A Love of Reading Spurs Reading, Writing, and Spelling Skills

Recently I wrote about how my daughter has found graphic novels, particularly what is referred to as manga, and she has become a huge fan of reading.  She absolutely devours the books!

Well, all this reading is paying off in not only her reading skills, but her spelling is suddenly just clicking. I find her playing with words all the time; she'll just out of the blue tell me how the sound of long e at the end of a word can be spelled with a y, an ie, or sometimes just i.  Then she'll speak about scooping parts of words from one word to put into another word because those words share that part in common.  It is as if the whole puzzle of how the written language works is finally apparent to her and it all just makes sense.

I know this is directly related to all the reading she is doing because I homeschool her.  I have never used the term "scooping" in terms of language before, and we have not talked about the phonics rules in quite a long time.  In fact, she's been enjoying reading and writing on her own so much, the only input I have been giving is when she asks me to listen to her read, look over her writing for spelling or grammar issues, or we talk about what her book is about, where sometimes other comprehension topics might come up like foreshadowing and protagonist.

I truly think inspiring a love of reading has made my daughter with severe Auditory Processing Disorder and Dyslexia not only read better, but write better, and to all of our surprise, become a pretty good speller.

So when those busy bodies who insist that "a child should only read classic literature" and other such nonsense start talking, just ignore them.  A love of reading will outshine anything else when it comes to literacy development, and whatever your child likes to read is perfect!



(I put a list of the graphic novels she has been loving in the list at the right.  It does link to Amazon, but if you want the books, check out your library too.  Ours has a very large selection!  Also, remember my daughter is an almost 12 year old girl, so some of the books are more appropriate for teens and pre-teens rather than younger kids.  I also put a few that were recommended by others.  If there are any your child likes, let me know and I will add them to the list.)

Coping Strategies For Auditory Processing Disorder in Everyday Life

I promised to write a post about coping strategies for Auditory Processing Disorder in terms of just living everyday life.  This is something we have come to over time and developed and changed according to Hailey’s needs at each stage of her life.  Some we learned from therapists, some from experimentation, and some from the helpful advice of other people dealing with APD in their lives or that of their child’s. 

As an almost twelve year old girl, here are some strategies she employs today:

1. She had to learn to not compare herself to children who do not have learning disabilities and to realize that she is incredibly smart and capable to be able to learn all that she does and do as great as she does even with her APD.
2. She had to learn how to manage her day to not be too overwhelmed: not too much socializing or too much having to listen to things. She takes quiet breaks and alone time as needed.
3. She had to learn destressing techniques that help her such as chewing gum (it relaxes her), or smelling something beautiful (she really likes lavender and has some oil she can place on anything to carry around and smell as desired).
4. She focuses on spending one on one time with friends so that she can manage the conversations and feel comfortable and confident.
5. When she has to be in a group of friends, she tries to focus on one kid if possible, and if it is too overwhelming, she finds a way to leave the group without appearing rude. (This is a new one for her and not always easy, but she is trying.)
6. We do math in small increments so as not to be overwhelming, use visuals, and I do not talk too much (We homeschool).
7. We watch documentaries and do hands on learning for a lot of science and social studies.
8. My daughter loves graphic novels/manga books and this has greatly advanced her reading confidence, skills, and she feels like it is a typical pre-teen/teenage girl thing to do as the topics are geared towards that age group.
9. She found an activity that does not require processing auditory input so much and she has a level field with the other kids. This helps her to feel "normal". (It is figure skating for her.)

As a young child, we the parents had to employs strategies to help her cope with her days.  We had to regulate her activity level, environment, and stress levels.   Here are some strategies we used then:

1. We scheduled her day to have auditory breaks where she did not have to listen.
2. We used a sensory diet throughout her day to manage her stress levels; when overwhelmed she would check out from reality and sit in a dazed like state or have major meltdowns.
3. When we had to go to a noisy environment, we used noise reducing headphones, made sure to massage her legs or arms to keep her focused, and protected her from the demands of others. (For example, when the lady at the checkout wanted to ask her questions and she just could not process them, we would answer for her while smiling at her, rubbing her legs, and reassuring her as she got extremely anxious when people spoke to her.)
4. We used picture cards, eye contact, and small phrases only to communicate with her so she would know what we were talking about.(She also required a physical touch to make sure she was aware we were talking to her.)
5. We planned for transitions (going from one activity or environment to the next) by interacting with her at her level, using picture cards, doing sensory diet activities to help her deal with her anxiety, and making sure we brought whatever she needed to bring with her to help her remain calm. (She had a special blanket that we put scents on that she carried everywhere.  We also had chewy toys and strong tasting mints or candies (a sensory calming strategy for her) to give to her as needed.)
6. When it came to academics (or just learning things like language when she was very young), we limited her time to just what she could handle; we used a lot of visuals and kinesthetics to help her understand; we made sure to give her a long amount of time to actually process what she learned; and we repeated things as often as necessary until she got them.
7.  In social situations, we always stayed with her to provide support as needed, and we gave her tools to help her navigate them.  For example, she needed to have the practiced phrase, “Hello, My name is Hailey.  What is your name?” at first.  We also taught her other stock phrases that helped her tremendously like “Do you want to play with me?” and “I like your ______”. (As she got older, we were able to communicate with her how to go with the flow more in socializing and as her receptive and expressive speech skills grew, she was able to not have to use stock phrases anymore.)
8. We made sure all our family and friends were aware of her needs and did not place expectations on her that would create anxiety for her. (This was not readily accepted, but over time it was.)
9. We worked with specialists such as a speech and language therapist, an occupational therapist, an audiologist who specializes in auditory processing disorder, and a special education preschool to implement therapies to help her.

As I read about the experiences of teenagers and young adults, I know that she will have to learn and incorporate more strategies as well as alter the ones she has now to fit new situations.  So as new situations and environments arise, we'll do research, ask others for advice, and do what we can.

Telling Relatives and Friends about our Child’s Special Needs: It is a Process for them Too

“Don’t lay him down or jostle him in any way, he’s just eaten,” I’d warn the unsuspecting loved one who just had to hold my baby boy at that moment.  Then, of course, came the dirty looks suggesting that she had held babies before and why was I being such a know-it-all.

 “Whoosh,” smelly, white liquid gushed from his mouth and covered her entire front side in sticky vomit. 

“Yep,” I’d think to myself, “that is why I said that,” as I went to retrieve my now sticky baby boy in need of a bath and to be refed.

So this was our introduction to letting family and friends know that our twin babies were not exactly like other babies – those ones that come out at 40 weeks gestation and not 32 weeks.  Among other things, the twins both had severe reflux which required special handling in their feeding routines – including keeping them still and upright for at least half an hour after eating.

As the years went by, my reputation as overprotective mother became even more pronounced.  I insisted my children did not have to be physical with relatives when they did not want to: “No Auntie he does not have to kiss you and she does not have to climb into your lap no matter how much you wish it to be so.”  Of course, I would try to explain why I felt this was important to their development, but like the adults in those Charlie Brown specials, I’m sure it just came off as “wa-wa-wawa”.

Well, you can just imagine the reception when I told the family that our daughter had a language delay and most likely Auditory Processing Disorder.  They simply didn’t believe it.  I was just being that overprotective mother who didn’t want to just let my children be.  “She would come around in her own time,” they thought, “all this effort on speech therapy and occupational therapy was a waste.”  Not to mention the fact that I used it as an excuse to not make her stay at large gatherings for long periods of time.

Still, I never let other people’s opinions change the way I reared my own children.  I knew I was being responsible and doing the best for them.  Heck, I researched everything and put every ounce of my heart and soul into being the best mother I could be for them.

Eventually the family came around.  They started to see that maybe I wasn’t this crazy, over-protective mother they had made me out to be.  Truthfully, I think having the “expert opinions” of others made them more open to the idea that maybe I was onto something true.  Here it wasn’t just me saying these things, but people with degrees in specialty areas were saying it too.  (Yes, you detect a note of sarcasm here because I hate that people think you need a degree to know something, but that’s another story.)

