My Attempt at an Introduction to Homeschooling

(((WARNING:  THIS IS VERY LONG!  I'm sorry, I just didn't know how else to get it out there.)))

As I sit and start to write about homeschooling, I feel overwhelmed with all the information I would like to impart and the daunting task of trying to make it understandable.  You see, there are so many, many different options when it comes to homeschooling your child.

Schools are designed with a particular curriculum that forces what exactly should be learned, how long it should take to learn it, when it should be introduced, when it should be mastered, how it should be presented, how it should be tested, etc.  When you homeschool, you get to make these decisions for your child. 

If you start reading about the philosophy of education, the history of education, child psychology and child development, you will find that there are really so many different opinions and attitudes on educating children.  Therefore, there are also a multitude of methods.  As a parent, you have so many options, you have to try to figure out what you think fits your philosophy, your style, and of course, the needs and style of learning for your child.

That being said, I have listed some links to various common homeschooling approaches at the bottom of this article for you to peruse at your leisure.  But remember, you can choose to do one in entirety, to pick and choose what you like from each, or to do something completely different altogether.  Governments do have requirements and they differ depending on where you live, but most homeschoolers have found it possible to do what they believe is best while still meeting the requirements of their particular government.

SOCIAL STUDIES, SCIENCE, AND BASICALLY LEARNING ABOUT THINGS:

For my family, we have taken an eclectic approach (that relies heavily on unschooling) with me encouraging learning different topics by showing an interest in them myself and providing the materials for study.  For example, when I wanted to explore the solar system, I started with a video on the solar system.  I invited my children to watch it with me and they did.  As we watched it, I expressed my enthusiasm, asked questions, and listened to them.  Then we went to the library and checked out some books on the solar system.  We looked through the pictures and read some of the books.   We acted out scenarios of what it would be like if someday people moved to a new planet in space. We made lego spaceships, my daughter painted a mural of a spaceship, my youngest son used his allowance to buy some little astronauts to play with.  We talked about what people used to believe when they believed the Earth was the center of the Universe and even when they thought it was flat!  A few days later, we went to our local science museum and watched a movie about some kids exploring the solar system in a cardboard box.  Then we went to the planetarium and saw the stars.  Eventually, I came home with Styrofoam balls, wire, and paints.  I had bought specific size balls to match the various sizes of the planets and so we had to look up in our books which ball should be which planets.  Then we looked at pictures of the planets and painted them appropriately.  Then we labeled them and even put some of the moons around them on toothpicks.  Finally, we created a giant solar system in the order from our sun and hung it from the ceiling in my sons’ room.  None of this was coerced or forced on the children in any way.  They could either participate or not, and like most children, they all eventually participated in every activity.  In fact, they loved it!  As a family, we were all essentially playing and learning together.  Now my children look back through our scrapbook of that time period and recall with pleasure the time we studied the solar system.

So this way of learning about things can be used for almost anything.  We’ve studied so many, many different things this way like Ancient Rome – which was tons of fun – and bugs, one that I as Momma did not enjoy as much because I personally do not care for holding and caring for bugs, but my children found immensely enjoyable.

As the children have gotten older, they have also discovered their own particular interests to study such as my boys’ love of weaponry and war strategy throughout the ages and my daughter’s desire to study origami and life drawing.  As Mom, I help them by helping them find resources such as books, documentaries, museums, classes, specialists, etc. I also listen to them which is a greatly overlooked tool for encouraging learning!  I listen to them tell me about all they have learned and all they are interested in.  I ask them questions and show interest in their interests.  You would be amazed at how much this simple task of truly listening to them helps them to express their interest, knowledge, questions, excitement, etc. about any topic. And of course I still play with them, make art with them, and let them teach me things they have learned how to do.

