates timed activities) hated it. I think he knows enough facts now for it not to be quite so frustrating.

We will try my exercise ball (hope it can take it) as you suggest. The trampoline requires too much multitasking.

Thanks for the encouraging words re NN; my instinct is to stay with this one. I am also thinking of TLP, which I know you’ve also tried, but don’t want to load too much on at once. I may be mixing NN up with something else —but does it not have a listening therapy component, one with a German name?

PACE may have value, but not tremendously for our guys, though our audiologist (very experienced in a # of pgms.) claims the 2 together do wonders for NLD. We started April 19 and have had some breaks (sports camp, my husband’s holidays, first week of school) but still and all he is only midway in most of the activities. We are both pretty much bored silly with it, even when we mix it up. Time to shelve it and move on.

Did you find NN improved working memory?

I am eager for the day when, like your son, mine tests out of spec. ed. math!

Jan

I like Quarter Mile Math software too, but since the timing aspect bothers your son, you may want to consider using a “Leitner box system”. This can be set up manually with a box of index cards and some dividers, or you can purchase software. Here are some websites with information on it:

http://www.flashcardexchange.com/leitner.php

http://www.supermemo.com/english/history.htm

http://www.memorylifter.com/index.html

http://www.paul-raedle.de/vtrain/sci.htm

Basically, this system allows known facts (such as the 1+) to be quickly relegated to infrequent review, while more difficult facts are reviewed more frequently. As facts are mastered, they come up less often for review.

I haven’t used this yet myself, but I saw a post from a parent who is using it successfully (manual system). I think I am going to purchase the SuperMemo software because it determines automatic review intervals.

Nancy

Nancy

Jan,

Neuronet has been the best thing we’ve done for working memory. PACE tries to work on it also but it wasn’t effective for my son. Now my son was young when we did it—7, which was a mistake. But even today I prefer NN. I am going to have him do a few more months of NN now in hopes of increasing his reading speed (slow but accurate after Seeing STars) and filling in some math gaps.

I have heard the improvements for nonverbal for PACE too but I think it depends on the kid. My son’s deficits really have been at the sensory motor level and that is where we have got the bang for the buck. I have used the visual thinking cards included with PACE and the SET game with my son since doing PACE though and I think they have helped, although only with the foundation NN laid.

My son was diagnosed with nonverbal learning disabilities by a neurologist but never received a NLD diagnosis. So I am sure the math road you have to travel is more difficult. But truly I think NN is your best chance of moving him out of special ed math. That happened pretty early on for us—after about six months of NN. But it still hasn’t been easy, especially since he has a reading disability which tends to capture most of my attention. But today he consistently receives Bs on his report card. I see gaps that worry me—he never really understood tenths, hundredths, and thousandths, for example, despite getting a B on the final test. So that is why we’re going to do some more NN. I can see this all coming to haunt him later.

You might try Quarter math for the easy ones and see if he can do it without undue frustration. Automaticity does help, if he can get there. If not, I’d try incorporating the ball into whatever you do. I bought a small tramp for PACE but he could never do his math facts fast enough to use it. The ball was much more successful.

We did do TLP as well as the German listening program that Neuronet uses. I am going to do the German listening program with my youngest starting next week and I am going to do it along with him.

Beth

Nancy,
thank you for the suggestion. I’ll check out the website.

Beth,
How does the German listening pgm. compare with the TLP?

I think the sensorimotor stuff is a key block for Pace too for my guy. For us math is a trickier challenge, but NLD means more than one area can haunt you—although my son enjoys reading, reads avidly for pleasure, doesn’t find it a chore, his fluency scores are on the low end of average. There are missing pieces, like the auditory processing one for ex. on the PG tests I just readministered. Memory for long-term phonological detail also cropped up on the last CTOPP. The NN RAN work hasn’t really changed the fluency score as I had thought; silent reading seems faster but I need to check. I am thinking of trying Read Naturally (or preferably something cheaper.)

On the up side, there are lots of positives, like great verbal reasoning, receptive vocabulary. Sometimes the task of keeping the weak areas up seems daunting though!

We’ll stick with NN and keep plugging away at those math facts.

Jan

Jan,

It is hard when you have weaknesses all over the place, as I know.

I think the German listening program targets lower frequencies more than TLP. It also is more efficient—like 5-7 minutes two times a day rather than 20 minutes twice a day for TLP.