I don’t harbor any ill feelings towards the family members and friends that did not accept that my children had any special needs or who did not approve at first of my parenting style.  It is only human psychology to try adamantly to not accept something that is hard to accept; if I went through quasi-panic attacks coming to terms with my children’s needs, how could I expect them not to have their own problems in accepting it as well.  It is a process after all, and all those in our children’s lives have to go through their own process as well.

Accepting Our Child Has a Difference/Disability: It's A Process

"When our daughter was two, we noticed that not only did she not speak, but she didn’t seem to understand most of what we told her.  She has a twin brother and he was speaking in sentences, telling us stories, and in every way communicating well.  We wanted to believe that she was just a late bloomer, but when she started tantruming from frustration, screaming from noises we could barely hear, and staring glazedly into space – absolutely checking out from reality – we knew something was not right." Suspecting Auditory Processing Disorder in Young Children

Realizing that your child has something "wrong" for lack of a better term is extremely frightening and completely overwhelming at first.  I remember being so stressed by it all that I actually would have quasi-panic attacks where I would feel my heart palpitating and feel short of breath.

Thoughts would race through my head: Will she ever be able to understand language?  What if she always tantrums? Will I have a 16 year old daughter who runs around frantically screaming with her hands held over her ears whenever she hears a loud noise?

Yes, it's true.  When our children show signs of a problem, we have no real idea how significant that problem is going to be in their lives.  And it is not just us who don't know!  We go to doctors and therapists and specialists of various sorts who can tell us what most likely is going on in their opinion, but none of them can give us guarantees of what the future holds.

So the hardest thing we as parents do is learn to be patient, keep hope alive, and honor and assist our children where they are at each and every day.  We cherish the little things they accomplish and work to help them meet one goal and then the next along their path.

Then over time we realize that our own anxieties are less.  We come to understand this disability for its gifts as well as its difficulties.  We embrace our child for who she is and cannot imagine nor wish her to be any different than whom she is.

Tell Yourself Ten Good Things About Yourself – How to Battle Negative Self-Talk

I’ve written before about self-esteem and the child with special needs, specifically in Nurturing Self-Esteem in the Child with SpecialNeeds, but I was reminded recently during a conversation, about a game I played with my daughter to help her specifically with her self-esteem.

After experiencing some bullying, my daughter became very down on herself and got to the point where she believed the insults hurled at her were accurate portrayals of whom she really was.  She started to believe she was stupid and fat and no one would want to be her friend.    It got so bad, she started telling herself these hideous lies, and I knew I needed to do something to stop her.  She needed an intervention, but what would work best?

So I caught her saying an evil to herself one day and I explained to her that when you tell yourself such things, you start to believe them.  I told her if she continued to go through her life telling herself how stupid or fat she was, she would always be miserable because she was carrying a bully around inside her own head.  I told her she was being the bully to herself!

Well, my sweet little girl who would never hurt anyone intentionally was devastated to hear that she was being a bully.  That was just not how she thought of herself.  So we made up a game to change her from being a bully to herself into being a best friend to herself.

Whenever she thought one bad thought about herself, she had to say ten good things about herself.  We practiced this by randomly asking each other for ten good things; for example, we’d be riding in the car and I would just say, “Quick, tell me ten good things about yourself?” 

At first it was hard for her and she needed a lot of prompting as well as she would make me go first to model examples for her.  Eventually, she began to really like the game and sometimes even get silly with it – “I am a marvelous cupcake baker” with an exaggeration on the word marvelous.

In the end, it did change her negative self-talk.  In fact, I overheard her telling her neighbor friend the other day about how telling yourself ten good things whenever you think one bad thing is important for your brain and will make you happy.

I hope this is of help to others in some way.  What techniques have you used to battle negative self-talk or to raise the self-esteem of your child with special needs?

A Community of Mothers: The Internet Has Found You

I have been thinking a lot about a community of mothers*.  You see, I used to always daydream about the days when mothers would get together over coffee in the morning and talk about the kids and the housework, swap recipes, share advice, etc.  At least, that is the way the books I would read always suggested it was – back when most moms were stay at home moms.