READING, WRITING, MATHEMATICS AND OTHER SKILLS:

So if you are unfamiliar with the concept labeled unschooling, you are probably wondering by now about the “hard academics” like reading, writing, and mathematics.  Well, these for us have strayed between unschooling, eclectic schooling, Waldorf and Montessori thinking, and traditional methods.  Being a public school teacher in my past, I was completely familiar with the “how tos” of teaching reading, writing, and mathematics.  So I have used those methods, but incorporated the non-coercion of unschooling, the wait for readiness of Waldorf and Montessori, and the be creative and flexible of eclectic.

(I fully plan on going into detail on teaching reading, writing, and mathematics to my child with auditory processing disorder in another post, but I wanted to introduce these basic concepts of  our homeschooling first.)

READING:

My children have all learned to read, write, and do mathematics at their own pace and schedule.  For instance, my oldest son learned how to read basic three letter words and easy reader type reading about age 7.  He didn’t care to learn more than that at that time and really relied a lot on sight reading as he had a fantastic memory.  However, by age 9 he realized that he needed help, because he couldn’t memorize every word and he wanted to read harder materials.  So, he spent one summer learning phonics in intensity.  I used phonetic based readers that built upon one another and phonics workbooks to teach him all those little rules to letter combinations such as vowel digraphs and syllabication.  He learned it easily and quickly, becoming an expert reader (i.e. what would be considered “grade level”) by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, during the time period he was not a strong reader himself, I read to him.  We would cuddle together and I would read whatever books he wanted me to read to him.  Sometimes, he would memorize a book just from listening to it and be able to read it back to me, even though he wasn’t truly reading – just repeating a familiar story.  This is okay, though, because it builds pre-reading skills such as book knowledge, story structure familiarity, grammar and language usage, and most importantly, develops a love of books and reading. (I still read to them sometimes and they read to me sometimes.  It is a nice way to connect with each other and have some one-on-one time.)

WRITING:

This same approach to teaching reading can also be used for writing.  My children write when they are interested in writing and I help them learn spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. as they have a need for it.  I also encourage writing by modeling it and sharing my writing with them or asking them if they would like to write a story with me.  I have also scribed for them many, many times before they could write well themselves.  By scribing for them (writing what they dictate to me), they get to concentrate on the creativity or message of their writing while I worry about those details like spelling and punctuation.  I do not correct their grammar as I encourage them to do that when we read back through what they have written and decide together if something sounds right or not.  As their spelling and writing skills have developed more, they start writing their own things without the need for me to scribe.  (Longer pieces I still scribe if they desire me to.)

Of course, I know a lot about writing.  So I utilize all that I know to help them as they are interested and as they are ready for the new information or skill.  For example, they may scribe/write a story.  Then we may read over it together and decide if it sounds good or not: does it make sense, is their some conflict to be resolved, does it get resolved, is the setting clearly present, do the characters seem real, do they change in the story, etc.  This is all done age appropriately and according to that child’s level of understanding making sure to not be overwhelming.  It should express my interest in their story and be something they want to discuss and develop, not a chore or me being critical in any way.  Sometimes the child will want to “make better” parts of the story and sometimes not.  I am always flexible and regard the story as their creative work and therefore they get to make all decisions on it.

MATHEMATICS:

We have played with numbers and mathematical concepts always.  We play games that encourage mathematical skills such as “Shut the Box”, “Yahtzee”, “Chess”, “Spectrangle”, “Dominoes”, and “Sorry”.  We played with tangrams, unifix cubes, geoboards, geo-solids, fraction bars, pattern blocks, scales, tape measurers, and every other kind of math manipulative we could get our hands on or create.  We read books about mathematical concepts like “Measuring Penny”, “Math Curse”, “The Doorbell Rang”, Sir Cumference and the Isle of Immeter”.  We watched television shows that incorporate mathematics like “Cyberchase”.  There are even some documentaries on mathematics and the history of numbers such as “The Story of 1".

