Just had a nice chat with Sabine she loves our objectives and will give me her personal opinion on important topics to discuss and engage with US Department of Education Special Education and Rehab services and she wants me to narrow down the list and she will narrow it down on her end as well so we have a few things to emphasis and get across. From this huge list what holds the priority to parents clinicians and teaches upon this board. A. An understanding of the difficulty in multi tasking. Dont ask a child to listen to directions and write a response at the same time. Children with dyspraxia generally cannot chew gum and walk at the same time B. educating teachers is having them understand HOW to teach kids with dyspraxia and understanding that there is often a reason the child is underachieving and is not being lazy, not listening, etc C. Cognitive Social Training support to help with judgment and processing and function issues of social development vs praise aka. a specific way of teaching us and showing and allowing us to use our intelligence to make social and any sort of choice. D. Ocular Motor Training for therapist in schools to help with safety and danger. via bringing into the team a Behavioural Optomotrist one wrong judgment of space can be a dangerous situation. E. To be recognized in the school district upon the same breath as other conditions for the full basis of therapy, interventions and support for Dyspraxia. F. An allocation of a buddy for judgment issues G. Early indicators for teacher and staff how to spot signs and identify the children with DCD, Developmental and Global Dyspraxia to get support before failing issues of co morbid struggles come into play. H. An Awareness Day in Schools to teach teachers and staff about Dyspraxia. I. Showing and teaching kids with the disorder how to use assistive technology J. understanding among teachers and staff about the inconstitences of performance vs being lazy or not trying. and the Understanding to teachers of frustration vs acting out and mis behaving. K. I want teachers, schools and therapists to understand that Dyspraxia can overlap other developmental delays such as those with Down Syndrome. I want them to realize that each childs circumstance is different from anothers. I also would like teachers and schools to acknowledge that we want our children to be seen as normal...we dont have special needs kids, we have kids with special needs. We, as parents-gr.parents, raising these amazing kids know our kids better than someone who spent a couple of hours evaluating them. Listen to what we are telling you about our kids. Learn from us just as you expect our kids to learn from you L. To recognize that the child will need help planning out tasks, and a young student will not know the steps to calm himself in the heat of the moment. You cant just put a 5-6 year old in time out; dyspraxics will get anxious not knowing what to do there and may hit fight or flight with the resulting anxiety. Words become useless in an anxious moment. Sensory overstimulation needs to be addressed as well. Sadly, classrooms are over full and expectations are higher. There needs to be more supports for the students and teachers. M. And that just because the child got something one day, they may not retain it. Repetition and consistency are so important. For our global dyspraxics, making sure they have a way to communicate their needs. N. I dont know about others, but our son becomes silly when his dyspraxia leads to anxiety. Many teachers saw this as misbehavior, when really it was a cry for help to know what to do next. Change also throws our son, so recognizing that the slightest change in schedule will be huge and preparing the child in advance for those changes and to know what the schedule or activity will now look like. O. Direct explicit instruction for concrete thinkers on everything, including social aspects. P. Collaboration and consistency among staff is so important. Q. Honestly, I want them (teachers, admins, etc) to have patience. Just because you tell him, do not expect immediate results. Break them down, check for understanding and repeat if necessary. Realize that just because it takes him a minute to process does not mean he is stupid, lacking, whatever term they want to use. He gets it, just give him a minute. R. I would like the dept of education to fully fund special education, like they were supposed to. All the things we as parents and members of the community are asking either take technological supports or additional assistance from a person (in and out of the classroom). All the understanding in the world isnt going to help if the schools dont have the budget to meet the demands of our kids. S. I would want your audience to know that every single person with dyspraxia is different. Every one has different challenges as far as dyspraxia even if they are siblings. What accommodations worked with one child may not work with another, it MUST be individual and may need to be adjusted through out the year. T. Dont withold support because you think the child needs to learn how to cope without it-they need to be taught how. One example, my son was supposed to do reading tests on the computer. He got a 54-grade level was 600 and above. He missed one so I helped him with it because the teacher was busy, and he didnt even know the correlation between what he read and the answers below. So I taught him that you get the answers from what you read above. I also was reading with him at home more going over some things the teacher gave me and his next score was around 650. Granted he must have had a really good day that day but still drastic improvement. Things that seem obvious are not always and a five minute observation/explanation can do wonders. U. Explaining everything, including the basics of test taking, in simple and detailed ways. Give examples and non-examples. In second grade, my son would come home after a spelling test and tell me which words he got right and wrong. Months later I learned that he was telling me his exact score before the tests were graded and returned. When the teacher said check your work before you turn it in, that meant look to see how many are right or wrong before you turn it in to him. When I suggested that he change his answers if he realized he spelled a previous word wrong (they were usually patterns), he believed that would be cheating and his teacher would never allow it. V. I want schools to realize that giving my son detention for not being organized according to their standards doesnt help. He organizes differently then other people and should roll with it. Also just because he can read at a highschool level doesnt mean he can write or spell that way. My son always tells me he is a thinker not one that memorizes. Another thing that doesnt really help him is lecturing, he finds it boring so he usually goofs off. He literally failed french because the school thought immersion teaching was the best way and he had no idea what was going on. W. A proper diagnosis and support so each child can reach their potential X. To teach social skills and calming strategies with positives. Teaching in the moment if anxiety has kicked in does not necessarily work. Example: I asked a kindergarten teacher to teach my son how to go and relax in a bean bag chair if he was feeling frustrated, to teach how to take a break BEFORE he needed it. I was thanked for the idea, told she would keep it in mind, but he was doing so good she didnt need to. She totally missed my point for the need of repetition during good moments.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:57:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015