My son could not do the PACE auditory processing exercises without extreme difficulty before we did TLP. We struggled and struggled and eventually gave up. I later did TLP and went back to the exercises. He could do in 5 minutes what had taken us days before. And before it really helped to stand on the balance board while doing the auditory processing exercises. After we did TLP, the balance board didn’t make a difference—obviously TLP had helped the vestibular system. We had done the German listening program already before doing PACE. So the programs aren’t really equivalent.

I certainly would give TLP a try, given what you describe. It also doesn’t require the same sort of compliance that doing exercises does!!

Beth

Dear Beth,
Do you mind my asking what the name of the German pgm. is? Is it a Tomatis offshoot? I gather it was not as effective for your older son; what issues does it seem to target?

I’m also curious how our AP progress compares. In five months we had just started #7 of 14 AP exercises. For VFN we only got as far as doing the far columns of numbers—never got to the addition part.

I’m annoyed with myself for persisting so long—there’s a feeling of failure that goes with having to abort a program, but if it is not working it can become counter-productive, even damaging. My son is aware of his slow progress in PACE, hardly a confidence booster. My intuition was telling me our audiologist was laying on too much, but I persisted, partly because our experience with IM suggested that hanging in might be a plan. (That took 42 mini sessions before the 15 session program, which he ultimately finished successfully. Having an end point in sight is a real motivator.)

How long were your NN breaks? We have been doing Jumping Jacks, ball toss, ball batting to various number sequences, twister board (good progress there, nearly done), stepping, RAN, and balance board toss (with counting by 2s, 3s, skip counting.) Does that sound reasonable? Or did you do more of fewer exercises to get such great gains?

At this point we need a break from everything for a week or two. I am feeling the need big-time—to the point where yesterday I looked up the number for the local Kumon Center (recommended in his last assessment, for math facts, but I know it does not get rave reviews on this board) and checked to see that the prescription for Adderall I got filled is where I thought it was.

We have a paediatrician appt. Tuesday, an Adderall followup, which I had planned to cancel; thinking that we would finish NN before considering it, I never put him on it. I may do a trial over the weekend, though of course this is something I am likely to flip flop on again. Everytime he complains that he “wishes he could concentrate” I reconsider.

I admire your tenacity and persistence in the many programs you’ve done. Over the weekend, I’m going to try to find mine again!

Thanks again for your help.

Jan,

I try to answer your questions below.

Dear Beth,
Do you mind my asking what the name of the German pgm. is? Is it a Tomatis offshoot? I gather it was not as effective for your older son; what issues does it seem to target?

I don’t know what it is called—will start it next week with younger son so can tell you then. I didn’t mean to imply that it wasn’t effective—it just seemed to help different things than TLP. It has been quite awhile but one thing I remember it doing was helping my son localize sound. In other words, he could tell where (what direction) sound was coming from. It also helped him distinguish between sounds.

I’m also curious how our AP progress compares. In five months we had just started #7 of 14 AP exercises. For VFN we only got as far as doing the far columns of numbers—never got to the addition part.

My son only completed two of the 7 AP exercises. We started on 7/6 and the last one he completed was 10/26.

MY son only did the inner columns with VFN but remember he was younger—he should have been able to do the AP exercises but not necessarily the addition part of VFN.

I’m annoyed with myself for persisting so long—there’s a feeling of failure that goes with having to abort a program, but if it is not working it can become counter-productive, even damaging. My son is aware of his slow progress in PACE, hardly a confidence booster. My intuition was telling me our audiologist was laying on too much, but I persisted, partly because our experience with IM suggested that hanging in might be a plan. (That took 42 mini sessions before the 15 session program, which he ultimately finished successfully. Having an end point in sight is a real motivator.)

We persisted too with PACE and I do think it was a mistake. He hit a wall very early and hardly made any progress after about six weeks. I too got that approach from doing another therapy program that way. We did FFW and it is supposed to take 6-8 weeks and we did it for four months with significant and lasting results. I am not sure that persisting works quite as well when it is a cognitive program. I think it was a mistake for us because it wore us out for nothing. I have thought of returning to the program after finishing up NN but still not sure I have the stomach for it!! That, I think, is too bad. If you aren’t making progress I would backtrack to more sensory motor based programs. I certainly would do TLP before doing more PACE. I really regret having not done it first. I heard good things later about that combination and even told the PACE trainers to tell people that.

How long were your NN breaks? We have been doing Jumping Jacks, ball toss, ball batting to various number sequences, twister board (good progress there, nearly done), stepping, RAN, and balance board toss (with counting by 2s, 3s, skip counting.) Does that sound reasonable? Or did you do more of fewer exercises to get such great gains?