We also use math workbooks.  Each of my children has asked to “do math” like their school friends do from time to time. (My daughter actually really loves to work in math workbooks and does it all the time.)  During these times, I teach them the specifics of doing mathematical computations on paper.  Because they already have the concepts due to our games and playtimes and movies and talks and real life experiences with mathematics, the paper and pencil computations are about the specifics of how to do it on paper.  This makes it much easier to do them as the concepts are already understood.

One example of how this works is the fact that my son wants to be a doctor, or at least he thinks he does at this point in his life.  He learned that doctors need to be good at math and science so he decided he needed to “do more math”.  So he and I spent time working in math workbooks.  He found the work easy to do and mastered multiple digit multiplication, adding and subtracting fractions, and comparing decimals in two weeks.  (He already knew the concepts and could multiply and divide in his head, as well as had done addition, subtraction, basic multiplication, identifying fractions, and comparing numerals, among other things, previously in workbooks.)  Then he decided to take a break and didn’t do any mathematical computations on paper for a few months, although he continued to do them in his head to play games and figure things out he needed.

EVERYDAY LIVING BUILDS ACADEMIC SKILLS AND MORE:

Reading, writing, and mathematics skills are learned and practiced through everyday living on top of being explicitly taught in our household.

My children spend time every day reading books, magazines, computer games, emails, etc.  They also build reading skills by watching movies; movies have similar concepts to written stories like characters, settings, plot development, conflict and resolution, protagonists, antagonists, etc.  We can watch movies and practice skills such as making predictions, analyzing characters, making connections to our own lives and other stories whether they be written in books or portrayed on a screen.  We have discussions and conversations to practice our use of language, build our vocabulary, develop skills in persuasion, compare and contrast, analogies, etc.  These everyday things all assist in developing their reading and writing skills. They also write e-mails and to chat in their on-line games as well.  (As they have gotten older, they have also become quite adept at researching on the internet.)

Mathematics is used in cooking, baking, planning, shopping, reading a calendar, reading a clock, predicting time, playing strategy games, reading maps, building things with wood or legos or anything else, making art, keeping a bank account ledger (yes they have their own notebooks to keep track of their allowance and expenditures), calculating tips, comparing prices, understanding interest on their personal loans from Mom, etc. (When we need paper and pencil to help figure out problems or to visualize them, I teach that skill at the time it is needed as well.)

BUT THERE IS SO MUCH MORE:

Wow, I have written so very little and yet I am over 2000 words!  I haven’t even spoken about social skills, life skills, physical education, character development as in my children’s character, dealing with life, keeping a positive self-esteem and outlook on life, using co-operatives and homeschooling social groups, and more.  I believe that homeschooling is something that one can always learn more about, develop into one’s own path and art form, change and alter, and continually build upon.  It is something simple and complex all at the same time.  I hope I have not scared anyone away and in fact have inspired you to think it is a wonderful new world you are excited to learn more about.

(Those details on specifically teaching to my daughter with auditory processing disorder will come soon, I promise.  Being that she does have some special needs for learning, there are things we have done and do that are extremely helpful.)

Here are some links on some different homeschooling styles:

• Unschooling: http://www.holtgws.com/unschooling.html

• Waldorf Homeschooling: http://www.christopherushomeschool.org/learning-more/articles-on-aspects-of-waldorf-education/articles-by-donna-simmons/introduction.html

• Montessori Homeschooling: http://www.montessori.edu/homeschooling.html 

• Traditional Homeschooling: http://www.hsunlimited.com/resources/homeschool-methods/traditional.php

• Classical Homeschooling: http://classicalhomeschooling.com/classical-homeschooling-first-issue/the-great-books-movement-a-return-to-the-classics/

• Online Homeschooling: http://www.k12.com/

• Eclectic Homeschooling: http://homeschooling.about.com/od/metheclectic/Methods_Eclectic_Homeschooling_Method.htm

• Charlotte Mason Homeschooling: http://simplycharlottemason.com/basics/what-is-the-charlotte-mason-method/

Homeschooling Our Child with Auditory Processing Disorder

Homeschooling has been the best decision we made for our daughter with Auditory Processing Disorder, Dyslexia, mild Sensory Processing Disorder, and mild Visual Processing Disorder. 

