2013 January » LearningAbledKids.com

Sensory Integration Dysfunction

Jan 232013

If you have a child that seems fussy about clothes, noises, food textures or tastes, active environments, bright lights, etc., you may have a child who has Sensory Integration issues. The NIH defines Sensory Integration as “The involuntary process by which the brain assembles a picture of our environment at each moment in time using information from all of our senses. Children with learning disabilities or autism have difficulties with sensory integration.”

On a practical level, that means your child can have difficulty coping with various stimuli that come to him from the environment he is in. For children with Sensory Integration issues, coping with a traditional school environment can be very difficult. There are bright lights, lots of movement from all of the people, visual input everywhere, and lots of noises that can overwhelm the senses of the child making it nearly impossible for him to process everything he is experiencing. When the environment itself is overwhelming, it goes without saying that learning can be significantly hampered in a traditional school.

As a parent, what can you do? The first step is to arm yourself with knowledge about sensory integration disorder. You can watch this video for a clearer understanding of Sensory Processing Disorder:

If you need or want to know more about SPD, you might want to buy one of these books or see if your library has them:

The Out of Sync Child
Books about Sensory Integration

After you’ve acquired a better understanding of sensory integration issues and how to deal with the coping issues your child may have, you will need to consider how best to meet his needs educationally. Most likely, you will want to find a local provider who can help with sensory integration therapy. Contacting the nearest children’s hospital or a child therapy center would be a good place to begin seeking a provider.

If your public school has exceptional special education provisioning, they may be able to provide therapy at school in a low-key learning environment, sensory management, and otherwise help control your child’s learning environment sufficiently to enable learning to take place. Your child can still be overwhelmed by the stimuli encountered in traveling to and from the school if he travels by bus, in going from the classroom to other areas of the school, and by any number of other issues in the traditional school environment. If you find your child cannot cope well with the stimuli, then you will have difficult decisions to make.

As with many other disabilities, home schooling a child who has sensory integration difficulties can be of great benefit, particularly when the child is young. At home, you will be able to control the environment and level of stimulation much better than a school is able, and learning is likely to be improved by the calmer, more familiar environment the child has at home.

Keep in mind also, a child needs to be able to learn foundational skills of reading, writing, and math while he is young, and if possible, without getting far behind peers. If your child has sensory integration difficulties, you may want to consider homeschooling throughout elementary school to provide your child the best possible learning environment while he is learning essential academic skills.

As a child with sensory integration difficulties gets older, he usually improves in his ability to process and cope with incoming stimuli. Once a child reaches a certain level of maturity and sensory issues aren’t overwhelming him on a daily basis, placing the child into a small, but traditional school environment can be helpful for further enhancing his coping skills. If you do decide to place your child into a traditional program of any kind, you will want to be certain his sensory needs are understood and that he is not punished or belittled for being unable to cope with stressors. He must encounter supportive, reassuring interactions when he is overwhelmed, otherwise the environment will cause unnecessary stresses. If your child has particular sensitivities he is not yet able to mediate well, it is a great idea to be sure his teachers are aware of potential areas of difficulty in coping.

Organizations which may be of additional assistance include:

Sensory Processign DisorderFoundation

Pathways Medical Roundtable

Do you know ANYONE whose child comes unglued at the drop of a hat? If you share a link to this page with them, it might provide them with an AH-HA moment that improves the quality of theirs and their child’s life. Use the sharing tools below to help your friends:

Your Child Can Achieve Anything

Inspirational No Responses »

Jan 172013

This morning a friend of mine shared a video with me. The video focuses on a man, Nick Vujicic, with profound physical disabilities–he was born without arms or legs. Nick felt worthless as a young boy and became suicidal. Nick credits his parents with always giving him a message of love, truth, and hope. If you can instill these three things into your child, you can help save your child from heartache the world my try to lay upon them.

As a parent who saw my child belittled and devalued by others, homeschooling was a way of rescuing him from the low self-image he was adopting for his self. My son became depressed and had very low self-esteem as described here: http://www.learningabledkids.com/articles_about_homeschooling/overcoming_learning_disabilities_through_homeschooling.html
I shudder to think of what our outcome would have been had I not believed in my son, treated him with the love and respect he deserved, encouraged him to embrace his strengths, and given him hope that he could be or do anything he wanted. Every child–Your child–deserves no less!

