Auditory Processing Disorder: The World is Not as Accommodating as We Moms Are

Since Hailey has been taking classes at the homeschool center once a week, I am getting to sit back and just watch her experiences and interactions in ways I haven't before.  I have always been right there beside her, helping her throughout it all.  Now, I see her sit in her class and listen to the teacher (I got to sit in on a class today).  I see her in the hallways.  I see the other children in the classrooms.  I see the other children in the hallways.

I am starting to feel emotions that I haven't felt for a while now.  I am realizing just how much we have organized our family and our homeschooling and even our socializing to accommodate her needs as a person with auditory processing disorder.  We don't even realize we are doing it anymore!  It has become so natural to us.

At "school" (the homeschool center), no one accommodates her needs (not that some of them don't try - they do).  The teacher talks and walks around the room, rambling in long sentences that are circular in theme and connected by only simple threads and tangents as she weaves her web of a story to showcase the point she wants to make.  There is nothing wrong in this way the teacher is talking; in fact it is a very common way people talk when they are just "speaking off the cuff" or rather just talking without a plan of what exactly they are wanting to say and how to get to it.  The other children just listen and seem to follow along to some extent.  Some of the kids jump in with responses to her story or sharing of their own similar experiences.  It is casual and free and a lovely open discussion.  However, for someone with auditory processing disorder, it is too hard to follow. The linearity of the story is lost as moments and details are remembered and added in.  The purpose for listening is lost as it is told at the end rather than the beginning.  The jumping in of others (which brings an interactive component for the other children) just makes it that much more confusing as new stories are presented in the middle of the unfinished original one.  I felt sorry for my sweetheart sitting there lost and bored, I imagined.  The other kids could appreciate the conversational style, but my child with auditory processing disorder found nothing but confusion in it.

In the hallways, the children stand and chat with one another.  Their voices mix and mingle like a choreographed dance of speakers seeming to talk over one another and yet all seem to still be able to follow and understand.  They laugh and smile and seem genuinely happy to be there with one another.  My sweetie with auditory processing disorder stands there lost, with vacant eyes and in silence. Someone will smile at her or touch her shoulder and she will momentarily smile and her eyes will light up, only to hide again in the din of the conversation.  When I ask her about it, she says she likes the kids, but she doesn't understand what they say.

Inside my momma bear wants to barge in to every situation and say "Talk slower.  Talk in phrases. Make sure she understands before you move on.  Don't talk over one another. Use visuals." Yet, I know this is not the right approach.  My sweet girl is almost 13 and she will run into this her entire life!  She has to decide how she wants to handle it, if she wants to handle it.

For classes, of course, we can ask for accommodations that will help her to learn what she wants to learn and do the assignments.  In social exchanges, she will have to speak up and ask others to slow down when she wants or just not understand when she doesn't feel the need to understand but simply to just be there. With her good friends, she does ask them to repeat themselves or speak slower or explain things if she doesn't understand.  In just the group-you-find-yourself-in situations, she says she doesn't really care.

So all this long ramble is to say that I, the mom, am feeling distressed by her situation.  She, the one with auditory processing disorder, is actually handling it all better than me.  She doesn't expect to understand everything and she's okay with that.

Meanwhile, I'm hiring a private sign language tutor to see if this will help her in any way.  She likes the sign language she has taught herself through books and videos, so we're going to try diving more into this as a possible option.  (Update:  I have been reading that "language disorders" (such as Mixed Expressive Receptive Language Disorder which Hailey was diagnosed with at age 6) often cross over into sign language as well as oral language.  Bummer!  We will still pursue the sign language, though, as it might prove helpful all the same.  I'll be sure to let you all know.)

APD Makes Classroom Learning Hard: Having Auditory Processing Disorder and Taking Classes after Homeschooling

As many of you know, Hailey (7th grade) wants to take community college classes as a high-schooler, which is in two years.  So we found a local homeschool center that offers classes to homeschoolers and she signed up for tennis, 3-D art, theater improv, and creative writing.  This way she will have some exposure to taking classes before taking college level classes. (And she really is loving just having the experience of going to school and taking classes and eating lunch with her friends.)

