Empathy, Bullying, and Recalling Emotions

“I just feel what she must have felt.  It’s too sad.  I understand why she killed herself.  I felt that sad before too, when I was bullied……But I just knew I wanted to live; she didn’t!”

Wow, I was struck dumb by my sweet twelve year old girl, tears streaming down her face, her body tense with anxiety, as she said that to me.

We were watching a movie called “The Hours” about three women in different time periods.  The first woman was Virginia Woolf, the author of many books including Mrs. Dalloway.  The movie parts about her were based on her true story as known from the detailed diaries she kept.  Virginia Woolf had a history of depression and possibly was bipolar; she ended her own life by putting stones in her pockets and walking into a river, to drown herself.

We were barely into the movie when my sweet girl had this horrible episode of extreme empathy.   At her request, we turned off the movie and talked for a just a little bit before finding something fun and uplifting to watch instead.

It really hit me then how much the bullying really affected her.  It was over three years ago now, but she can recall the emotions so vividly.  She was sad, she felt lower than low, and she thought about death as an option.  Luckily, she had a strong desire to live!

We spent a lot of time working through those feelings years ago when they happened.  We focused on building her self-esteem up again and she is such a happy girl now.  I guess it shocked me to recall those feelings with her.

Now my sweet girl Hailey says she knows that “Even when life gets sad and you feel like you will never be happy again, you just have to believe that you will.  Because you will get happy again – I did!  Now I’m like this really happy person. Don’t you think Mom?”

“Yes, Hailey!  Yes I think you are a happy person and your ability to empathize with others is a precious gift you will learn to manage in time.  You can use it in your art whether it be drawing, painting, writing, baking, or even the artistry of living your life.”

Phonemic Awareness for my Child with Auditory Processing Disorder and Dyslexia

I wanted to touch on reading skills again and the immense troubles Hailey had learning how to read.  You see, I was a first grade teacher for years before I decided to stay home with my own children and I had been trained in teaching children phonemic awareness, phonics, and various approaches to reading and comprehension skills.  I used these same techniques on my own children from the beginning as I was reading to them as infants.

The trouble for Hailey started very young.  When she was just a toddler, she would get angry at me for reading to her.  She wanted to look at the pictures, but when I read the words, she would get mad and put her hand on my mouth to let me know she wanted me to be quiet.

As for phonemic awareness, she could not understand what I was asking her to do at all.  We played with sounds like identifying the beginning sounds of word: bananas, babies, bottles, etc.  I had toys to go with them; I had plastic letters; we played scavenger hunt games for them; and much more, but she just could NEVER do it.  Her twin brother loved it and picked it up like it was second nature.

No matter what I tried, Hailey just had no phonemic awareness.  To her, many letter sounds sounded all the same.  She could not tell the difference between sounds like /b/, /p/, /d/, /t/.  I was dumbfounded and had no idea what to do.  

I managed to locate a reading specialist about 40 minutes drive from our house who was a retired reading specialist from the public school system and now was offering private tutoring.  I made an appointment for her to see Hailey and give her some testing.  She had been trained in using The Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing® (LiPS®) Program for Reading, Spelling, and Speech and believed it would be the best solution for Hailey.

So Hailey and I started going to her once a week for an hour long lesson.  She would send home homework for us to do during the week.  The real key to this program which made everything finally make sense to Hailey was the way she taught Hailey to identify letter sounds by their oral motor sensations and the visual look when seeing someone make those sounds.  She could identify /p/ by the way the lips go together and a breath is formed at the front of the mouth and blown through the lips.  /b/ on the other hand, has a sound created in the throat that goes through closed lips and /t/ has the sound formed in the front of the mouth like /p/ but it goes through the teeth and the tongue goes up behind the teeth in front.  It sounds complicated, but for Hailey this made absolute sense and she picked it up incredibly quick.

This way of identifying sounds by their oral motor sensations and the way they look on others when being made brought Hailey the phonemic awareness she needed.  She finally could identify the different phonemes in words, rhyme words, and read words!

Not every child  with Auditory Processing Disorder has this same problem with phonemic awareness or the inability to hear the distinct letter sounds.  But if your child cannot rhyme, identify the beginning sound in words, or otherwise seems to think you are crazy when trying to teach them these things, it might be worth looking into.


