How Can I Afford Academic Support Outside of School

Many families hope that medical insurance coverage will reimburse them for outside academic support for children with learning disabilities.  Study skills, remedial help and homework support is often necessary for this population of learners, and it can come at a steep cost.  Although these services should be provided by school districts, you will find most have limited resources and one to one assistance is virtually impossible.  Insurance companies accommodate psychological services, but because learning specialists, educational therapists, and tutors are usually trained in education, they don’t have the needed licensing credentials and codes for insurance companies to pay the bill. 

How Can I Afford the Costs of Outside Help?

Before disregarding this option, there is good news.  According to IRS publication 502, under the heading Special Education, with a doctor’s note, parents can use medical expense accounts to pay these bills.  In addition, you can “write off” these costs if the teacher is trained to work with learning disabilities.  In fact, you can even be granted compensation for your child to attend a school where the reason is overcoming a learning disability.  Finally, check with your employer to see if they offer other options.  Some large companies, such as IBM, offer financial compensation when an employee's family member need these types of services.   

How Do I Find the Right Service Provider?

First, pursue a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment that provides a diagnosis and a comprehensive report that presents the cognitive weaknesses associated with the learning disability.  Second, find a local, highly-trained tutor, learning specialist or educational therapist that can offer the best services.   Be sure to interview and meet potential providers, so that you can find the best fit for your child.  

Early intervention and support is key for students with learning disabilities.  In fact, young learners receive the right help and support, some deficit areas can be remediated.  In addition, children can also develop compensatory learning strategies as well as self advocacy skills that will help them to realize their highest potential.

Cheers, Erica

Dr.  Erica Warren, Learning Specialist and Educational Therapist

Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator and publisher of multisensory educational materials at Good Sensory Learning and Dyslexia Materials.  She is also the director of Learning to Learn, in Ossining, NY.  To learn more about her products and services, you can go to www.goodsensorylearning.com, www.dyslexiamaterials.com & www.learningtolearn.biz  

Structuring Children for Success

In my last blog post, I talked about Filial Therapy and how it benefits families. In my next few posts, we’ll take a closer look at the components used in this approach and how parents can apply the skills even without formally participating in therapy.

The first component we’ll talk about is structuring. Structuring involves planning to set a person up for success before even beginning the activity or task. It is important because it can solve problems before they occur - consider this the prevention side of parenting. Here are things to consider when structuring:

1. In order to do this well, you’ll need to consider the age and developmental appropriateness of what you want to accomplish as it relates to your child. No matter how brilliant your structuring plans, the task will go poorly if you’re asking for something your child isn’t ready to do. For example, most 3 year olds are unable to hear multi-step directions and follow them on the first try, and if you ask a child this young to get dressed, brush their teeth, and wash their face, the expectation is unrealistic and you both will end up frustrated. In summary, step one: know what is appropriate for your child.

2. Once you’ve determined that your expectation is appropriate, think about a specific situation that you’d like to structure. For example, imagine a situation in which a child protests going to the dentist. Ask yourself what is it about that situation that is upsetting? The child might feel scared, angry, or maybe just bored in the waiting room. Step two: tease apart what is happening that causes the problem to best determine how structuring will help.

3. Now that you know the situation you’d like to structure and you have a guess about why it’s not going well, plan ahead for success. For instance, thinking about the dentist, let’s imagine that your child is scared of the dentist because he has not been there before. Structuring might involve going online to look at pictures of the office, explaining in kid-friendly language what will happen, and being realistic (but not alarming) with the language. For example, “We will go into a room and we’ll tell a receptionist our names, then wait in that room until our names are called. Next, we’ll meet the person who cleans your teeth. That person will probably brush and floss your teeth, which can sometimes feel funny or nice because they’ll be clean. The dentist might want to take pictures of your teeth as well, but we won’t know until we get there. At the end, you’ll get a bag of goodies, like a new toothbrush and maybe a sticker.” Not, “They brush your teeth and sometimes have a drill, which really hurts, so make sure you brush every day so you won’t have to do that.” Step three: prepare your child with appropriate language.

4. Structuring might also involve the use of specific items. Let’s imagine that the child is not afraid of the dentist, but instead acts wild in the waiting room. Structuring for this child might instead involve packing a favorite book, a new game to play, or a tablet with a cartoon and headphones to encourage quiet behavior. Step four: pack for success!

Have you recently used the structuring skill? Leave a comment to share how you’ve applied this to your life. 

Emily Herber McLean, LPC is a child and family therapist at The Center for Psychological Services. To learn more about her practice, visit www.centerpsych.com.