When she was the age to start kindergarten, the special education program at the school district she was in decided they wanted to drop her from their program; she would no longer qualify for an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and would be mainstreamed with absolutely no support or additional services such as speech therapy, which she still desperately needed.   Having been a first grade teacher myself for years and having taught kindergarten for student teaching as well as some substitute teaching, I knew the environment my child would be going into.  I also knew that she would not be likely to even tolerate it well.

She already came home from the special education preschool having meltdowns from her stressful half-day.  She already was not able to do the pre-academic work of the preschool, so how would she be able to do the kindergarten work.  She was still having problems with social interactions; her speech was not clear; and whenever I went to spy on her through the window in the door of her preschool classroom, she would be staring into space, completely tuned out to her surroundings.

There was no way I was going to subject my little girl to five days a week, seven hours a day of a classroom full of 20 children and one teacher with no support.  That was when we decided to homeschool our children. (When you teach one at home, we figured, you might as well teach the others.)

At home, I am fortunate enough to be able to work with each of my children one-on-one.  My daughter gets a completely individualized education plan; she works at her own pace, learns in the style that best fits her needs, takes breaks when she needs them, and when she needs the help of a specialist, we find her one.  (We paid for private speech therapy, listening therapy, a social skills group, vision therapy, and reading intervention.  My spouse is very fortunate to work for IBM, a company that has a program for children with special needs and reimburses its employees for 80% of the cost of services.)

In another post, I will tell of some of the strategies we have used for teaching her.  Suffice it to say that she is doing well academically at 11 years of age, has a relatively healthy self-esteem and awareness of her strengths and needs, has friends, and is growing into a young woman with good coping skills.

Accommodations for Chewing Gum and Other Sensory Needs Kids Have

Chewing gum and other things that help people lower their anxiety and process information better are finally getting recognized!

Remember when everyone in school was supposed to sit still and be quiet?  Well some teachers and schools are starting to realize that this does not work for all children.  Some need to move to think.  Some perform better with classical music playing in the background.  Some need to chew gum to lower their anxiety levels.

I am a homeschooling momma and I know that each of my three children are very different in their needs:

•  My daughter uses gum to lower her anxiety and focus better. She also requires absolute silence to read, do math, or basically anything that requires a lot of concentration. Noise is a horrible distraction for her and it raises her anxiety level tremendously. (Sit still and be quiet would be fantastic as long as she could chew her gum and fully understand the directions.)
• Her twin brother likes to pace as he processes and recalls information.  He says his brain just works better when he moves.  Making him sit still causes his brain to just freeze up; he’ll actually sit and stare at you while his body tenses-up in frustration.  (He would have been one miserable child in the classrooms of sit still and be quiet.)
•  My youngest child is so full of energy that he needs to be able to jump around, be loud, and move a lot during the day or else he explodes – like that extra energy is just boiling inside of him and needing a way out.  (If in school, I would say he would benefit from extra recess as his body needs that time of physical activity and being loud.)

wiggle seat

If your child needs something different than what your school is providing, talk to them.*  See if you can get a permit for your child to chew gum, move (walking or using a wiggle seat), have some sort of extra physical time (maybe a 3 minute break to run around), listen to classical music in head phones while working, use noise cancelling headphones for more quiet, have a visual blocker of some sort if he/she is visually distracted, or whatever else you think would be of benefit.

*There are parents whom have been successful in getting their schools or teachers to permit their child to have accommodations that make sense for that child.  These are usually granted with an IEP or 504 plan, but sometimes they will accommodate even without one of these.  For instance, neither of my boys would qualify for a 504 plan, but they still could use these accommodations if they were in a classroom environment.