This experience is really showing her and us just how much her auditory processing disorder affects her in a classroom environment.  None of us really could have guessed how difficult some aspects of a classroom learning experience would be.

As Hailey has some great coping skills and really relies a lot on the visual information she is inputting, she is doing very well in the tennis and 3-D art classes.  She says that although she doesn't necessarily understand what the teachers are saying, she can see what they are demonstrating and so knows what to do.  She has always done well at both art and anything physical.

The problems for Hailey are in the creative writing class and the theater improv class.  The areas of difficulty so far are in understanding what is being taught orally, clearly knowing the directions told, and reproducing the spoken or written work under the pressure of time.

The creative writing class is taught by the teacher reading a poem and talking about the use of literary devices such as metaphor, simile, personification, etc.  She tells the students what a quatrain is and reads an example.  So everything is being told to them and at most, they have a sheet in front of them.  The problem is that the sheet is just of the poem being read and so it helps, but it doesn't teach Hailey what a metaphor is for example; she would have to understand what the teacher is saying to get it.  The homework is also told to the students at the end of class.

The theater improv class has the students working in groups and doing improvisational type skits; although not completely improv as they do get to do some planning and preparing before they do their skit.   This is very fun and Hailey is enjoying it, but again she is not processing everything and so tells me that she just lets the others take the lead and she has very few lines.  She says that she can understand the themes and emotions by the body language and so uses that as her guideline as well as in the groups, the other students do make sure she knows what is going on so that she can perform her part.

In creative writing, she has to write in class as well as at home. The writing at home is something she actually looks forward to doing and does well.  She has all the time she needs and she can get help as needed.  In class, she feels pressured to write in the limited time frame given and this worry makes it so that she cannot remember how to spell even simple words and she says she even has trouble just making it look neat on the paper. This was shocking to me as she has good handwriting and has always taken great strides to make her handwriting neat and legible.  She is also a good speller (which is not that common in people with APD it seems) and so I think her and I were both shocked that she would have these problems.

In theater improv class, the teacher has them practice things like accents and tongue twisters and speaking backwards and really fun things like that which makes a lot of sense for a theater class. However, Hailey's APD makes it even more difficult for her to process these and forget having her try to do them; she can say a tongue twister for example if she practices it a lot and even then she has to say it slowly, but on the spot and fast is simply impossible.

So we are taking advice from all our schooled friends with APD (those on the Facebook APD support groups) and asking for accommodations that may help Hailey in her classes.  My hope is that we can do all the experimenting at these homeschool center classes and then be prepared and ready for community college in a few years.

So far we are going to record the creative writing class so that Hailey can bring it home and we can go over it together.  I can then teach her whatever was taught in class.  She is also going to type her in-class writing and e-mail it to her teacher so that she feels less constrained by time, because typing is faster than handwriting and she doesn't have to worry about making it neat.

In theater improv class, the teacher is now aware of the APD issues and will hopefully make sure Hailey works in a group that helps her be her best as well as she won't keep asking her to do tongue twisters; maybe she can focus on more gestures and body language in acting skills.

I'll certainly keep you all updated on what we discover works and what doesn't.  I do feel very grateful that Hailey has her background of being homeschooled and knowing that she is very smart and capable of learning and accomplishing whatever she wants to do.  I fear that if she hadn't had this successful background to discover herself and feel assured of herself, these experiences of not understanding in class would be too hard on her.

My heart goes out to all the children with APD who go to school everyday to sit in a class where they do not understand what is being taught.  My hope is that more and more teachers are using a multi-sensory approach to teaching and not relying on auditory input only.  Our children with APD are smart and capable and just need to be taught in a way that works for them.

Curriculum in the Homeschool: What We Have Used for Our APD Daughter for Mathematics

So this post is a day later than I had planned, but I finally have time to sit down and write it.