It Takes a Village of Skills to Become a Reader!

Reading!  It sounds easy but it is anything but to a great many students.  In order to understand why your child struggles to read well or with facility, it is essential to have working knowledge of the primary elements that form the all-important foundation for reading.  A gap in any of these skills will produce problems in reading, evident not only in slow skill development but also the frustration, upset, and dislike of reading with which you, as the parent of a struggling reader, is probably all too familiar. 

Here is a sampling of the skills and abilities your child must use when she reads:

1. Word Recognition:  This consists of two factors.  The first is sight vocabulary—these are the words a child recognizes on sight with automaticity and without effort. The other is decoding or the ability to use phonetic analysis skills (which we have talked about in earlier blogs) to sound out unfamiliar words.
2. Fluency: Oral fluency includes the ability to use expression, adhere to punctuation, and read words with ease.
3. Word Knowledge: the ability to recognize various meanings of words. Parents typically refer to this as vocabulary.
4. Background (or factual) knowledge: so much of what we read is understood in the context of what we know about the world.  When a child is familiar with the subject of a book his understanding of it is far richer than it is when material is utterly novel.  For example, imagine your fourth grader reading about the legend of King Arthur without any understanding of a knight and his coat of armor, medieval times and the structure of a town and city being built around a fortified castle, all money having once been in coin form, adoption or foster parenting, wizardry or magic. Without such knowledge and vocabulary he would be lost, confused by the words on the page rather than able to picture them in his imagination.  For an adult, this would be akin to the experience a lay person would have in reading a medical journal, perhaps in Russian! 
5. Language Structure: your child must not only know the meaning of the individual words, but must also be able to integrate them into the sentences she reads, understand the sentence structure, and make sense of the transitions from one sentence to the other.
6. Language Processing, Critical Thinking, and Memory: He must grasp the core idea, remember facts and details, apply background knowledge to new information, make associations, draw conclusions, anticipate outcomes, form concepts, and think critically.
7. Working Memory: the ability to hold information in one's mind for just a few seconds until it can be used; after its use, it is discarded or forgotten.
8. Attention: it is essential to both reading fluency and comprehension that your child be able to sustain attention to material as he reads.

As you can see, Comprehension, the ultimate goal of reading, depends on proficiency with a variety of skills.  So in supporting your child’s reading development books are, of course, important. But so is conversation, exposure to broad vocabulary and background knowledge, and experiences of the world at large.

Now go read with your kid!

Be well,   Jennifer

Jennifer Jackson Holden, Psy.D. is managing director of the Paoli, Pennsylvania office of the Center for Psychological Services. www.centerpsych.com

Visualization Improves Academics: A Free Game

Did you know that visualization can improve learning capacity, enhance memory and ignite creativity?  In fact, research now shows that mental imagery can improve academics in the areas of reading, writing, math, history and science.

What is Visualization?

Visualization is the ability to create mental images within ones head.  This picture allows an individual to “see” ideas, past experiences, or even future projections.  Every individual lies on a continuum from having no visualization capacity, or a “blind minds eye,” to having an excellent capacity to imagine and experience vivid pictures and even conjure movie-like imagery in ones mind’s eye.  

Free Visualization Game:

Picture This and Draw.  Is a game is I created that develops the capacity to visualize, and also works on expressive language, verbal reasoning, fine motor dexterity, attention to details, spatial skills, and ones ability to follow directions.  This is a game I often  playing with my own students.  Click here to download a free copy of this game.

To learn more about the history of visualization and to acquire assessment materials and other engaging activities and games that teaches this needed skill, come learn about my publication MindfulVisualization for Education as well as my two Teaching Visualization PowerPoints.

Cheers, Erica

Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator and publisher of multisensory educational materials at Good Sensory Learning and Dyslexia Materials.  She is also the director of Learning to Learn, in Ossining, NY.  To learn more about her products and services, you can go to www.goodsensorylearning.com, www.dyslexiamaterials.com, & www.learningtolearn.biz

What is Filial Therapy?

I recently had the pleasure of attending a training by Risë VanFleet, PhD on Filial Therapy, and I came away very excited about the method. Developed by Drs. Bernard and Louise Guerney, Filial Therapy is an approach that helps to facilitate change in the child and family through strengthening the relationships between parents and children.

When children are having behavioral or emotional difficulties, play therapy is often recommended as a developmentally appropriate way to work with children in a therapeutic setting. The use of play allows the therapist to learn more about how children see their world, how they learn, how they express their feelings, and allows for growth in mental and social capacities. Many types of play therapy include the therapist working directly with the child, which can have many benefits. In Filial Therapy, the therapist teaches the parent how to conduct play sessions with their children in a certain way, thus including them as an integral part of the process. 