We have taken a couple weeks off at some times, other times it was longer—maybe 6 weeks. We also took time off to do other therapy programs—the summer of PACE, TLP, IM, SS. The periods of time when we haven’t done something (not necessarily NN) have been pretty short to be honest. We took three months off this fall—he had made the basketball team at school and I started working with my youngest child. That is probably the longest period of time I haven’t done a program with him since I started working with him over 4 years ago. Boy that is a depressing thought!!!

On the number of exercises—That sounds like about the right number of exercises. Nancy Rowe now has a set of CDs that she is taking everyone through. Are you doing the program to a CD? If not, you might ask your provider about checking into the CDs that she is now training providers to use.

The advantage is I think it leaves less things unturned—less judgment. We did NN as she was developing the CDs and last year just focused on a few specific issues. There was benefit to doing that (e.g., fractions, writing) but I had begun to have second thoughts about the peice meal approach. Nancy did too and now we have put him on CD 5. There are 7 CDs in the program. There still are some motor issues that are unresolved for him, which is discouraging after all this time.
She has said for year that it is all motor for him.

At this point we need a break from everything for a week or two. I am feeling the need big-time—to the point where yesterday I looked up the number for the local Kumon Center (recommended in his last assessment, for math facts, but I know it does not get rave reviews on this board) and checked to see that the prescription for Adderall I got filled is where I thought it was.

I’d have a hard time believing that Kumon would work better than things you’ve already done. I don’t know about the Addernall.

If I was in your shoes, I’d do the TLP and then go back to NN. TLP will feel like a break but you are still doing something. You can try incorporating some PACE again, if NN is later moving along well. My own experience though has made me hesitant about using PACE along side NN. I would be more inclined to do NN completely before PACE. I think sensory based issues really make PaCE difficult to impossible to benefit from adequately. But your provider has obviously had a broader range of experiences than I with my own child.

I have a paediatrician appt. Tuesday, an Adderall followup, which I had planned to cancel; thinking that we would finish NN before considering it, I never put him on it. I may do a trial over the weekend, though of course this is something I am likely to flip flop on again. Everytime he complains that he “wishes he could concentrate” I reconsider.

I understand your reluctance with Addernall. I have considered it but like you always wanted to do one more thing before trying it. In the end, his attention issues have turned out to be mild and mostly it has been processing. Of course, it may be different with your son.

Hope this helps.

Beth

I admire your tenacity and persistence in the many programs you’ve done. Over the weekend, I’m going to try to find mine again!

Thanks, Beth.

I will ask my provider about the TLP CDs, which she is also a provider for. I hope she is not too married to the idea of the supposed synergy between NN and Pace—clearly it isn’t happening, but she too has noted the slow pace with progress and might be amenabe to a TLP break.

Ironically, there is a private school we checked out and rejected 4 yrs. ago with an eccentric guru psychologist leading it (now in her late 90s and going strong) which used Tomatis—which I checked out and discounted. (When I asked her about her knowledge of research results, she snootily said, “Well, I am a graduate of the Sorbonne!”) Basically I’m now, after doing the more research-based stuff like FFWD and IM, in a place where I am willing to go with the not-quite-so-well-proven, especially on the basis of your success with it. This aged psychologist (who, frankly, cheesed me off because she seemed to subscribe to the “blame the mother” Freudian approach, suggesting my son hadn’t had enough sensorimotor experiences in his baby and toddlerhood) prescribed a “physiotherapy” approach to math teaching. How right she has turned out to be on the physio approach, despite her other questionable prejudices.

You are right about Kumon not doing anything I wouldn’t. It’s just that I feel I can’t do math drill just now on top of TLP or NN or whatever we go to next. As Victoria says, it needs to be consistent.

In my other life, my principal surprised me by changing my timetable in July but neglected to inform me til the week before school, so I am scrambling all the time with prep for a course for senior university bound students that I have never taught before, the curriculum having changed again! (I am the old turnip on staff who can supposedly handle anything! As a senior turnip I also get asked to do workshops a lot, most of which I turn down.) I also have an interesting group of behavioural/dyslexic students to teach (we are doing PG, Rewards and comprehension strategies.) So although I am a part-timer I am not as part-time (and rested) as I would like.

The local Kumon is headed by a retired special ed. administrator for my district- a man I respect. It’s worth talking to him I think because he may have put his own spin on Kumon, which is supposed to start from where the child is at.

What I get from your CD description is that it makes the NN program more structured and systematic?