Mathematics is one of those things that I have found people think about in very different ways.  It sometimes amazes me the way that people can solve a mathematics problem in a way that seems so bizarre to me, but it works.  The reason is because our brains don't all solve problems the same way.  Therefore, I find that mathematics must allow for each child to discover what way works best for his/her brain.

Also remember that  children with APD (auditory processing disorder) need to have visuals and/or kinesthetics to help due to the difficulties with auditory processing.

So keeping all this in mind, I have been very eclectic with mathematics.  All of my children think differently about it and solve problems in their own ways.  My sweet girl Hailey (who has APD)  is very visual and so conceptualizes as well as solves the problems really by picturing things in her mind. For this reason, we have done a lot of hands-on, real world learning with mathematics as well as used manipulatives and pictures.

The Early Years:
When Hailey was a little one, we played with math like we would play anything else.  We counted objects and we shared by dividing up our spoils.  We bought enough apples for each family member by counting.  We found out we are the second house on our block.  We subtracted how many cookies we ate from the total we had to find out how many we had left.  We would cook together and get 1 cup of milk or 1/2 cup of milk.  You get the point; we just incorporated mathematical thinking and language into everyday life and made it fun.

I also liked to read aloud mathematics stories like Measuring Penny and 12 Ways to Get to 11. There are a ton of great story books that introduce math concepts and really get kids interested in trying to "do math".  Hailey's twin brother absolutely adored books about money!

Introducing Numerals and Paper Problems:
At some point, we started writing the numbers down on paper and making written math problems. We used the objects we were adding and wrote them down so there was a one-to-one correspondence with the manipulative (what we were adding) with the numeral associated with it.

Sometimes I would write them as a problem like 2+3=5 and sometimes I would write them on a number line.  Othertimes we would draw them as pictures or stick figures.  This way, the kids would have seen a variety of ways to write it.

Having the Child Solve a Written Problem:
After having done the above for many times, then I would ask my sweetie to solve a problem by giving her the written problem.  She would have access to objects, which was her preferred method at first. Then later, I would not have the objects out and she would have to decide what way she could do it without the objects.  This generally led to using her fingers as objects.   Her fingers then didn't become an obstacle until she got to numbers higher than ten and she needed to implement other ideas.  As she would get stuck, I would show her options like the number line, counting up, counting down, drawing pictures, drawing stick figures, etc. I would only show one at a time to see if that made sense to her.  If it did, then great.  If not, then I'd try another one.  However, if I had to do more than two, then she was frustrated and it was time to stop and try again another day.

Introducing New Concepts:
As we were doing mathematics for everyday living all the time, new concepts were usually not completely new.  So when I wanted to add them to her written abilities - mathematics on paper - I would reintroduce it as "remember when we.......(ex. baked the cake and had to measure 1/2 a cup)". Then we would discuss what 1/2 meant or whatever the new concept was.

I would always be sure to have visuals and manipulatives as needed.  So for fractions, for example, we would have measuring cups and spoons; we would have something to cut into equal pieces; we used fraction blocks (a plastic manipulative you can buy); we drew pictures (half the people are wearing hats).

I always taught Hailey the concept and its practical use before how to solve any problems.  This is the way her brain best stores information: she needs the "why is this important and how does it all make sense" first.

Then she could start to solve problems both in real life and on paper.

Don't Make it Hard or Complicated:
Mathematics can be easy and it is best served in small chunks.  I never spent too much time working any mathematics problems or concepts. If it started to become frustrating and we couldn't fix the frustration quickly, then we stopped and did something else.  We could always go back to it another day.

My biggest concern was that Hailey would get frustrated with math and then decide she wasn't good at it and just shut down.  I did not want that to happen, so I made sure to make the steps small enough for her to always feel successful.  I really felt there was no rush to learn anything at any particular time and her perception of her skills was more important than any race to do things quickly.

The Workbooks We Used:
Mostly I made up my own mathematics curriculum and used the state mathematics as a guideline to make sure I covered everything she needed (but not at the time frame set by the state - at her pace).

