I don’t even know where to begin or if I should be here at all. But I do know that I am going crazy myself.
I homeschool my 2 children. My son who will be 7 and my dd will be 6 at the end of summer. My son does great. It’s my daughter that I seem to have a problem with. I don’t even know where to begin looking for solutions.
Background:
She’s reading a first grade cirriculum. She’s doing the first grade math. But neither are easy for her. Some days she just zooms right through it and other days she can’t remember any of it. I keep thinking that I’m expecting too much of her, after all she is very young. But when I try to back up and try something less complicated with her, she does even worse. And I think it’s because she feels that she’s not smart enough. But she’s very bright and I remind her often and try to encourage the activities that she’s better at. She consistently gets “i” & “t”, “m” & ‘w’ among others, confused. Is she just young? There are other confusions also. The confusions themselves don’t worry me, she’s young. It’s the consistency with them that worries me. There are also discipline problems. She’s not “out of control” or “unruly”. She just never seems to get it. Nothing works and she never remembers why she’s being disciplined or why it shouldn’t be done, etc. Consistently. I don’t know if I’m expecting too much from her. If, maybe, I’m not parenting her correctly. Or if there’s more to it than that. She comes across as unmodivated and lazy and her personality, she’s neither.
With homeschooling, they aren’t around too many kids their age. She is at the age where it’s hard to find anything for her to be involved in yet and there is no group locally (I’m helping to found one currently). So, I have no idea really what kids her age on an average do, other than my son. But I don’t like to compare them because they are so different and I don’t think it’s fair to her. I’ve tried reading books but you should see the library in my town (you’d be amazed that it’s even a public library, so very small). Do I need to discuss this with her dr? Do I need to just let it go and keep trying different teaching methods? What if there is a “problem”?
I am so confused and lost. I want to help her so much, but I just don’t know what else to do.
Nancy3
The confusions about i/t, m/w can be an indication of undiagnosed problems with visual efficiency. These are not checked in regular eye exams by either optometrists or opthalmologists. It would be a good idea to get an evaluation by a certified developmental optometrist. For more information, see http://www.childrensvision.com . To find qualified optometrists in your area, do a search at http://www.covd.org .
>She just never seems to get it. Nothing works and she never >remembers why she’s being disciplined or why it shouldn’t be done, etc. >Consistently.
This is a characteristic of children with non-verbal learning disability (NLD or NVLD). They tend to have great difficulty understanding cause-and-effect relationships. Two websites with good information about NLD are http://www.nldontheweb.org and http://www.nldline.com . If you see your dd in these profiles, I would recommend getting an evaluation by someone qualified to diagnose NLD (perhaps a neuro-psychologist).
Mothers often see things long before others do. My advice is to follow your instincts and start researching.
Re: Help!
Thank you so much so far. I really don’t like having to think that something might not be “normal” with her. But I also wouldn’t want to ignore it and have her suffer through life thinking she’s not good enough. She has definate problem solving skills, cause & effect. I just want to help her. She’s developed normally in many other ways. She potty trained easy, had no problem weaning, walked at under a year old. She didn’t talk really untill she was 2, and then she was quiet. Then suddenly, it was full conversations. So I know if there is something different about her, it’s not *that* bad, but it could be if it’s ignored.
Thank you so much.
Re: Help!
I, too, get the feeling that she’s not seeing those letters right — though of course figuring that out over the INternet is making several leaps and lots of assumptions!
How is her auditory processing? Can she rhyme? Does she playl with sounds? There are some neat sites with phonemic awareness games (just google “phonemic awareness” and skip the scholarly stuff :-))
What if you make the print bigger? Do things improve? If you use your finger underneath the letters to help her “track” in the right direction, do things get better? Do her eyes track from left to right when she’s reading or does she have a hard time with that?
Is it possible that the “easier” stuff has easier words but less meaning tied to it, so she can’t use other clues (and her good intelligence), but has to just rely on those letters — so it is, in fact, harder for her?
http://www.auburn.edu/~murraba is “The Reading Genie” site, which has a lot of excellent information on early reading.
And, YES, she is young :-) But it’s a good thing Mom is looking out for her :-)
Re: Help!
I will look that up. You never realize just how much is involved, just take for granted that things are going to come naturally and when they don’t it kinda sends ya into shock. At least it has me.