I have to think up a reward system because the main problem with NN now is that my son’s sleep schedule seems to have shifted to adolescent mode. Always an early riser he is now having trouble falling asleep before 10.00-11.00 pm, which means I have trouble getting him up earlier. Since he finds the am the best time for NN, this is a problem I will need to surmount. Any suggestions?

Thanks for your help.

Jan,

I too dismissed sound therapy early on because the research wasn’t there. We did FFW first, with much anguish, as it took far beyond what it should have timewise. Some had suggested even then that sound therapy would make it easier. It wasn’t until much later that I decided to try sound therapy, partly because our NN provider saw merit in them.

Dea, who posts on this board, has used Tomatis with great success but here child is pretty different from ours. She had severe APD but no motor involvement and no math type issues. Tomatis is also quite expensive.

The CDs with NN make the program more systematic so that it is easier to make sure all areas are covered.

I am not sure about when to do NN itime ssue. If your son is switching into late night, he may not be so great anymore in the morning anyway. Maybe you need to think about a different time of day regardless. He may think he is best in the morning but I suspect it isn’t true if he is staying up later.

Kumon is a solid program and as long as you understand that it works mostly through repetition you might see benefits from it, especially if you work on the underlying processing at the same time. I understand the weariness of trying to do it all, especially since we do try to at least occasionally have other lives!

Beth

Thanks Beth,
I’ve decided to scale back to NN and assess in a month about TLP, which may work for reasons other than the ones cited in the questionable research. Since it is apparently impossible to tell in advance who will be helped by it, we will try one of the Mozart Effect tapes first to see if my son at least finds it relaxing before shelling out the $ for the pgm.

We will do ball bouncing with various skip counts and scale back everything else math related for now. Kumon was a brief but bad idea. NN can take up to 2 years to have an impact, apparently. I think the math bit is just going to take longer for my son. Also I’m told, he may not tolerate the fast pace of the CD pgm. just now. And it deletes 2 activities (from the old pgm.) that he finds particularly enjoyable and relaxing. The CDs may work at a later point when he is ready.

This has been a lesson in not following externally/ artificially driven timetables!

As an NLDer myself, I know that while I mastered the times tables (by repetition, chanting, seeing visuals) after some difficulty, I did not learn to add until my 20s when, oddly, my brain went through some sort of final growth spurt or something and I could do it. I have added missing pieces since. Now it would have been nice to have had a short cut or two! But everyone’s timetable differs.

We are going to start Adderall for a trial tomorrow. I will let you know how it goes.

Jan—

All my tape (sound therapy) says is Lydterapi-Band 1. Band 1 is obviously the name of the specific Tape. Don’t know if that helps. I listened to it tonight—it is strange. Both my son and I are going to listen to it twice a day for three weeks (it is only 5 minutes). I will let you know if I see any changes.

Tonight my older son brought home his usual Friday folder. He had a 40 on a multiplication (three digit) quiz and a 90 on the final test. It came out that he took his time on the test (and it had fewer calculations on it—more things like properties of multiplication) but on the quiz he hurried because he didn’t want to be the last one done. I told him that my best students tend to either be very fast or slow and deliberate. He told me that’s not how it is in fifth grade—only stupid people are slow.

So the child has come amazingly far—he can do grade level math—even if he is on the slow end of things with calculations. I am very grateful for that. But kids always want to fit in…and he sabatoges himself in the process.

Beth

Beth,
I too am struggling with this getting-ready-for-adolescence phenomenon—increased focus on peers and being cool, feeling that too much emphasis on school is nerdy, being less concerned than he was about his performance. My son hates that he is exempted from the grade 6 math part of the provincial testing, wants to do it to fit in. (We bought the teacher prep. for it today because he wants to know what’s on it. More about that below.)

Organizationally too he’s less committed. (forgets books at school, or does homework then forgets to pack it or forgets to record test announcements & dates in his agenda book). He says it’s the fact that he loved his last year’s teacher, who shared his quirky sense of humour and this year’s teacher is merely ok by him.

(I just wish she’d give more than 2-4 days’ notice for major tests that count big towards the report card marks—an issue I intend to raise with her at parent-teacher night as it’s not fair for any student let alone one with LDs.)

Topics on the gr. 6 testing include a lot of applied problems using basic operations but also topics I know he can’t do, like calculating percent, finding equivalent fractions, changing improper fractions to proper ones, multiplying whole numbers by fractions, doing basic algebra, finding mean, average and mode, finding square roots, calculating perimeter, volume and area for various geometric shapes , problems in expanded notation and metric conversions as well as problems involving probability and ratios. One geometry problem gives measurements for a square that is within another (shaded) square for which measurements are provided. The task is to calulate the area of the shaded portion.