I did use workbooks as ready made problems to solve as she got a little older.  We also did some Time 4 Learning, but she found she liked the workbooks better.  Here are some I liked:

School Zone Publishing Company Math Basics:  These are organized by grade level and you can see how the skills are repeated but with a little more added to each year.  I tended to use them without regard for the grade level.  So I might do a multiplying fractions unit and use the Grade 4 to introduce them and then do Grade 5 and Grade 6 the next few days.

Educators Publishing Service Attack Math:  These are books all about addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They are the basic skills only, but worked well for repetitive practice.

Educators Publishing Service It's Elementary! 275 Math Word Problems: This is workbook filled with word problems.

Singapore Math Practice:  These are something that I just found this year and she has been doing well in them.  She is technically a 7th grader and she is currently working in the 7th grade level workbook.  I decided to mix up the flow of this workbook as it makes more sense to me to do the geometry sections all together and since we haven't done as much geometry before, I am saving them for last.

Algebra:
Hailey has not taken algebra yet, but she did do an app on her iPad that really taught her a lot about solving algebraic equations.  The app is called DragonBox and the basis is that whatever you do to one side of the equation, you have to do to the other side as well.  The point is to solve for x.

After completing the app, I gave Hailey some paper algebra equations and she could do the problems easily.  So I guess it worked.

In her Singapore Math workbook this year, there is a small algebra section but it is even simpler in that they give you a value for x.  However, the writing algebraic expressions from word problems was tricky.

So Hailey and my plan is for her to take algebra next year. (Remember she wants to take community college courses as a high schooler, so she is wanting to get prepared for that.) We probably will use the homeschool classes that she is enjoying this year as they have an algebra class.  However, if they go about it in a way that makes it seem complicated (as sometimes classes and people make math more complicated than it needs to be), then I'll take her out and do it with her at home.

Curriculum in the Homeschool: What We Have Used for Our APD Daughter for Language Arts

Curriculum is one of those hard questions for many homeschoolers.  Some choose not to use a curriculum, some choose to use a boxed set by one company for all the subjects, some choose different ones for each subjects, some pick and choose different resources as needed/desired, and some make up their own.

There are paper products like hardback books and workbooks and teacher's guides.  There are online products such as websites that have all the subjects or just one of the subjects.  There are hands-on materials such math manipulatives and art and science projects.  There are board games and videos and computer games.  There are real world resources like the grocery store, the animal shelter, and the local farm.  There are museums and re-enactment places and events.  So, the resources are there and homeschoolers are free to be as creative with them as we desire.

So when most people ask about curriculum, what they are wanting is usually the paper and pencil type workbooks or computer programs/websites for the skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics.

When people ask me for advice, I can tell them what I have used and why.  However, it might not be the best fit for their child.  So my first and foremost best advice is to get to know your child and what types of activities and presentation styles work best for him or her.  Some kids need to actually touch things like math manipulatives.  Some kids need a visual of the big picture while others want it step-by-step and don't confuse them with too much at once.  All kids with APD are going to need it to not be only auditory.

So here are some of the Language Arts materials/resources I have used with my sweet girl Hailey along the way:

Phonics and Early Readers:
We went to a reading specialist and Hailey was taught using the Lindamood Bell LiPS program* with a combined Orton/Gillingham approach.  There we were introduced to the Educators Publishing Service Primary Phonics readers.  They are interesting for readers (most are horribly boring and some don't even make sense) and they build on the skills very sequentially and with lots of repetition.  I actually used them for all three of my kids.

If you need direct instruction in how to teach phonics, I would look into a book that teaches you the parent how to teach phonics.  Also, there are websites that do a good job with teaching phonics such as Time 4 Learning; we did some Time 4 Learning and it presents phonics in a very easy to understand and fun way for younger kids.  There are also other great websites and programs out there for phonics, but I haven't personally used them.

There are also all sorts of phonemic awareness games you can play with your children.  Look for a book of suggestions geared toward the parent/teacher and you will soon realize how easy it is to incorporate these into everyday life.  An example would be going to the grocery store and looking for produce that start with /b/ sound or cutting out pictures from a magazine of /b/ sounds or rhyming words for the fun of it as a car game, etc.