The benefits of such an approach are numerous. First, it empowers parents who have felt uncertain about how to help their children. Because parents already have a history and bond with their children, they can better report on changes in the play and interpretation of what transpires in the sessions. In addition, the bond between parent and child is strengthened, which allows the child to use skills after therapy ends and prevents many future problems. Additionally, in this model, all children are included in the process, which allows siblings the opportunity to express how they feel rather than focusing on just one child.

If you are considering therapy for your child, you may want to ask a clinician in your area about Fililal Therapy. If you are want to know more about how Filial Therapy or other types of play therapy might help your family, please give me a call. I look forward to speaking with you!

Emily Herber McLean, LPC is a child and family therapist at The Center for Psychological Services. To learn more about her practice, visit www.centerpsych.com.

Developing Your Child’s Ability to Self-Advocate

     Saturday night, while sitting on the back deck at the shore having dinner with my parents, my sister, and my 10-year-old son, the topic of dyslexia came up.  Here’s how: Jess was having trouble understanding the plans we were making for later in the week.  He calmly and even with humor, expressed his confusion and I, in laughable exasperation exclaimed, 

     “Your dyslexia is driving me crazy!”  Not my finest moment as a mother, but one that met with laughter from Jess and confusion from his grandparents and aunt.  

     My mother asked, “What does that have to do with dyslexia?”  

     My sister said, “Dyslexia is basically when you see and write letters backwards, right?”           My father (a psychologist himself) replies, “Yeah, and the words look like they are jumping around on the page.” 

     This is a misunderstanding of dyslexia that I often hear non-clinicians and people unfamiliar with the condition purport.  Based on outdated information, it fails to appreciate that dyslexia is a language-based learning disability that affects far more than the association of letters and sounds, though that very deficit is at its center. 

     Here is the remarkable part of the story, as I prepared to set them all straight as to the nature of dyslexia as we now understand it, Jess (the 10-year-old), chimed in.  “That’s not right.  I have dyslexia and I don’t do that [write letters backward].” Well, as you can imagine, that got everyone’s attention.  Jess went on to explain that he has trouble with reading, but not just reading.  He can’t always find the words he needs to express himself, he has trouble remembering things people say to him, it is hard for him to understand a concept or sequence described in a purely verbal way without benefit of a context or visual reference.  The words he did this with were more basic and perhaps, quite frankly, more eloquent for they reflected his actual experience.  He then went on to explain that the parts of his brain that process the language he encounters when reading are different than the parts the rest of us non-dyslexics use.  He pointed to his head, “my brain uses this part and this part and your brain uses this part on the other side.”  He used a visual aid and everything!

   The conversation, as you might imagine as a parent, then shifted away from the dyslexia itself to Jess’ ability to explain it.  We call this self-advocacy: one’s ability to articulate how they function so as to get what they need to function well. 

     As the parent of a child with a learning disability you have probably learned how to advocate for your son or daughter.  You have worked to educate teachers about your child’s learning style and concomitant needs.  You have explained his or her strengths and weaknesses to your friends and family, articulated the functional impact of his learning disability to your school district, intermediate unit, or insurance company in order to secure the services he or she needs to thrive.  Perhaps you have even hired a professional advocate to fight on your child’s behalf.  You have seen, first hand, the benefits advocacy by an adult on behalf of a child can reap.

     So imagine how profound your child’s ability to advocate for him or herself can be.  Within the classroom, it allows her to tell the teacher when she does not understand something so that the teacher has the opportunity to explain it in a way your child does understand.  She can ask for more time to finish a test or reading assignment when she needs it without feeling embarrassed about that need.  It enables her to negotiate use of technology in the classroom so that she can write more clearly (or legibly), or in a more-timely manner, or go back and add to her work once her initial draft is complete.

How does the ability to self-advocate develop?

Not by chance, I assure you.  Jess’ explanation of dyslexia was the result of years of conversation about dyslexia in general and its specific impact on him, both the positive and the challenging.  Learning about other people with the disorder, particularly famous ones like actors and athletes helped normalize his impression of dyslexics so that he sees himself as being in very good company.  Each time we encounter another famous person who identifies as dyslexic, Jess’ community grows.

Herein lies the force of an accurate diagnosis.  Vocabulary is a very powerful thing.  From identification of a learning disability, comes understanding and a sense of being able to manage and even master the challenges it brings.

