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Child not retaining information form year to year

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

Hello,
Question, My Daughter in LD/ADD, since second/third grade has a hard time retaining concepts ex:subtraction trading even after tutoring she retained it but then when she needs to figure out trading she forgets. I noticed the same with spelling. the same spelling error constantly for years. I tried the rhymmns I before E except after C when I tried to explain that it was a way to remember the i/e rule in spelling I tried to explain it several time,and she didn’t understand. She is in resource room for Math and reading. she is up for reeval this year, the school requires it every three years. Although I think I might want an outside consult.
That is my question what test should be used and any programs suggestions I know memory is a big one and retaining info.
She is making progress on paper but the problem is the next year she for gets what she learned. any suggestion would be appreicated.
The school has the same old breaking problems down in chunks, extra time the routine that is in alot of kids plans. something needs to be changes but, I don’t know what there is a piece to a puzzle that is missing.

Willow

Submitted by michele on Tue, 09/23/2003 - 5:07 PM

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Hi

My son doesn’t retain information either not even from week to week. I don’t know what to do I had a short meeting today at school and still don’t know anything I didn’t already know.

I don’t mean to sound stupid but you said to work on the cognitive skills what is that? I looked up his records and it says his cognitive abilities seem on track.

thanks
Michele

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 09/23/2003 - 6:00 PM

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Hi Willow,
My son is very similar and we work a lot on memory. You responded to my post about teasing and I think the memory and word retrieval issues unfortunately add to this.

I’ll try and give you the best advice I can. What I try to do with my son is work on visualization. For example, my son has an extremely difficult time remembering names. So I try to get a class list of names at the beginning of the year, photocopy their photos from the year book, and then practice going over them. If the name is Tyler I have him imagine the boy tying his shoes. For Grant I had him imagine a king granting him a favor. Those probably aren’t the best image cues, but it was a start.

I have Audiblox and I think it’s a very good (and relatively reasonably priced) program. You have to be organized and able to work well with your child daily (I used it for approx 20-30 minutes per day. We used it for quite a while prior to starting vision therapy. It’s something I plan to start using again once we finish LMB and PACE). Another program for memory is Brainbuilder but it focuses on digit span (which in turn supposedly helps memory). Brainbuilder is a repetitious computer program, but it’s fast and easy. It’s a program you’d probably want to use in addition to other things and not by itself.

If you have a difficult time working with your child, PACE is a good program. It’s much more expensive. There’s a parent set called BrainSkills or PACE which you’d get through a provider.

Another thing to help with visualization is LMB’s Visualizing and Verbalizing. You can buy the book through Gander Press and do the program yourself (in fact, you can buy the books for Seeing Stars and On Cloud Nine as well and do those yourself). I haven’t done V/V with my son, but it’s something I believe he needs.

One more thing that I think is really good and would be helpful for your daughter is “Language Wise” which was written by the author of “Reading Reflex” (McGuinnes?).

With most kids people always say it’s as if they absorb information like a sponge, but for our kids with memory problems it’s as if we have to pour and repour and repour information into them over and over. And we must have them practice and say it and air write it and jump on a trampoline with it and try to contain it inside any other way we can come up with. It’s definitely a challenge.

I hope this helps! :-)

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