You want to know exactly what you can do to help your child succeed in school and in life.

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You are probably giving your child help with their homework, most parents do. But you may be missing the one, sure sign that what you are doing is not helping your child learn.

Helping your child with homework is a good way to make sure that your child is keeping up with their schoolwork, but it can be a hassle. I have known many parents become frustrated and angry when they try to help their child do their work.

You want your child to produce their best work so that they get good marks, and you encourage your child to try hard, make their work look good, finish their work on time, and make sure that they hand it in on the right day.

Doing all these is fine, as long as you and your child are happy and getting along well. But this is not always the case. When they get home parents are often tired after a hard days work and helping a child with homework is the last thing they feel like doing. So, rather than helping with a good will and with lots of patience, they may provide support grudgingly and, if their child does not respond in the way they want, stat to get frustrated and angry.

I have had phone calls from parents when all I could hear was quiet sobbing on the other end of the line!

It didn’t take me long to figure out what was going on. The homework hassle had got out of hand and the mother was so frustrated with her child that she was desperate for help. She had no idea what she could do. She told me that she had tried everything to get her daughter to do her work but had only succeeded in making her daughter angry and herself upset.

I am sure that she was not the only parent who has found themselves in this situation.

To all you parents who have found yourself in a similar situation – and you know who you are- I have some very important words to say.

If you or your child are not happy about the help you give with homework it is not working!

You are wasting your time and your energy as well as putting your relationship with your child in jeopardy.

If you are in this situation, stop now! Stop doing things that do not feel good. Neither you nor your child are benefiting from the situation.

If you haven’t completed the free Parent Starter Kit at the top of this blog now might be a good time to download it.

The solution to this problem is very easy to say but more difficult to do.

Children need good physical abilities if they are to be good learners. Children who do not see well do not learn well, children who do not hear well do not learn well, children who are hungry do not learn well, children who are tired do not learn well. The need for a child to have these physical skills in order to be able to learn seems fairly obvious.

But not all physical abilities are so easy to see.

For instance, there is a report out today that shows that brains do not work well when they are starved of water. It seems that brains have problems making connections when they are dry and this lack of connectivity means less learning takes place, or that learning becomes more difficult.

So,if you want to make learning easier for your child make sure they get plenty to drink, and get them used to drinking water and juice rather than the sugary laden drinks that are on the market.

Who knew that helping children learn could be so easy?

Some children are highly sensitive to stress and can quickly become fussy and irritated by loud noises or other stress factors. These hyper sensitive children have been called ‘orchid’ children because they can be hard to raise and need careful nurturing – just like orchids.

It seems that if they are stressed by their home environment, if their parents have financial problems or are feeling overwhelmed by life in some way, these children fare badly in school.

But research points out that these children,if given the right environment can flourish in school, often outperforming their peers.

If your child is not an orchid child he or she is probably a ‘dandelion’ child, a child who seems to thrive no matter what stresses and strains are thrown their way.

I agree, sensitive children can be difficult to work with. The are reactive and can quickly switch off when things get too difficult for them to handle. But the same thing happens with all children. Every child has a ‘breaking point’ where stress of some kind prevents them from learning and can lead to some strange behavior.

The only difference between orchid children and dandelion children is the amount of stress that they can handle before it prevents their brains functioning properly. A highly sensitive child is more likely to pick up on stressful feelings than a less sensitive child, and that can make them more vulnerable to stopping learning.

All children need nurturing, need an environment in which they can grow and learn. The fact that that environment differs depending on personality and make up is nothing new. Nor is the fact that children who come from stable home environments do better in school that children from homes full of stress and unhappiness.

I think that even ‘dandelion’ children suffer from an unstable home setting, they just may not show it so much.

What this study does point out is that a child’s emotional state has a big impact on how well they can learn. In my course ‘Love of Learning’ I devote a whole section to understanding a child’s emotional learning skills and what parents can do to help children develop them.

Orchids are beautiful, and I like having one in my house. I also love to see the dandelions appear in my lawn in Spring. When we create the best environments for all children we may end up with fields of orchids as well as fields of dandelions.

Vive la difference!

I have been hearing a lot recently about the type of skills people need in the 21st Century and how important it is that schools help children develop these skills. These 21st Century skills are the skills that will help a student get a good job and contribute to society.