In his spec. ed class he is doing the grade level math from a few years back, before the curriculum change here. I am wondering, would these topics be grade level topics for grade six in Florida?

The irony is a high school math teacher I work with says all he really cares about kids knowing before they get to him are the basic operations, problem-solving with those basic operations, and fractions. He says he’d take it quickly from there. I wonder if in this part of N. America we are teaching kids to fly before they can really walk!

Well, I have my old texts that my school used to teach us back in the dark ages, and all the topics you listed are indeed in Grade 6 *except* square roots, probability, ratios, median and mode (note — mean and average are the same thing; usually we speak of mean, median, and mode).

The big question is always at what level of difficulty these things are presented and tested.
For example basic algebra, well solving n + 11 = 19 or 6n = 24 by inspection is quite reasonable for Grade 6; solving multi-step equations would be awfully advanced. In statistics, finding the mean (average) and median (middle value) of a list of data would be reasonable; extensive graphing or formulas would be too much.

There is also the huge question of what weight is put on each topic. As your high school teacher points out, it is most important that the students can deal effectively with fractions, and then the later teachers can easily teach equations with fractions and square roots which come out as infinite decimals and so on; but if the students leave Grade 6 with a superficial skill in each of the ten or twenty topics, the high school teachers have to do a lot of unteaching of misunderstandings and re-teaching of basic skills that got skimmed over. So there should be a big weight of time and effort on the fraction work, and a lot on applications like measurement and area and volume; then later the other stuff can be gone into in more depth.

Hello Victoria,

I guess the algebra is fairly basic. Some examples: z + z - 9 = 5 and
What is the value of x in the following equation: x/3 + x/3 = 1 1/3.

I’m sure this is reasonable stuff for gr. 6. I like the heavy emphasis on active problem solving/application. I guess I am reacting to the sheer seeming impossibility of my son’s ever getting caught up in math!

PS- I knew mean and average are the same—was just rapidly going through the teacher book and listing topics—in a rush as usual.

Jan,

Yes, it is hard when they start caring more about what other people think than about what is right for them. I think LD children may be even more like that than the average bear because they have never quite fit the mold.

On the math, I agree with Victoria on what would be considered 6th grade math. But the algebra problems you gave are way too hard I think for 6th grade. My daughter is in a regular (not honors) algebra class in ninth grade and those problems are about what she did during the first marking period. They really require understanding algebra equations as opposed to being able to solve them in your head.

My kids are in a parochial school where there is less given to the trend of the week and more emphasis on basics so that is may be why I line up with Victoria’s old textbooks.

So I think I would just keep trudging ahead with math with him try to not let it worry you too much. What sometimes happens is everything is introduced too early and it all is repeated later anyway.

Beth

JanL wrote:

I guess the algebra is fairly basic. Some examples: z + z - 9 = 5 and
What is the value of x in the following equation: x/3 + x/3 = 1 1/3.

I’m sure this is reasonable stuff for gr. 6. I like the heavy emphasis on active problem solving/application. I guess I am reacting to the sheer seeming impossibility of my son’s ever getting caught up in math!

____________________________________

Well, the first equation, z + z - 9 = 5, is just barely possible for Grade 6 — fairly challenging but with some work and practice most kids could get it.
The second equation, x/3 + x/3 = 1 1/3, is off the charts. A *good* Grade 9 class should be taught how to deal with fractions in equations, but there aren’t that many good ones around. The great majority of my college students couldn’t solve things like this (which is why they were repeatedly failing remedial math, but that’t the point.) Note that your high school teacher stressed, as I do, learning to *work* with fractions — that is far more important than doing a little bit of equation work all wrong.

Both of these equations can also be solved by guesswork, just trying whole numbers until one fits. If that is the technique being taught, it’s possible, but highly counterproductive; three years down the line the algebra teacher is going to spend the year trying to unteach guessing and teach system, a huge waste of everyone’s energy and some kids will stick in the guessing rut for life (shades of the problems with the reading curriculum).

So given these examples, my answer is that your math program is of the hurry-up-and-wait type — hurry up and try to do everything two or three years earlier than traditional, and wait four or five years until any topic is even halfway learned. It is not an advantage to start two years early if you finish three or four years late or never.