Don’t Make Judgments about Things You Don’t Understand

There has been some talk among parents of children with Auditory Processing Disorder about the lack of tact that other adults exhibit sometimes.  It seems that there is a good amount of people who express judgments about APD without thinking about how their words are impacting the people around them.

Auditory Processing Disorder is very much an invisible disability. It is not something that people can see by looking at the person with APD, and with adequate coping skills, people with APD can appear to not be having any difficulties due to their APD. When they do have difficulties, non-understanding individuals sometimes attribute it to a lack of trying.

Most school districts are completely oblivious to Auditory Processing Disorder.  Many psychologists link APD to Attention Deficit Disorder and want to treat it as such.  Family and friends may think it is nothing other than the child being lazy or willfully not listening.  Others cannot see the disability and so treat it as if it is not there, which is good psychologically by not emphasizing the disability but rather the person, but not good when not providing understanding and adequate modifications when necessary.

These opinions and lack of understanding hurt the child with the disability and the parents of that child too.  When someone says things like “He’s just lazy”, “You let him get away with too much”, “Why doesn’t she try harder”, it is hurtful because it does not respect the person with APD’s hard work or the parent’s good parenting. 

When people say things like “It’s no big deal” it is also hurtful.  This statement does not respect the real struggles that people with Auditory Processing Disorder have to work through.

Conversely people who go to the other extreme and express pity and “I could never deal with that” attitudes also hurt.  Auditory Processing Disorder is not a death sentence and it doesn’t mean people with APD cannot live happy, successful lives.

Of course I cannot speak for all people, but my daughter with Auditory Processing Disorder (and Dyslexia) wishes to be treated as a “normal” girl who has a disability that sometimes interferes with her ability to process language.  She wants understanding and not pity.  She wants people to understand that she is smart, capable, works hard, and just needs some more time or different ways to get things done sometimes.  Other times, she can do things exactly like anyone else.

How Mathematics are More Difficult For My Child with Dyslexia, APD, and VPD

It may be obvious how reading would be more difficult for a child with Dyslexia, Auditory Processing Disorder, and Visual Processing Disorder but have you ever thought about mathematics?  There are four areas of difficulty when doing mathematics that my child has to pay extra special attention to. 

1. Word problems:  The most obvious way Dyslexia, APD, and VPD trip up a child when doing mathematics is in the word problems.  Whether they are written or spoken problems, the child has to read or listen to them correctly and understand them correctly in order to know what to do. 
2. Reading the numbers:  People don’t think about the fact that written numerals are a language in which specific notations represent a specific number.  A child with Dyslexia, APD, and VPD can read the numerals incorrectly; 26 may appear as 62 or 56.  If a number is read incorrectly, how can the correct answer be found?  Also, if a number in a sequence is skipped, again the answer will be wrong.
3. Writing the numbers:  Just like reading the numbers, the Dyslexic, APD, and VPD child may write the numeral incorrectly; 26 may be written as 62 or 56. (This one is a common difficulty for my child and she has to pay extra attention to whether or not she is writing the correct numerals in the correct place.) If the wrong number is written or written in the wrong place, the answer will not be correct.
4. Remembering how to compute correctly:  The child who has short term memory problems (common to Auditory Processing Disorder) will have difficulty remembering how to do something until it is finally stored in the long term memory. This is especially true for multi-step processes that are common in mathematics.  Therefore if how to multiply multiple digits was taught yesterday, and even though the child managed to do it correctly yesterday, does not mean the child will remember how to do it today.

Knowing that these four aspects to mathematics may be a problem for a child with Dyslexia, Auditory Processing Disorder, and Visual Processing Disorder, what can be done?