Oh yes, one last thing I do not want to forget.  With having APD (auditory processing disorder), it really helped Hailey early on to use a lot of tactile, movement, and visuals for learning.  So she had a baking sheet with sand in it to draw letters in and she would tap the letters to sight words on her arms and write in big letters in the air and walk out words by each step being a new letter.  She would write letters and draw them into pictures as ways to remember them like an M can become a mountain. These multi-sensory additions really made the learning stick in her memory much better. I've seen some books online that teach multi-sensory approaches to phonics and reading, so those would probably have a lot of good suggestions.  When I have time in the future, I will try to read some and see if I can make a suggestion of one in particular I like.

(Rhyming was always an impossibility for Hailey with her APD and she still struggles with it to some extent even though she reads very well now.  So don't worry if they can't do some particular skill; they may not need to.)

Just Past Early Readers: 
I gave Hailey a combination of the bookstore early readers like Step Into Reading and DK Readers. She loved being able to pick out her own books and there were a variety of levels and subjects.  As a foresight, the DK Readers are a little harder than the Step Into Reading, so your child may be at a level 4 Step Into Reading and only a level 3 in DK Readers.  Don't worry about the level written on the books and what grade they are supposed to be for; just look for ones that your child can read without too much difficulty.

If comprehension is proving to be difficult, check out my post about comprehension strategies here: http://apdhailey.blogspot.com/2013/06/some-reading-comprehension-strategies-i.html

More Reading and Comprehension:
Then Hailey moved into some comprehension workbooks called Early Reading Comprehension in Varied Subject Matter by Jane Ervin; these have passages to read and then questions about the passage such as main idea, details, vocabulary, and writing about it.  She loved these workbooks and felt a real sense of accomplishment from doing them.

From there, she moved to the Reading Comprehension in Varied Subject Matter by Jane Ervin which are a higher level of the same thing but with more in-depth questions like going beyond the facts, true/false, writer's style and techniques, etc.

Novels:
Novels have not been something Hailey has been able to accomplish on her own yet.  The length is just too long for her as she starts to feel overwhelmed and gets frustrated.  She has read entire series of graphic novels and we have read novels together - her and I - in which we take turns reading a chapter (or if she is feeling too overwhelmed to read, then I just read) and we stop and discuss them along the way.

I have also used a lot of movies as an introduction to great works of literature.  They don't build her reading skills, but they do build her literary base to some extent.  At least she knows the basic storylines and I think that will be helpful in her future.  Besides, she loves watching them.

Vocabulary:
Obviously a child's vocabulary is developing all the time and the influence comes in many, many ways: language used in the house, language on movies and television, language in the reading, language of friends, etc.  So I have always tried to just push the limits of Hailey's vocabulary by using a little more complicated vocabulary at home as fit the circumstances and she was able to understand.  With her APD (auditory processing disorder), I have to be careful to integrate the new vocabulary slowly and appropriately, or she would be overwhelmed.

Just recently, at Hailey's request, she started in a series called Wordly Wise 3000 by Educators Publishing Service to build her vocabulary and it also has reading comprehension passages as well as word study with the vocabulary and things like synonyms, antonyms, prefixes, suffixes, Latin roots, etc.  This work is to help prepare her for college and specifically the college placement exam, as she wants to attend community college as a high schooler.

Punctuation and Grammar:
With punctuation, I opted to teach it along with the reading and writing.  So when we came to a period in reading, I explained the use of it. Then when we came to an exclamation point or quotation marks, etc. we read the piece appropriately using those punctuation marks as our cues.  In her writing, when I edit it, I point out the need for or appropriate use of punctuation.

I've done grammar pretty much the same way for the basics: nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives.  I have not taught her beyond those yet.  However, with her desire to attend college so soon, we have started to review the basics and learn the more advanced like prepositional phrases, etc.  I actually bought her Schoolhouse Rock  to watch and she is enjoying those.  I also have a workbook called Premium Education Series Language Arts which focuses on grammar and punctuation.