The video also includes the message that God and Jesus can lift a person up in any circumstance. Nick Vujicic says, “You can either be angry for what you don’t have, or be thankful for what you do have. Do your best and God will do the rest.” There is an explicit Christian message in the video, so if you are easily offended by messages of faith, you might want to bypass watching the video. Otherwise, it is a very inspiring video to watch–uplifting in every way and encouraging to anyone whose circumstances have made them low on hope.

Here’s the video clip for your inspiration:

Stanford versus Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) – Which is best?

Testing & Evaluation No Responses »

Jan 012013

Parents who are required to provide standardized testing for their children while homeschooling often wonder whether they should utilize the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) or the Stanford test. As with most things, there are pros and cons to using either of the tests.

One of the first considerations is usually timing for each of the tests. Both the ITBS and the Stanford tests have “timed” testing guidelines. The Stanford is technically untimed even though they include timing recommendations for their tests. The timing helps with large groups if some students work very slowly, but timing is not required for the Stanford-10. Conversely, the ITBS must be administered within guidelines for timing.

One of the aspects I like about the Stanford is their published accommodations guidelines. If you’d like to see what standard accommodations are permitted under a NORMAL administration for the Stanford Achievement Test, please refer to their accommodations document: http://www.pearsonassessments.com/hai/images/PDF/6942-Accom_SAT10_Supp1_v2.pdf. Using their guidelines helps a lot if you are testing a child who may need some of the listed accommodations. I have been unable to find any documentation whatsoever for utilizing accommodations for students with disabilities at the ITBS site (http://www.riversidepublishing.com/products/itbs/index.html), so their choice to ignore the needs of those with disabilities makes me less inclined to recommend their standardized testing.

As a drawback, the Stanford has a restriction against testing your own child without ALSO testing with at least two unrelated children. “Testers administering Stanford tests to children who are related to them or children who reside in their immediate household are required to include two or more unrelated children in each testing group” (http://www.bjupress.com/testing/terms-conditions.php). The ITBS can be administered directly to your own kids without additional children, as per the published testing guidelines. Thus, if you use the Stanford, you would either have to go with the group testing or invite a couple of families to test with your child in your home.

Personally, I have used both tests, testing in each of the different formats/groupings. I have used the ITBS at home with just my kids and with other kids. I’ve also tested using the Stanford in a large group in a church classroom and at my home with a few additional children. In each case, whichever test it was, it all worked well for us, but the Stanford large group testing was the least viable for my kids’ needs. With the larger group, while things went well with the vast majority of testing, there were those couple of incidents that I believe affected all of the kids being tested at the time.

As far as the tests themselves go, I liked the flow of the ITBS better than the Stanford. I also preferred being able to complete each section at flexible times when my kids were physiologically ready for testing (they had good night’s sleep, were up and ready, no illness, no stress, etc.). If you use the Stanford and have others set to come over for testing, then you pretty much have to test when scheduled rather than when your kids are up and ready to test. With ITBS, we tested when we got ready each day, without feeling stressed or having the excitement of others coming to test.

The timed aspect of the ITBS can be an issue if your child has a slow processing or reading speed. I much prefer the untimed aspect of the Stanford, but I dislike their group testing requirement. If your child is prone to day dreaming, works very slowly, or likely to get “stuck,” then the ITBS timing could be more of an issue than testing WITH other people. For children who are highly distractable, testing in the group environment can be more of an issue, particularly with young children. While some parents want their children to get accustomed to testing in groups, I think there is PLENTY of opportunity to test with groups through the PSAT and high school level testing of other types (AP testing, testing in any classes they may take, etc.), which will prepare the kids for group testing for the ACT or SAT. Thus, for any child in elementary or middle school, I’d probably opt for the ITBS unless timing was a significant issue. For all other children, I would go with the Stanford.

Lastly, in regard to administration at home, you have to be careful to establish an interference-free testing environment. Turn off all of the ringers on the phones, put a note on your front door for anyone NOT to ring or knock.. Leave a notepad out there (if they want to leave a note) and ask them to quietly leave due to testing. Also, if you have any dogs, it’s a good idea to tend to them before testing so they will be crated and as far away from the testing location as possible so any sudden event won’t cause a lot of barking and interference (we had that one year!!).

In the end, I think the ITBS and Stanford both have their pluses and minuses, so a parent does best to weigh the options in relation to your individual child’s personal needs. Hope that helps!