There is a lot of discussion about what these skills actually are, and there does not seem to be a definitive list that teachers can refer to. Everyone seems to have their own list depending on their vision of the future.

Stephen Downes in his blog ‘Half an Hour’ gives the best definition I have read. He calls these skills an ‘operating system for the mind’. He says that they are the skills that help people make use of all the facts in their heads in a way that makes them relevant and useful and helps them become autonomous individuals, capable of making their own decisions and directing their own lives.

He then argues that schools are too busy filling children’s heads with facts to help them develop these 21st Century skills, skills that will help them succeed in life.

It is an interesting argument, and one that many people would agree with. But I think that there is a more fundamental discussion that needs to take place.

I agree that schools should be helping children develop the skills they need to go out and earn a good living and have a successful life, but that is not enough. Schools are about learning, learning facts as well as skills, and learning does not just happen on its own. Children need to know HOW to learn.

Few teachers really understand how children learn. Teachers are very good at teaching, presenting information in different ways and hoping that children will find a way of understanding what they are teaching. Good teachers will help children by going over information in many different ways until a child has understood it. More often than not the child is expected to know how to make sense of the lesson on his own.

Children are very bright. They seem to pick up learning strategies even when they are not taught them directly. They may not learn all the strategies they need, and this will impact their learning, but on the whole children seem to learn how to learn quite well without actually being taught how to learn.

This brings me back to the idea of 21st century skills. If schools are going to be expected to teach children the skills they need to prosper in the emerging digital world – and I think that they should- then why are they not expected to help children develop the skills they need to become good learners?

And if teachers are not able to help children learn how to learn then who will?

We all feel better after going to the gym, well before the aches start anyway! But did you know that you are more able to learn as a result of the exercise you have just done?

There is research that shows that exercise not only warms up muscles it also warms up brain circuitry making it easier and quicker for your brain to process information. More exercise = more learning, but the timing has to be right. Dr. Charles Hillman, a researcher in Illinois,found results that suggested that this extra brain power only lasts for about an hour after any exercise. So, that after school football practice may not be as helpful as an early morning run round the block.

Some schools have organized early morning exercise programs. In my, inner city school, the children would run around the playground and collect points for each lap. They could use these points for treats in the classroom later. This program was successful during the summer but in the winter, when mornings are often wet and dark, it was more difficult to get children outside.

Schools in Finland have 15 minute play for every hour of class, says Anne McIlroy of the Globe and Mail, and they outperform children from around the world.

What can you do to help your child get exercise? It might be difficult to get your child to exercise in the morning before going to school. Time is precious in the morning as everyone is hurrying to get ready for their day. But there are some things you can do.

* Ask the teachers in your child’s school if they can start an early morning exercise program, or volunteer to start one yourself if you have time.

* Make sure that your child has some exercise before they start homework, and that they take exercise breaks every hour.

* Start and exercise program yourself – nothing better than showing your child how much you value exercise to get them interested.

* Tell your child about this research, challenge him or her to see if 15 minutes of exercise helps their thinking.

* Get a heart rate monitor so your child will know when the exercise is working to increase heart rate and blood flow. Check with your local gym to find out what your child’s heart rate should be during exercise.

There is more to learning than sitting at a desk. Get out there, walk and run and learn!

We all know that children need some self-esteem, some feeling of self worth if they are going to become good learners. Why bother to learn if you don’t feel that you are important enough to make a difference? So teachers, and parents, help their children develop self-esteem by telling them how good they are, what wonderful things they are doing, and how proud they are of their efforts.

But have things gone too far? Has the self-esteem movement helped breed a generation of children who think they can do no wrong or who think that they are great just the way they are.

In the book -The Self Esteem Trap – the author says that drowning children in unwanted praise to boost their self-esteem might not be the best thing to do. Children need to be told how wonderful they are, but they need to know WHY they are wonderful, and this praise has to be grounded in truth. Just telling your child how great he or she is and not telling them why you think they are great can lead to them thinking that they do not need to put any effort into trying to better themselves.

Helping your child develop self-esteem is a very important thing for parents to do, but self-esteem can quickly turn to arrogance if it is given for no good purpose. I am sure that we have all met children who feel that it is their right to do and be a certain way.