Writing:
For writing, I've always let Hailey write what she wants to write.  She also writes at the end of those reading comprehension books she likes to do.

When she was little, she mostly drew pictures as her way of "writing".  She made stories out of a series of pictures.  Then sometimes she would add words or sentences here and there and I would help her as needed.

Now when she writes, she asks me for help in spelling as needed and then to look it over and edit it for her; so we do that together and I am careful to not be too picky. I just basically  look for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. If she has none, then I might suggest ways to enhance it such as adding more descriptive words, etc. Just recently, she has started asking me to write things for her to correct; so I write things with incorrect spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc and she finds my mistakes.  She loves doing this! It has become like a game for her.

*

With all that said, I do not make Hailey do work in her workbooks every day.  She is very self-motivated and wants to do them, but if she is having a tough day or we are having a lot to do that day, then I tell her that we should take a break.  She will get overwhelmed easily and she pushes herself way too hard sometimes. I am the one who keeps reminding her that there is no hurry and she needs to monitor her energy and stress levels, etc., because she will overdue it and wear herself out.  So you know your child with APD (auditory processing disorder) and you will have to figure out what he/she needs as far as motivation/limit setting.  Please do remember, though, that people with APD can get mentally fatigued very easily due to the auditory processing demands and so if your child needs a break, give it to her/him.  Keep the work down to a timeframe that is manageable for your child to not get stressed out and if you see her/him getting stressed out, then move to something comforting and destressing; there really is no hurry to learn any particular thing at any particular time.

As this is so long already, I will write what materials we have used for mathematics in another post. My plan is to accomplish the mathematics post tomorrow.


*  The Lindamood Bell LiPS program is a program that incorporates the look and feel of the lips, tongue, and mouth when producing sounds.  This was the only way Hailey was able to differentiate between sounds such as /b/ and /p/ that sounds alike to her.  Here is a link to the post I wrote about her difficulties in phonemic awareness and how we found the LiPS program to be the only thing that helped her: http://apdhailey.blogspot.com/2013/01/phonemic-awareness-for-my-child-with.html

My APD Homeschooler's First Day of Classes Went Well

So Hailey (almost 13) had her first day of classes at the new homeschooling site we signed up for. She is taking tennis, theater, and 3-D art.  To her advantage, she already knows many of the students in her classes as they are friends we have known through homeschooling for years.

She wanted to have the experience of taking classes to see how she could handle it and for the social aspect.  I am curious to see if she needs any accommodations for the classes and if she notices any difficulties that we will need to be aware of for her future college career - which she insists will start in two years when she can take college classes as a high school student.

Concerned she might be overwhelmed with it being a new experience, I requested that she start with only the three classes and to make them "fun" classes.  Well, she is already talking me into letting her take a fourth class - creative writing.  So we are checking to see if there is still a way she can add on one more.  Hailey is definitely a reach-for-the-stars kind of person and sees no limits to doing what she wants in life. (This is definitely an asset in her life.)

So as you have guessed by now, she loved the classes!  She also adored the experience of eating a rushed lunch with all the other kids and even the idea of having a packed lunch!   Seriously, she was excited about the packed lunch; I guess if you aren't a kid who has spent so many years going to school, the novelty of it is pretty exciting.

I'll definitely keep everyone who follows this blog updated on her progress.  So look for the amazing adventures of my perseverant, optimistic APD teenager to come.  (I'll take time to go back and write past experiences and helpful advice as I can too - especially about the younger years when her future seemed more questionable.)


* UPDATE * :  Hailey woke up this morning and decided to do her homework for her theater class. She had to read two articles on public speaking and pick a poem to memorize that she will perform in seven weeks.  My sweet, go-get-em girl not only read the articles, but wanted to write them down in entirety; so I told her about this wonderful thing called taking notes and she paraphrased the main ideas and wrote them down instead.  Then she picked her poem and started to memorize the first stanza.  I couldn't be prouder.