It helps her alot when I follow the words with a pencil, breaking them down into parts for her. She will sound out a word perfectly but to blend and put it together, it gets messed up. She knows what the sounds are. I find myself reminding her to read only what is there. But to her, maybe that’s not what is really there. She takes small two letter words, like “it” and “on” and reads them backwards, consistently, untill I point it out to her and have her spell it to me and repeat the letter sounds. She is extremely “clumsy” and can’t seem to sit still during her lessons, especially during reading. She’s constantly rubbing her face, her eyes and swinging her legs. She looks around the room and can’t seem to focus on the task at hand.
We recently got each of our kids a kitten. We’ve had them about 2 weeks now. She loves her kitty, she feeds her and makes sure she uses the litter box, etc. But she consistenly picks her up and holds h er against her will. The cat will cry and cry and claw to get away but it’s as if my daugher doesn’t associate the kitty crying with the kitty wanting down. That’s an every 10 minutes or more ordeal for us. She’s not hurting the kitten, she’s very gentle and loving. And I know that eventually the kitten will adjust to it. But, I have been trying to teach her that the cat doesn’t want to be held all the time. She has trouble with taking one concept from one situation and applying it to another similar situation.
[quote]though of course figuring that out over the INternet is making several leaps and lots of assumptions! [/quote]
I agree totally. But for me, this was the first place to start to know if I even needed to be concerned. I feel so quilty for thinking that she might have “problems”, but also feel guilty because if she does, then I’d be ignoring it. Guess it’s off to the doctor I go, and in the meantime (waiting on insurance currently) research away.
Re: Help!
I work with a LOT of kids who have these kinds of directional issues. I have very good success over time with stress on the basics and gradual step-by-step teaching and learning.
The kids I have *not* been able to succeed with at all have been those whose parents went in for magical thinking — there is some kind of mysteriously different brain here and so we will find the magic mysterious program that wiill cure everything in a flash of light and smoke. In the long run the lack of consistency and of commitment to a system leave the kid right where he was.
If vision therapy helps, good. Many of the things I advise in teaching are therapeutic in their own right and will help train vision, again slowly and step by step.
Take this as a long term project, twelve years of school and a lifetime altogether, and work on getting a few little things right every day; don;t rush ahead to do whole words when the letter by letter level needs work — build that foundation first.
Nancy3
A 5-3/4yo who has trouble blending would not be particularly unusual. Some children just aren’t developmentally ready for reading until closer to age 7.
A very good series of graduated readers is the RALP series at http://www.usu.edu/teach/LittleBooks.htm . These are the best decodable readers I have found for young children. They are interesting and they provide *lots* of repetition, which is important for children who have difficulty learning to blend. Start with Set 1. I usually require a child to read a book twice with two errors or less in order to “graduate” to the next book in the set.
The reading of “no” for “on” is a sequencing problem. Children with developmental vision delays usually also have weak sequencing skills. After a vision problem is corrected (or after it has been determined that there is no developmental vision problem), a cognitive skills training program such as Audiblox can do a lot to develop sequencing. See http://www.audiblox2000.com
Clumsiness, fidgeting, lack of focus are also often associated with undiagnosed developmental vision delays. Does she avoid ball sports, such as playing “catch”? That is often another giveaway.
If you can get your medical insurance to cover it, a complete neuro-psychological battery would probably yield the most information about your dd’s strengths and weaknesses. These do not include a developmental vision eval, which insurance usually doesn’t cover anyway (costs about $150 where I am, with an additional $75 for a written report of the test results — useful only if problems are found).
Early intervention, if there is a problem, is the most beneficial for the child, as often you can reduce deficits that way.
Nancy
Other people here can help you with personal issues more than I can.
I will be happy to send you my how-to-tutor notes which include specific suggestions on how to straighten out letter confusions and teach fluent reading with fewer frustrations. Just ask me at [email protected]
Kids always show unevenness in their work; this is normal.
If the unevenness gets extreme, it can be a sign of stress. This often happens when the work is unclear and the child is getting frustrated and overwhelmed. Going back and teaching skills directly can often make a huge improvement. Try working with the approaches in my notes, teaching for understanding and mastery first, building success, and see if that helps.