-----I just wanted to add a link to the reading specialist we used in case anyone lives in the Detroit Metropolitan Area: Macomb Tutoring, LLC.

Larger, Darker Font Makes Reading with Visual Processing Disorder Easier

Good News!  

Hailey has discovered the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and is devouring them as fast as she did the graphic novels.  She said the letters don't jump around on the pages and it's interesting and fun to read.  I think the fact that the letters are of a darker and larger font on slightly yellowed paper makes a big difference for her visual processing.

(The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books by Jeff Kinney are in the fifth grade reading level range.  So the fact that she is a sixth grader reading them fluently - yes she is reading them at a fluent speed and not slightly slower - is wonderful!)

UPDATE: I was told the Kindle Fire enables you to change the font size and color of the text as well as the background "paper" color.  I want to find out more about people's results with using this feature, especially if you have a visual processing disorder or dyslexia.  So if you can tell me anything that might help, I'm ready to listen!

Pictures Of Hailey: Premature Twin to 12 Year Old Girl

I thought I'd share a couple photos of my daughter whom you have been reading about:

Premature Twin shown here at 13 days old: (She's the one on top.)

And now, a healthy 12 year old girl: (Her twin brother is in the background.)

We Need to Educate ALL Children About Learning Disabilities and Other Differences

Girl 1:  "Jimmy chews erasers at school, ewwweee."

Adult:  "Really?"

Girl 1:  "Yeah, he's the weird kid in the corner."

Girl 2:  "He has a quiet corner away from everyone else.  And he wears big headphones."

Girl 1:  "He also has a special blanket and mat thingy.  He's really weird."

Adult:  "Do the other kids play with him?"

Girl 1: "No......(she becomes lost in thought).....There is this one girl in school who is a real bully."

And then the topic went on to bullying.  This conversation I had with some school age girls I know was enlightening for me.  I realized that my daughter could have been "the weird kid in the corner" had she went to elementary school.  Certainly at ages five to seven, she got stressed easily, needed sensory input, liked to chew on things - even non-edible things, would have needed noise cancelling headphones, and probably would have spaced out a lot.  It broke my heart really.

So, me being me, I let them tell me about the bully at their school and we discussed why people bully and what they can do about it.  Then we segued back to the boy in the corner.  We talked about how he might be feeling stressed and needed the headphones, blanket, and mat to help him feel better. My daughter told them about her headphones and briefly about her Auditory Processing Disorder and Dyslexia.

Hopefully it helped.  I think it did to some extent, however I am sure they are not going to rush over and befriend the "weird boy in the corner" anytime soon.  Maybe though, they will at least have some compassion for him and stick up for him sometime.

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We need to educate all children about learning disabilities and disorders.  There is a real need for books for kids about processing disorders and learning disabilities.  Other children need to understand that kids aren't "weird" to annoy them or be made fun of or take the teacher's attention inordinately.  What a difference it would make for all the children!

Loraine Alderman and Yvonne Capitelli wrote a book for children about a child with Auditory Processing Disorder.  It is the first book about APD written for children and I hope it helps many children understand this disorder/learning disability better. Here is a link to the book if you are interested: I Get It!  I Get It! How John Figures It Out

(I've also added an Amazon widget on the right sidebar with some books about children with learning disabilities or other disabilities/differences.)

No Mean Girls Here! My Daughter's Successful Party

The party began with nine girls sitting around the kitchen table, cutting fondant with cookie cutters, painting with colored frosting, and designing their own personality onto cupcakes as their moms chatted quietly standing around the edges.

This was the first party my daughter had thrown in over three years.  She invited many of her homeschooled friends that live in this area.  Luckily, almost all of them were able to make it to the party.  Some of them knew each other, but none of them except my daughter knew all of them - although a few she didn’t know very well.

The girls were all engaged in their work and seemed content, but would they connect with each other?   Would they enjoy each other’s company? 

As the party continued, the moms sauntered into the living room or out into the backyard.  Some moms stayed in the kitchen to help themselves to cupcake designing while the girls moved on to other projects. (Some moms were quite talented at it too!) Mostly, the moms tried to stay out of the girls’ way so they could mingle and connect in their own ways.

Some girls danced to the Xbox Kinect game in the living room; some chose to sing karaoke in my daughter’s bedroom; and some went to jump on the trampoline in the backyard.  At first I was worried these groups would become static and the girls would not move outside of their social comfort zones, but I need not have worried.  Soon the girls were moving among the groups and getting to know each other more.