1. Give more time:  The biggest help for a child with APD, VPD and Dyslexia in doing mathematics is to have more time to do each problem.  With more time, the child can carefully reread problems and numbers to make sure he or she is reading, interpreting, and writing correctly.
2. Reteach concepts and practice consistently:  Do not assume just because the skill was mastered yesterday that it will even be remembered today.  Reteach the skill without condemning the child for not remembering.  Reteach the skill until the child does not need to be retaught anymore.  It will happen; the skill will eventually reach the long term memory and the child will be able to do it without help and reteaching one day.  Be patient.
3. Use visuals and/or kinesthetics when teaching mathematical concepts and skills: Children with Auditory Processing Disorder have poorer auditory processing skills and are usually much stronger with visuals and kinesthetics. (My dauthter's VPD is very mild and pretty much limited to letters and numerals.  We have used a lot of drawings, hands on work with objects, Cuisenaire rods, place value blocks, and movement when she was younger for things like basic addition.)
4.  Teach in small chunks:  Smaller pieces of information will be better retained by the short term/working memory and thereby be more usable to the child.  Too much information will simply be overwhelming.  

Given the right circumstances and the time to learn mathematics, my daughter has proven that she is very capable of doing well.  She can grasp the concepts, memorize the processes over time, and use mathematics in her every day life.

* For more information on how to help children with short term memory difficulties, visit the National Center for Learning Disabilities: http://www.ncld.org/types-learning-disabilities/executive-function-disorders/how-to-help-child-with-weak-working-memory

* Here is an article by the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity about Math Struggles:  http://dyslexia.yale.edu/math.html

* Here is a really inclusive article about dyslexia and mathematics from Dyslexia Scotland via Oban High School:: http://www.obanhigh.argyll-bute.sch.uk/Websites/SchSecObanHigh/UserFiles/File/dyslexia%20materials/3_9_19HelpWithMaths.pdf

Personal Notes and Feelings About this Piece:

Since I cannot pinpoint exactly which one of her diagnoses (APD, Dyslexia, or VPD) is the culprit of these problems, I have decided to include them all.

I also have to put in a caveat here that my daughter does have short term memory problems for things like language and mathematics yet her short term memory for things like pictures, feelings, physical movements, and events is incredibly strong.  She has also grown very strong at quickly memorizing the spellings of words via her understanding of phonics and utilization of chunking common spelling patterns.   I suppose all this tells me is that each child is unique and the definitions cannot apply straight across the board and/or she has learned compensatory strategies for some things.

Why Auditory Processing Disorder Makes Reading Difficult

Guest post by Bonnie Landau

Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) is not an issue with hearing sounds, but an issue with how the brain interprets the sounds that are heard. The challenges most often arise with spoken speech since the differences between sounds can be subtle and therefore more difficult for an individual with APD to detect. The presence of background noise can make this even more difficult.

But even without background noise, people with APD are often have difficulty distinguishing differences between similar parts of speech.  For example, you can say “Please go to your room and get your red coat,” and the person may hear “Please go on your broom and get your bed note.”

Research has shown that APD effects the ability to distinguish specific sounds, or phonemes, within speech. This causes speech to be perceived as “muddied” or “blending all together.”  As a result, when children with APD begin to read, they have difficulty learning the distinct sounds that are used to make words.

Muddied sounds makes for inconsistent learning
When a child is learning to read, the first part of that process is teaching the sounds (phonemes), and how they relate to the letters (graphemes). This is known as the alphabetic principal. In addition, the child must master phonologic awareness, or the ability to break words apart (decoding) into their phonemes and put them together (blending) to make the word.

Since children with APD often perceive similar sounds as the same, this can make it very difficult for them to learn the specific phoneme pronunciations. As a result it is very difficult for them to learn how to decode the sounds in a word.

Environment contributes to the inconsistency
Because environment effects how a child with APD interprets sounds, the classroom environment can further hamper the learning process. What they learn one day with a quiet room can sound very different the next day when the air conditioning has been turned on. When you read to your child at home it sounds very different than in a classroom of 30 kids all rustling and making noise. This inconsistenct input makes learning a struggle.