The first step toward raising a child who can advocate for himself comes from letting him know the nature of his reading difficulty.  The second is giving it a name.  Time and time again I see students who are relieved to learn that there is a name to explain why reading is hard for them.  Giving a child the facts about dyslexia gives her power to understand it and to regard it as a part of who she is rather than something that is wrong with her.  It is this latter belief that children come to possess when they are in the absence of accurate and factual information about why learning is hard.  The third ingredient is being positive while working and speaking with your child about dyslexia.  Though reading is hard for him as may be verbal expression or tasks that rely on working memory, he may possess remarkable creativity, outside the box thinking, or originality.  The fourth is recognizing that this is not one but many, many conversations over many years. What a first grader can understand and articulate about how she learns is enhanced by what a fourth grader can understand and that even more so in seventh, ninth, and eleventh grade.

So, as I always say, keep on talking with your child.  And remember, make sure you are always listening too!

Jennifer

Jennifer Jackson Holden, Psy.D. is managing director of the Paoli, Pennsylvania office of the Center for Psychological Services. 

How “Slow Writing“ Helps Kids Write Fast

"Slow writing," an exercise dreamed up by British English teacher David Didau, has been circulating on teaching blogs over the last few months. 

Here’s how Didau himself describes it:

So "slow writing" isn't what you think it might be. It's not, at its core, about teaching children to take their time when writing, but rather helping children learn to plan ahead before they even start. The beauty of this idea is that it actually helps speed up what is often a laborious process for struggling writers. On their own, they will often either take hours to write a single paragraph, or resort to the path of least resistance: short, simple sentences that leave much to be desired!

But if you can explicitly guide them, rather than just asking them to be more creative on their own, then they themselves will be amazed at how quickly they can produce good work.

And then, with practice, they need the guidance less and less. At that point, the process of crafting interesting sentences becomes automatic for them.

This, of course, sounds strangely like the Guided Phonetic Reading technique we use in Easyread. Maybe that’s why I like the idea of “slow writing” so much…!

Read more at Didau’s blog, here.

—

Sarah Forrest is a Reading Specialist for the Easyread System, an online tutoring service that uses innovative literacy techniques to help struggling learners with visual learning styles, dyslexia, auditory processing weakness and more. www.easyreadsystem.com

5 Ways to Play More This Summer!

Most blog posts this year have been about making good decisions, getting ready for testing or reducing fear and anxiety; all issues that many with learning issues can relate to.  Not this post!  This post is about PLAY!  Summer fun!  There is NO AGE LIMIT for play.  It is REALLY good for ALL of us.  In fact, a lot of research has been done on play.  And guess what?  We all, especially our kids, are getting less and less play. This is really awful! 

Play, especially Outdoor Unstructured Play, is critical for important developmental reasons:

• Learning and maintaining the desire and ability to explore.
• Learning and maintaining the ability judge risk taking.
• Development of fine and gross motor skills
• Input of vast amounts of basic knowledge about the natural world.

Research shows playtime is shrinking in kids life due to an earlier and earlier academic focus, excessive screen time (both TV and computers) tired parents, unsafe neighborhood play places and elimination of school recesses.

Darrell Hammond from kaBoom!, a company that creates multi sensory play grounds, says active and balanced play helps kids to thrive. Other experts tell us attention spans increase if playtime is integrated into the learning day and fidgeting can be an indication that there isn’t enough physical activity in a child’s day.

What can you do to encourage outdoor unstructured play? 

First get out of the house and out of their way! Kids will engage in this kind of play naturally. You might hear, “I’m bored” at first. That is A OK! If you let them solve their own dilemma soon they will be engrossed in imaginative play or made up games.

To facilitate play:

• Provide longer periods of playtime – 45 minutes to an hour of uninterrupted play to allow creative and imaginative play to develop.
• Provide a variety of out door play materials beyond what nature provides: water, chalk, clay maybe even mud!
• Don’t squelch risk taking! If there is true danger, by all means intervene. Remember kids LEARN how to take risks and understanding risk taking serves us all well.
• Recognize the value of messy, rough and tumble and nonsense play!
• Take an interest in their play by asking questions and getting involved. Get involved on their level – do no directing! For example put on a funny hat and march around with your kids. Don’t change their play to be your play.

Outdoor play helps our kids learn to be creative and innovative while experimenting with socialization. They are also building self-confidence, self-esteem and self-efficacy. This is a lot of value packed activity that has everything to do with playing and nothing to do with academics. 

Enjoy your play filled summer!

Parents, do you have questions raising your child with learning issues? You can raise confident capable kids despite learning issues. Reach out for answers to your most perplexing questions today!

Becky Scott

610-783-5676

The NavigatorsWay.com