My daughter, Beckie, has AD/HD. Now that she’s a teenager, her primary challenges are with the executive functions (EF) like planning, organization, and working memory. She also continues to need more prompts and external rewards than her peers without EF challenges. Beckie and her sister have been sharing a hair dryer for years. It is [...]
Most of us have times when it’s hard to recall someone’s name, although we recognize the face. We readily admit, “I’m terrible with names” as a disclaimer when we first meet someone so he won’t be offended in the future if his name slips out of our grasp. This difficulty with name recall is both [...]
Having a child with special needs and learning struggles can put a strain on your budget. There are so many expenses with doctor’s visits, therapy, tutoring, specialists, and medications that the overall cost is overwhelming. As a speech/language pathologist and homeschooler, I could address some of my children’s needs on my own. I was a [...]
Years ago I convinced my brother to go skiing with me. I had been skiing once prior to this, and I never made it off the easiest slope known as the “bunny hill”. The easier slopes provide a rope tow up the hill rather than the chair lifts used by more advanced skiers. I [...]
My friend and colleague, Kathy Kuhl, has written an excellent book (Homeschooling Your Struggling Learner) that provides practical strategies for struggling learners as well as being a wealth of encouragement. Kuhl interviewed homeschooling families with children representing a variety of special needs such as autism, AD/HD, learning disabilities, and more. Many hours were spent interviewing, [...]
I’ve met many parents who are pretty sure their child has AD/HD or some other learning challenge but they are hesitant to make it official by having their child evaluated and diagnosed. The fear that a label may limit their child, be inaccurate, or be used in discriminatory ways is valid. When my son, Josh, [...]
“There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NASB) When you are homeschooling a special needs or struggling child, you are not always on the same timeline as others. The curriculum you use needs to be adapted and usually one of the biggest modifications [...]
When my son Josh was learning to read, it was an arduous process. He made steady progress, but had to work hard to remember the sounds represented by print and the various ways they blended into words. At the time I was teaching Josh to read, my next door neighbor had a daughter 11 months [...]
A mom wrote to me about her 7 year old son, asking for suggestions for a language arts curriculum. Her son has been diagnosed with AD/HD, and like many others he is creative, distractible, and likes some subjects better than others. Since my son had extreme likes and dislikes at that age, I could have [...]
I’ve heard that individuals with autism think in pictures, not words. Temple Grandin has even written a book (Thinking in Pictures copyright 1995 Random House) describing her very visual way of viewing and interpreting events. My daughter, Beckie, has learned to compensate for the deficits in her working memory by visualizing what she is hearing [...]