A child without APD is presented with phonics and reading exercises which are the same day-to-day. A child with APD is faced with exercises that can sound very different day-to-day. This clearly causes confusion, frustration and an extreme slowing of the learning process.

Kids with APD compensate with sight reading
Kids with APD are often very bright, and to bypass this inconsistent learning situation, they will often rely on their visual strengths to help them learn to read. As a result, they will not bother with the breaking apart (or decoding) of the words, but instead learn the word in its entirety, like memorizing a picture. The child may still struggle to hear the different words, but there is less confusion than breaking the word into specific phonemes.

At first this technique is an effective coping strategy, but as the volume of words turns into 1,000’s of words, reading becomes cumbersome and slow as they continually have to access this visual memory bank. In addition, when faced when an unknown word, the child has no tools for deciphering the word and must rely on others to teach new words.

Around a third of children try to read by sight recognition of the words and we call that pattern Optilexia. Some of them have auditory weaknesses, like APD, while others just have great visual memories and so memorizing words seems the easiest way to deal with inconsistent English spelling.

57% of kids with APD have reading difficulties
A lot of research has been done to identify causes of reading difficulties in children. Recent studies have identified a causal relationship between APD and problems learning to read (Sharma et al., 2009; Watson et al., 1993; Wright et al., 2000). In 2009 Sharma et al. did a study of 68 children diagnosed with APD. 57% of these children were found to have a reading disorder. 47% of these children were found to have a language disorder in addition to the reading difficulties.

Helping a child with APD learn to read
Clearly the auditory-only approach taken by most schools is not the optimum learning environment for a child with APD. It is best to supplement their reading instruction with a modality that engages the visual and/or kinesthetic approaches in order to expand ways the child can learn phonemes and decoding. By engaging the other senses the child has a way to verify decoding, and they can progress more rapidly in learning to read.

It is important to not use reading programs that involve a lot of language or word-structure rules which require even more auditory memory for the children. For example, having to remember a silent ‘e’ at the end of the word makes the vowel say its name.  Modalities that layer language rules on top of reading rules requires more short-term memory processing,  which children with APD often struggle with.

It would be optimum to understand the child’s strongest learning style, and choose a program that fits this strength. Then the child can have a structure that will be engaging as well as assisting in learning to read.

Bonnie is a mom to 2 boys, one of whom was diagnosed with APD. She manages the USA office for the Easyread System, a new approach to providing reading help and spelling help for children who have dyslexia, reading problems or are visual learners.

What is Your Face Expressing? Teaching Body Language Awareness

Have you ever thought about how the expression on your face influences how other people react to you? 

I’ve been watching my daughter in different situations and it dawned on me that when she is feeling uncomfortable or nervous, such as in a group situation or meeting someone new, she looks down and has an almost frown/almost grimace on.  I’ve asked what she is feeling when she looks like that and she said she’s a little nervous, but that’s it.  If I were not someone who knew my daughter well, I’d assume from the look on her face that she was grumpy.

My daughter has always been extremely good at reading facial expressions and so I just assumed she was aware of her own.  This incident made me realize that the two skills are not the same.  So very carefully, I initiated a discussion about facial expressions.  We played with different ones and said what we thought as observers of these expressions.  Together we decided that a grumpy looking face is not one that we would feel very comfortable going up to and starting a conversation with.  In fact, we’d probably avoid that person.

Now my sweet daughter who tends to get a little nervous is trying to remember to look up and smile when she is around new people or in a group.  Of course, she still puts on the grumpy face sometimes because it is hard to not do what one is so conditioned to doing.  It takes a lot of courage to smile and look up when you are feeling like maybe you’d rather just hide.  But the reality is she doesn’t want to hide; she wants to socialize, she’s just a little nervous.

Have you realized how your facial expressions affect those around you and influence how they treat you?  How did you learn to make yourself aware of what you were expressing and if it was what you wanted to be expressing?