It was a success!  My sweet girl, who just a little over a year ago felt she had so very few friends, threw a party and everyone seemed to enjoy it.  Her friends all got along with each other, were kind and engaging, and my daughter felt the joy of being with a group of friendly girls.

(My daughter suggested the title "No Mean Girls Here" because she wanted to reference the difference between this group of friends and the one she had almost three years ago where they ended up being unkind to her.)

Tips for Homeschooling a Child with Auditory Processing Disorder

YOU HAVE TIME:

No matter what style of homeschooling you choose, the best tip I have to offer is to remember that you have time!  Do not compare your child’s current skills to where he or she “should” be according to the standards of traditional schooling, because you are not doing traditional schooling. (The only exception to this is if you are planning on putting your child into traditional school at some point.)  If you plan on continuing to homeschool, you have as long as it takes for your child to learn what he or she needs to learn to function as an adult, go to college, get a job, or anything else that is to come in the future.

To ease your parent mind on making sure your child eventually learns everything you think he or she needs to know (or to meet the requirements of your government), you can do research on curriculum by using the internet, buying a curriculum planner, getting information from your local school district, or if you work with an umbrella school by asking them.  This curriculum can be used as your internal guide of what overall is to be learned, but I would recommend not worrying about the timelines they have established; your child might learn some things slower and some things faster and all of that works just fine in homeschooling.  Also, use their suggestions of activities or methods as you desire, but remember that there are multiple ways to accomplish the same goals and multi-sensory is the best approach for your child with Auditory Processing Disorder.

DEALING WITH SHORT TERM MEMORY PROBLEMS AND AUDITORY FATIGUE REQUIRES A MULTI-SENSORY APPROACH, SHORTER TIME SPENT ON EACH INDIVIDUAL “LESSON”, REPETITION, AND MORE DOWNTIME:

Children with Auditory Processing Disorder often have problems with short term memory, also called working memory.  Due to this, they often need repetition to learn things.  Just because they understood how to add on Monday, does not mean they will understand it on Wednesday.  However, once that skill/information is transferred to long term memory, the child will have it permanently.  The best way to deal with this is to teach in smaller increments, but with repetition. 

Another great way to help deal with short term memory issues is to use a multi-sensory approach.  The more senses that are involved in learning a task, the more likely the information will be retained.  So do not just sit at a desk and use a pencil and paper to add.  Plan activities that involve visuals, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, taste, touch, music, and basically anything and everything you can think of.

Children with Auditory Processing Disorder often get fatigued easily from having to concentrate on auditory input and output.  Therefore, your child will not do well with long lectures, boring textbooks that drone on in a language based imparting of information, or being forced to memorize passages. These are strong auditory skill based methods that are not for children with weak auditory skills.  Find alternatives to learning things such as hands on methods (re-enactment places, hands on science museums, making things, planting a garden, taking care of bugs, etc), watching movies or documentaries with lots of visuals, and acting out information (like pretending to be a settler on a prairie rather than just reading about one). When you do read things for information, take it in smaller chunks, and stop along the way to make sure the information is being understood.  Most importantly, do not overwhelm your child with too much new information at once; your child with Auditory Processing Disorder processes information differently and needs to digest things slowly in manageable chunks.

As children with APD get fatigued from auditory input and have problems with short term memory, another strategy we have used that works very well is to do a little learning of new information in as multi-sensory a way as possible, and then take a break.  During that break, just relax and have fun doing something that does not require concentration or auditory input, does not impart a skill or knowledge that “must be learned”, and is something your child feels safe, comfortable, and confident doing.  Your child needs that downtime so much more than you can imagine.

FOR VISUAL LEARNERS, FIRST TEACH THE CONCEPT/WHOLE PICTURE, THEN ADD THE DETAILS:

As most children with Auditory Processing Disorder are visual/spatial learners, they do well learning larger concepts and overall knowledge that they can then apply the details to.  For this reason, unit studies work well because they can continue on one topic at a time, gathering a broader view of the topic while there is no competing new, unrelated information having to be processed at the same time.

Here is a link to a homeschooling blog that describes how unit studies can work: What is a Unit Study?

