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Stories from the Documentary: Nathan V. LaurenSarah LeeAdamNathan S.
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Recent responses to the Misunderstood Minds documentary and Web site. March 26, 2002 Dear Misunderstood Minds: Your documentary is eye-opening for teachers, parents and children themselves who do not understand what is going on inside their minds. My son, Michael, who is severely dyslexic, has central auditory processing problems, has attention deficit, impulsivity characteristics, as struggled since 1st grade. The challenge to overcome is that when someone sees that you look physically okay on the outside, they tend to dismiss the thought of anything being wrong with you. Boy, if my son had been missing a limb, the sympathy would have poured out but not in my son's case, as I sure that it is with all children who learn differently and there are no physical marks on the outside. What helped me help my son, was to read, read and read all I could regarding how he learned differently. This is the key to understanding. If more teachers were familiar and understood, they would have more compassion in their hearts just as they would if a child is missing a limb. This is a wonderful, insightful documentary that I plan to order the video. After successfully helping my son achieve the right services and placement, I am now a Parent Advocate for children who learn differently. The beauty of this is that my son is right by my side to encourage other children to hold on to their self-esteem and he tells them hold on my mom will not stop until you are getting the services you need and you are learning. Another sad side to all this is that most districts do not want to change their theory of reading techniques. If they would only follow research based language problems that are working for children who learn differently, far less children would be left behind. Thank you for allowing me to share my story. Marlena Morrow San Diego, California. March 26, 2002 Dear Misunderstood Minds: I am a mother of a child with a "misunderstood mind." Whether my son has a learning difference or learning disability is a hotly debated topic in my home and in my son's school district. Thus, I was interested in reviewing the on-line materials and I look forward to the broadcast. The information presented is excellent and the strategies suggested are solid. As a researcher in special education, I was especially delighted to see that most of the strategies described were ones that have a solid research foundation. However, all the materials presented on the website is grounded in the acceptance of the premise that the problems the child experiences in school are problems based within the child. Based on my own research and my own experience with my son, this is a premise that I do not readily accept. From the beginning of my son's public school experience, he had difficulty learning some of the simplest skills but excelled at some of the most difficult skills. Thus, it was clear that he learned differently than most of his peers. Unfortunately, early knowledge did not translate into programmatic changes at school. We found it increasingly difficult to get him appropriate services, as opposed to readily available services. We had to turn to expensive tutoring, re-teaching of some skills at home, and most recently to home schooling to get him appropriate educational experiences. I firmly believe that the current curricula used in my local public school have contributed to my son's learning difficulties. In my son's case, the curricula used appear to be mismatched to his instructional needs. Exclusive reliance on learning experiences in which children construct their own "knowledge" in reading, math and language arts had a profound impact on his acquisition of math computational skills, spelling skills, and his ability to learn to read. Educators attributed his failure to learn in these "single-method" schools to his own deficiencies, variously labeled, and not to the mismatch between his learning style/needs and the style required in most of the curricula/instructional approaches. Interestingly, when his style matched the instructional approach (through tutoring and home schooling), his learning difficulties significantly diminished and he flew through the curricula, quickly acquiring the missing skills. I believe that my son's experience is one example of problems our schools face when they approach education as a "one-size fits all" approach. This approach to instruction is not successful with many students. For example, witness the explosion families who have left public schools because of their child's unsuccessful experiences or unmet needs. If we are concerned with the future of our public schools AND with developing the many talents of our children, we will have to reconsider how we approach the educational enterprise. For instance, we need to make sure that all educators learn how to consider the learning styles and needs of all the students when planning instructional experiences. Such considerations may reduce the number of students who develop learning problems, who experience learning gaps, or who are forced to leave the public school systems to get an appropriate education. March 26, 2002 Dear Misunderstood Minds: To whom it may concern: I was a young child who had a speech problem, I did not form words and sentences until about 4 years old. I was behind academically in school in the early 70's. I received speech therapy for years and I am blessed to say I speak very well, and work in social work helping disadvantaged young people. I am a parent of a toddler with all of the problems I endured and it is very frustrating when you baby wants to communicate and cannot. He is receiving wrap around services, but there needs to be more funding and education to help these children. Although our problems are very small compared to the many children with severe disabilities, myself and my husband feel very uneasy at times, because children with mild disabilities are overlooked as fixable. You are told they have a disability but when you seek outside services, things are measured and your child is tested, and you don't always qualify for the better programs. I wish all parents of children with mild and severe disabilities the very best of luck in their journeys with their very special gifts from God. March 26, 2002 Dear Misunderstood Minds: I was disappointed (and confused) that the information on attention problems did not differentiate between ADD and ADHD. I thought current opinion was that the two are (sometimes) different. Case in point is my daughter (now 20) who from a very young age would seldom play with a toy for more than a few minutes before moving on to something else. In school, her teachers described her as not paying attention, daydreaming, etc. She would often fail to write down assignments or would not understand what she was supposed to do. And yet, no one hinted that she might have ADD, because she was not physically active. The hyperactivity was all in her brain, it seems, not in her body. She was not tested until she began college and really fell behind in her schoolwork. The elementary and high school she had attended were excellent schools, and, I