Being a stay at home mom myself, I felt wouldn’t that be such a wonderful resource, but alas I didn’t know how to make it actually happen.  How impossible would it be for my friends to drive over to my house every day for coffee!  Then along came the internet.

I have found that community of mothers I was seeking.  Online, I can talk to other mothers every day – even multiple times a day.  We can share stories, advice, recipes, anything really.  We all can do it when it is convenient for us to do so, and we can do it without having to step outside our front doors.  Seriously, all those naysayers who think the internet killed interpersonal communication have gotten it wrong.  We are communicating and our voices are growing stronger through the support from one another.

Moms with children who have learning disabilities or other special needs can reach out across the globe to help each other.  Moms who homeschool can swap resources and share stories.  There really are groups and ways to connect with pretty much any group of moms you are looking to meet.  Whether you live in a bustling city or out so rural the cows are your only neighbors, you can have a community of moms just like you.

Thank you to my community of moms from around the world.   

You mommas are amazing!

--To find groups for auditory processing disorder support, check out my post Facebook Auditory Processing Support Groups.  It has links to the groups themselves.

---And here is one I participate in for Dyslexia (There are probably more and feel free to comment and tell me them so I can update this.): Dyslexia Support Australia 

---Comment and let me know others and I'll gladly add them here as well.

*Daddies are great too, but it is mommas who seem to be connecting the most in my experiences.  Thank you to you daddies out there that are part of this global community of parenting as well.

A Call to Compassion: Stop the Bullying

(This didactic speech was inspired by my friend's child being bullied, and on a support group for children  with auditory processing disorder where she posted about it, parent after parent wrote: "It happened to my child too!" Pair that with what is happening everywhere we look in society, and I had to express my opinion. )

As a society, we need to take that next big step into enlightenment. What I mean by this is we need to stop comparing ourselves to others and garnering our self-worth from how much better we are at something than someone else, how much more attractive we are, how much wiser we think we are, or how much more money we have.  None of that matters!  We are all human beings and our self-worth needs to come from the knowledge that we are actively compassionate people who strive to do our best and recognize the value in ourselves as well as that in others.  It’s time to believe that there is room in this world for all of us to shine and one light does not extinguish another.

You see, I have read account after account of children being bullied by other children and unfortunately, sometimes by adults.  Why are they being bullied? They are being bullied because they can’t do something as well as another, they don’t have the same looks as someone else, or they somehow are different.  Some children, following the path that society has laid out to them as the right one, have learned to value themselves by putting down others.  They position themselves as a “leader” in a social setting by excluding others through actively harming them.  This creates the “haves” and the “have nots” that society is so fond of: the smart and the not smart, the pretty and the not pretty, the rich and the not rich, the whites and the not whites, the Christian and the not Christian, the American and the not American, the men and the not men.  Do you see where I am going here?  It’s all about comparison and nothing about compassion!

Of course, it is worse than just those actively bullying.  The others just stand aside and accept it.  Why?  Well of course it is for survival.  In a world where you are either a “have” or a “have not” and the “have nots” are tortured, most people actively align themselves with the “haves” no matter the cost.  The only ones who do not are the ones whom have already taken that next step and realized how ridiculously foolish and harmful the whole game is.  They have their self-worth in being a compassionate human being who values everyone (which does not mean everyone's ideas, beliefs, or actions - just that they are people who have some value in some way), and so they have the strength to not go along with the crowd – to stick up for the one being bullied.

It’s time to start actively pursuing this goal of compassion.  Start pursuing it on an individual basis.  Start actively teaching it to our children.  Start demanding it be reflected in our larger society.  How?  Support compassion where you see it: put your heart, your money, your work into compassion being practiced, whether it be the child sticking up for another at school, the business putting its profits into helping others, the politician refusing to support discriminatory laws, the movie where there are main characters eliciting kindness in others, the fashion magazine that showcases a variety of body images and price levels, the church that accepts everyone, etc.  Refuse to support intolerance!  Refuse to support those people and those entities drawing the line and categorizing into the “haves” and “have nots”.

Or as John Lennon put it so many years ago, "Give peace a chance."

-This article is cross-posted on both this blog and my personal blog as it is relevant to both.