For skill such as reading, writing, and mathematics, you can teach the concepts of the skill (why we do it) before you teach how to do it.  A child has no reason to learn how to add if he or she does not understand the purpose for it.  There will be no place to put that information without a place holder for it.  The place holder in the brain is the “why”.  Children live in life just like adults and they can grasp the concept of adding when they say they want one more cookie.  They have this experience of wanting another cookie that is already in their long term memory, so it acts as a foundation for adding the new information called addition.  Using real life skills and experiences works the best for teaching children the concepts of reading, writing, and mathematics.

CO-EXISTING CONDITIONS AND WHY YOU NEED TO BE FLEXIBLE:

Many children with Auditory Processing Disorder have other co-existing conditions such as Visual Processing Disorder, Dyslexia, Sensory Processing Disorder, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, Dyspraxia, Attention Deficit Disorder, and many other possibilities.  Therefore, you might have to address these issues in relation to teaching your child as well.  The best advice I have is to become familiar with your child’s strengths and areas of weakness; know the details to the conditions your child has (and remember that even within a label, every child is not exactly the same), and be flexible.  If something doesn’t work, try to figure out why and change it.  Be willing to try new things and see what works well for your child.  Along those lines, remember that each child’s personality and personal interests are also a big part of their learning.

THE ENVIRONMENT FOR LEARNING IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR THE CHILD WITH AUDITORY PROCESSING DISORDER:

One of the primary symptoms of Auditory Processing Disorders is the inability to filter out background noises.  Therefore, it only makes sense that a child with APD would do best concentrating in a quiet environment.  This is especially important when focusing on skills such as reading.  When my daughter with APD reads or works independently on something like a math worksheet, she wears noise reducing headphones to block out noise.  When her and I are working together to learn something, we try to keep the background noise to a minimum as much as possible (when we are at a location such as an aquarium, we try to stay away from the crowds).

If my daughter with APD is starting to get stressed, she chews gum and/or we light a scented candle.  These help to relax her.  (Other kids might need to get up and move around or use a wiggle seat.)

My daughter tends to get annoyed with visual distractions as well; she also has mild Visual Processing Disorder where she actually tends to focus better on things in her peripheral vision rather than her central vision.  Therefore, we also try to keep her visual environment calm – not too much movement going on around her.  Just like APD, her VPD seems to bother her most under stressful situations like working on something that is very difficult for her.

DO NOT BE AFRAID TO CONTACT OTHERS OR USE EXPERTS AS NEEDED:

When my daughter was learning to read, I thought for sure I could teach her.  I am a credentialed teacher who taught first grade for years.  I taught many, many children how to read.  I studied all the methods and thought I knew all I needed to know about teaching her to read.  Despite all my education and experience, I was not successful.  She needed something that I simply did not know.

It turns out that along with her APD, she also has Dyslexia.  Her particular combination of APD and Dyslexia made it impossible for her to distinguish the different sounds in phonemes.  She cannot hear the difference between sounds like /sh/ and /ch/ or /wh/ and /h/ and so many more.   She needed to learn a very different way of identifying those sounds.  This way for her was a program called the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program (LiPS).  We hired a reading specialist who knew this program and used it, along with a strong Orton Gillingham approach, to teach our daughter how to read.  I sat in on all the lessons and learned how to work with her at home.

This was also the time we found out she also had a Visual Processing Disorder and we utilized a specialist to do some vision therapy with her as well.

BUILD SUCCESS:

Your child needs to feel successful.  Above all else, make sure you find ways for your child to feel success.  Like Rick Lavoie, educator, author, motivational speaker, says in his presentation When the Chips are Down, if your child is great at screwing things in, make sure you loosen all the screws in your house so he can do something he feels successful at.

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I hope some of this information is helpful to you in some way.  If you have more specific questions, I will do my best to answer them.   I am not an authority on teaching children with Auditory Processing Disorder, but I am a mother who has been doing just that for many years now.

Here are a few links to other posts I have written specifically about reading and mathematics and one to our overview of homeschooling in general.

Why Auditory Processing Disorder Makes Reading Difficult  (A guest post written by Bonnie Landau)

It Shouldn't Be This Hard: How One Girl with APD Learned to Read

Graphic Novels Have Made My Pre-Teen a Book Lover

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

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

My Attempt at an Introduction to Homeschooling