now believe, accommodated her "learning problems" to the extent that she was able to be a B student. With those helpful teachers and a helpful mother not in the picture, she found college to be an overwhelming experience. Her reading comprehension was very poor and there was no way she could keep up with all the college-level reading. She began taking Adderol (sp?) after a couple of dismal semesters and has been doing much better. She says that she can see a big difference in her distractibility (and talking to her is a different experience... not having to repeat things when her eyes wander away and she is no longer listening, for instance.) The sad thing is that after all those years of disliking school, and not being able to do as well as she thought she should and consequently feeling "stupid," her self-confidence eroded; she has yet to re-gain it completely. That is what bothers me about not explaining that a child may suffer from ADD without being physically active. If only we had known to have her tested early on, we could have saved her from so many problems. March 26, 2002 Dear Misunderstood Minds: Bravo!!! What an exciting site!!!!!!!! I haven't yet explored it fully. It presents such a feast. I have been working with "hard to reach" kids with learning problems/differences for about 40 years. In 1967 I started to use the Tomatis method. I was the first in the country. It was very far out then and is still controversial because there has not been enough hard core research to satisfy professionals in the US. Finally I was able to help children who have a disorganized perception of frequencies. No wonder these children can not usually learn phonics! They have difficulty understanding the sound/symbol relationship. They have a "global" learning style and sometimes can learn more efficiently with three dimensional aids. Because this listening method can stimulate the vagus nerve, training may help the reticular activating system in the brain stem, responsible in part for helping people to focus and screen out distracting stimuli. See www.tomatis.com See also www.advancedbrain.com for info about TLP. Unfortunately these same children do not do well in even small groups. The cost of 1-1 remedial teaching is usually prohibitively expensive for schools. And most teachers are not aware of all the alternatives to the teaching of phonics... perhaps through no fault of their own, I should say. Alas, what a dilemma. Raising consciousness can at least alert parents and teachers to the notion that these students are not lazy and unable to learn. Mostly they feel discouraged and humiliated. If only we could identify more of them before kindergarten. I refer you also to www.memfox.net March 26, 2002 Dear Misunderstood Minds: This is one of the very best sites I have seen. It is easy to use and offers such wonderful articles and information. I have a son that learns differently and I am always searching for more information to help him as well as myself, understand and succeed further. Thank you for offering this information to me and everyone fortunate to visit you site. March 26, 2002 Dear Misunderstood Minds: We have a seven year old daughter who has been diagnosed with ADHD since age four. Last year during Kindergarten she started getting depressed around October when more written paperwork was given at school. Her behaviors worsened and she started ripping up worksheets, crumpling papers and refusing to do the school work. She would come home and say it was "always too hard." She was placed on Prozac without a mood stabilizer for her depression and started rapid cycling with aggressive behaviors. It was later determined that she also has bipolar disorder which adds even more fuel to her problems with dealing with frustration. She was placed in full time Special Ed because of these aggressive behaviors and it was recommended on several occasions, including case conferences, that we place her in an ED self-contained classroom. The school insisted she wasn't learning because of her behavior problems. I insisted that some of her behavior problems were caused by other factors such as possible ld's, but no testing was done to determine the possibility of learning disabilities. At the beginning of first grade, with the help of an Advocate, we were able to get her out of the full-time Special Eed setting and back into a general eed classroom with special eed supports, resource room, an aide, and other resources. At the beginning of this school year the school corporation also did a psychological evaluation of her and said her IQS was commensurate with her achievement. We were able to prove that there were errors in the summary statement of this report and she was retested by the school corporation as well as a private behavior therapist we hired. Both testing personnel found similar results. Her full scale performance IQS is 134-135, which places her at the 99%. She has three significant learning disabilities in reading, spelling, and written expression. During this time, some staff members from the school insisted she couldn't have learning disabilities because she was functioning at an average level. The behavioral therapist said she was bright enough to have figured compensatory strategies like using a capital letter D rather than d, which she reads as b, because she also has Dyslexia. Her frustration level still is very high at school, but the more they properly accommodate her needs, modify her curriculum, and reward her for positive behaviors the better her behavior is becoming. We are still frustrated because the program they set up deals only with her learning disabilities and not her giftedness. She still tells us she gets bored and that she gets frustrated because she knows the answers, but loses her place, makes too many mistakes, and can't seem to get things right or do things as well as she wants to. She says she thinks she is smart, but feels really stupid. She says she is especially embarrassed because when they make her read aloud with the group. She says classmates give her looks as though they think she is stupid, and they snicker when she makes mistakes. She has poor social skills and also has tactile defensiveness which causes her to respond defensively to touch. She says that kids pick on her or make fun of her when the teacher isn't looking, especially at recess, in the lunch room, restroom, and in other classes such as PE. When they push or hit her, and she hits back, she gets in trouble because no adult seems to see what happened. They base their reports on what the other kids say happened. She feels they listen to the other kids' stories about what happened and not her version and that she has to defend herself because no one else will help her. When she was two and one half years old a two hundred fifty pound oak dresser fell on top of her and pinned her to the floor. She was knocked unconscious and we think it somehow contributed to her problems. Do you have ideas of how to get information about accommodating the needs of a child who is both gifted and significantly learning disabled? Let us know if you do. Ann |
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produced by © 2002 WGBH Educational Foundation All rights reserved |
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