Posted by Lorraine on April 16, 2001, at 22:16:30
In reply to Re:Thanks for the comments. , posted by Kymber on April 16, 2001, at 11:31:36
> It is true of most parents that we worry about our childrens futures. I find that I worry more about my oldest sons because of the ADD. Everything is so much harder for him.
You caught him at 8--good for you. I caught my son at 9. I really threw every good program at him pretty quickly. Every summer it was fast forward 1 or 2 or a report writing class at an LD summer school program or vocabulary roots. The result of all of this is he is now in junior high--his first time in a graded environment--and he pulled all A's and one B+ last quarter. My point is that it seems overwhelming, but it is doable. Get his self-esteem the boost it needs=step one. Without that, he'll close down. So a therapist and a good LD tutor were the first steps.
My sons school was very small and although they had no LD resources (or even a clue about what to do with LD), they were very accepting and the other 20 kids in his grade were very accepting. At his elementary grad. speech he talked about his issues with anger control and with LD. He was definately not ashamed--just viewed them as hurdles. When he started getting A's he said, "I'm a lot smarter than I thought". We always think how much harder their lot is, but one of his teachers (5th grade) who used to run an LD center said that actually these kids do ok because we pump them full of "work arounds" and strategies to succeed. They know their learning style and what works, but more than that they know that if they hit a brick wall they can work it through. Gifted kids (w/o LD) she said frequently do well at what comes naturally but are completely thrown off by something that doesn't come easily because they are not used to working and don't have the strategies to approach difficult learning situations.
The other thing that I did beside telling him constantly that he was smart but just had some learning issues was I read him success stories about others with LD--like the guy who founded Kinko's or Charles Schwab and so forth. That definately helped.
This thing you talk about with being extreme also sounds like "inflexibility"--which can be a big issue--how to move from one task to another. The attention issue has a great resource that you can work through with your child called "Attention Cockpit" by ??? (big guy in LD). You can get it at Amazon--it costs like $15. It is a big chart with a book and you read a section of the book with your child and identify where he falls on the "cockpit"--which identifies about 16 different aspects of attention with a fuel gauge to indicate how much of an issue he has with it. It is useful because it provides the child with the language to understand and talk about what is going on with them. Same thing with anger control--learning the language (triggers etc) allows you both to talk about it.
I know this kid of yours is in good hands because you care so much. Just take it one step at a time; don't let a summer go by without boosting skills; hire the tutor; use a therapist for self-esteem issues and (I swear to you) step by step you will walk out of this together and you will have a very self aware wonderful child.
You can email me privately if you like. I founded the LD committee at my school and implemented broad changes there. lbj1@pacbell.net
Use a subject line that let's me know you are not spam. Good luck!
poster:Lorraine
thread:18089
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010411/msgs/60132.html