The one advantage to a student in this kind of system is that nobody is really learning anything, everybody is rushing and guessing and cramming, so it;s easier to catch up than you think; all of this stuff will be re-presented (I won’t say taught) every year for the next four or five years.

Hurry-up-and-wait is a perfect description of our new curriculum. For ex. last year in gr. 5 my son did properties of matter and changes of state—in far more depth than I did in grade 9. Luckily for him he is good at soaking up verbal info. and did well but over half the class failed. Naturally, he now has very little recollection of that unit.

Guess the high failure rates explain why the non academic stream kids we get at the high school level are a generally unruly lot. They get properties of matter again in grade 9 and naturally are hell bent on creating a ruckus—why bother trying if you flunked the first time?

My second son (4th grade) gets A’s in math—is great at the patterning, pre-algebra and problem-solving content. But the school is so busy cramming in content, they don’t wait for the basics to get cemented. This week I realized I will have to start drilling some of the times tables with him.

Most older teachers have the wisdom to chuck the garbage and go intensively with what kids need, but demographically they are a minority here. The young ones are frightened witless in teachers’ college about the need to follow the profiles with an almost religious zeal (never mind that the cover pages of the government profiles all say in fine print that they can be modified to meet local needs as long as the core expectations are met.) Not having kids of their own yet, many of them don’t yet realize that education is not a race, and their role is not to overwhelm kids by shovelling stuff at them, regardless of common sense, what kids need, or where they are at developmentally, or if they do realize the lunacy of it, they are too scared to do otherwise.

Our house is littered with projects assigned as at home projects because it was clearly unrealistic/impossible to get kids to do them at school. They are not even projects kids could do without one on one assistance in grades 1-3. (Build a log home, race car, conestoga wagon, etc. etc.) So parents do them, and get in the habit of being overinvolved with their kids’ work. A friend (lawyer, hubby a physiotherapist) asked me in all seriousness if she thought I should be helping her bright son nightly with his homework and projects in grade 9. Duh! No. But old habits die hard, and once again real learning is not taking place.

Hello JanL;

I just finished reading your Math question thread. I was away from this list for a while, so I am kind of joining in a bit late (i hope you don’t mind).

I read your posts with a lot of interest, for a couple of reasons. First, my 8-yr.o daughter also has NLD and math is a huge struggle. Second, she also has CAPD, and we have done some of the same therapies your son did (FFW, NeuroNet, were supposed to do PACE).

Actually, I think you guys are seeing the same audiologist we are seeing (in Toronto). I may be wrong, but some of the stuff you describe, sound exactly the same like the process we went through. We too did FFW for 5 months (with fabulous results), and were supposed to do a combination of NN and PACE, but I decided to skip PACE for now, as my girl is not ready for it yet. So, we are now doing NN - started in June and are not even close to be done with it any time soon. We are planning on taking a break over the Christmas and NY’s holidays.

As for the approaches to teaching math - for now I am tutoring my dd and am using some parts of the JUMP approach (i think John Mighton <sp?> is pure genius and I think his approach is great!). I was also considering KUMON, but have never really looked into it. I would like to find a tutor for my dd, as I find it hard to work with her without both of us getting very frustrated.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know that Dr. Maggie Mamen (a great expert for NLD) is coming to Toronto on November 20th. I have already registered for the workshop, and if you are interested, I can give you more info.

I would love to talk to you about your journey and ways of addressing and dealing with your son’s NLD and CAPD. Please let me know if I can e-mail you privately.

Good luck!

Rubby (in Toronto)

Hi Rubby,

Please feel free to e-mail me privately.

I suspect we do see the same audiologist. We are visiting her Dec. 10.

We are just about to restart NN, after taking a breather. It can take up to two years to have an impact apparently. I am thinking of using the TLP as well, although it is more of a gamble.

You are wise to get all of these pgms. in early. Although we first visited Toronto when my son was 8, and did FFWD right away, I think the feeling was that that would suffice. We seemed to get such great gains. But then the curriculum challenge ramped up after grade 4 and I pushed for IM (mostly for the sports effect, which is where the gains chiefly were.). I wish that we had done NN earlier.

My son is less compliant now that he is approaching his teens. It’s a combination of getting sick of “programs”, wondering why other mother’s kids don’t have to do them, and wanting to see his LD as small and insignificant — the latter a sign of approaching adolescence in itself. However, homework really seems often to cause him stress, and my hope is NN will make things easier. I am going to wait awhile before doing John Mighton’s program for math and have decided not to proceed with Kumon at all.

Contact me anytime.