Sensory Needs and the Small Child: Scents and Tastes that Calmed our Sweet Girl

Today my mind is wandering back to the younger years when my children were just little toddlers, and I remembered how my sweet Hailey adored smelling the fresh ginger root when we went grocery shopping.  I would take the ginger and break it at the end so that it would release its sharp, refreshing fragrance.  She loved it!


So I got to thinking about other sensory things we would do for our little sweetie when she was a toddler.  In particular, she adored smells and tastes.  As she was a little one who carried around a security blanket she lovingly (and probably mistakenly due to her auditory processing disorder) called "Nonny" after her twin brother would speak about his bunny he carried around named "Bunny", we would put scents on the corners of her blanket for her.  Some of her favorites were lavender oil, maple syrup (I know sticky but it dries just fine and retains its smell for a while), and lemon juice or lemon oil.

We actually cut her blanket into 4 small squares and she would carry one of the squares around with her constantly.  Each corner would have a smell put on it and she could rotate it so that as she sucked her fingers (she liked her index finger and middle finger) she would at the same time put one of the corners of "Nonny" to her nose to smell.  This was a way that she could self-sooth and remain calm, especially when we were in environments like the grocery store or at a family gathering and the like. (And who knows, maybe she hated the smells the world had to offer up sometimes and she chose to smell what she liked???)

Another sensory trick we had was to bring along little hot cinnamon candies called Hot Tamales that she liked.(Our occupational therapist turned us on to these little hotties.) When life was getting overwhelming, a Hot Tamale candy to suck on was like a magic pill. At home, we usually used a drop of lemon juice on her tongue, but the candies were kept in my purse for occasions that we were not at home.

So if your child has sensory issues and gets frazzled at times, you might find that some scents or tastes might just do the trick.  I mean who would ever think that giving a two year old a really hot cinnamon candy to suck on would calm her down and make her feel relaxed!

Perseverance, My Daughter with APD, and Her Latest Goal

"Perseverance: steady persistance in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement." http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/perseverance

I love this definition of perseverance from FreeDictionary.com and it totally describes the go-getter, never-let-anything-get-in-the-way nature of my sweet Hailey.  I don't know if it is her auditory processing disorder which has made life so much more difficult for her or just her nature as she is, but Hailey has always persevered.

Recently Hailey (who is 12 1/2 years old at the moment) has decided that rather than being an artist for a living or opening a bakery or any of the other thoughts she has had about a future career, she will be an occupational therapist.  She wants to help children who have disabilities or special needs and she is particularly interested in working with sensory processing disorder.

If you knew Hailey, you would know that she doesn't just decide something, but she makes a commitment to her decisions!  She insisted that we immediately find out all we could about occupational therapists and exactly what she has to do to become one.  So we found out that one of our local community colleges has an associates program in occupational therapy and the college accepts students as young as 14 years old (although perhaps not in the associates program per se). Yup! You guessed it; Hailey wants to go when she is 14.

So she made the decision, found out the path is to go to the community college (and later to a university for her masters degree), and has decided her current plan of action.  She wants to take a few classes at a local homeschool co-op in order to get comfortable being in a class; put a large emphasis on improving her writing skills; learn higher level math (we're going to try pre-algebra); and learn sign language. These are all her goals that she came up with! She told me that she wants to be sure the community college will accept her at age 14 as someone capable of taking their classes.

She really does put a lot of pressure on herself and so I try to be supportive and yet help her to realize that she doesn't have to accomplish everything right away and she doesn't have to go to college at 14 years old. (My plan is for one class at a time at the community college, but she insists she will handle two at a time.) Yes, she is determined!  As she put it to me, "I want to DO something with my life and I'm tired of waiting!" (Hmm.... this makes me wonder about our society's lack of opportunities for teens to do more.)

Anyway, I have no idea if she will go to the community college at 14; we'll have to wait and see. What I do know is that she has perseverance and she will accomplish all she sets out to accomplish in life, or change her mind along the way and set her sights on new goals as she sees fit and then accomplish those.

So what do you think?  Has APD made you or your child more perseverant?