A couple of days ago, as I was trying to get off a crowded bus, a young boy just ignored everybody and started to push to get on the bus. It did not seem to matter to him that others had to get off first, he just went right ahead and pushed several people out of the way until he could get on. Fortunately another passenger stopped him in his tracks and made him wait until we were off the bus before getting on.

No big deal, it probably happens all the time that hurried, eager kids need reminding of their manners. But what struck me about this child was his complete lack of understanding that he was doing anything wrong. He did not understand why he was being shouted at. His self-esteem was so high that he was only thinking of his needs and was unconcerned about the other people getting off the bus. Self-esteem had turned to arrogance.

So what is a parent to do?

Whatever you do please don’t stop praising your children, but do make sure that you tell them why you are praising them. Self-esteem has to be earned. Hollow praise is not only a wast of time and effort it can also be detrimental to your child’s emotional development.

Always tell children exactly why you are giving them praise, who knows, they may even repeat what they did to earn your praise!

There I as, trying to find my house on Google Street (along with everyone else in Vancouver!) when I realized what a great learning tool it is.

As regular readers will know, I am somewhat directionally challenged, I get lost a lot. But I am also a visual learner, I learn and understand best when I see things. And now, thanks to Google Street View, I can see more than just a great map, I can actually see what the streets look like and what my destination looks like. I no longer have to try and remember street names, I can see where I have to go and how I can get there.

I can see that the junction I have to turn on has a McDonald’s on the corner, or that I have to go past a blue house just before I get to where I want to go.

Google Street View has made finding my way around so much easier. I may never get lost again! Well, at least when I am in a city that has been covered by Google.

Why am I so excited about this?
Well, suddenly someone is teaching me the way I like to learn! I no longer have to rely on translating verbal instructions or working out which way is up on my map. I can see where I have to go and how to get there. I love it.

What has been the problem so far?
When I want to go anywhere I have had to rely on my skills of verbal memory (street names) or my visual spatial skills (Map reading).. Neither of these are very good. I know that my strongest learning skill is my visual skill, I remember and understand what I see much more than what I hear.

So, now that finding places is so much easier for me, does that mean that I was stupid before? That because finding where to go was difficult for me I was lacking some sort of skill, I was being not very bright?

No.

What it means is that no one had come up with a way of helping me learn that fitted the way I learned. Just because I can now use Google Street View to help me get around does not mean that I am suddenly much more clever than I was before I used Google Street View. I just needed a way of finding directions that fitted my learning style.

What does this mean for students?
Think about it. Think of all the bright students who cannot do things because they are not taught in the way they like to learn.

They are not stupid, though they might think they are, they are just unable to do things because no one has shown them how. No one has helped them learn in ways that they can learn.

One of the main reasons children underachieve in school is because they are not being taught in the way they learn.

Google Street View helped me. What do you need to help your child?

Now I have it. Thanks Google Street View!

“Does anyone know where I can get my child’s learning assessed?”

This was a plea from a mother of a nine year old non-reader. She felt that a learning assessment might give her the power to get extra help for her son.

She is right, having information about why children have learning difficulties is very important in knowing how to provide the help children need. A learning assessment is an excellent way of getting information …

BUT…

there are different kinds of learning assessments depending on what you want the end result to be.

First, there is the traditional assessment conducted by an educational psychologist. This type of assessment can be requested by a parent or a teacher with concerns about a child’s progress in school. Where I live and worked there was a two to four year waiting list to get this service. Even when the child is eventually assessed the resulting report may not be very helpful. These reports are written for the school system, as a way of helping the school decide where to place the child or what extra support to give him or her – assuming that extra support is available. I have translated several such reports into ‘parent language’ for parents who had no idea what they said or how they could use them.

But, if you want the school system to provide your child with extra support this is the way yo have to go. Schools only seem to respect the reports from their appointed psychologists.

If you can’t wait in line because you think that your child needs help now, you may be able to pay for a private assessment. These can be quite expensive but you do get results pretty quickly. In my experience the quality of the report depends on the ability of the tester and I have seen some reports that are excellent and some that are pretty poor. These reports are supposed to be written in a way that is useful to parents. After all, they are the ones who are paying. So, if you decide to go this route, ask questions about the nature of the report and make sure that you tell the assessor what you want from the results. Do you want a report that you can use to try and influence your child’s school? Do you want a report that tells you why your child has problems? Do you want a report that gives you practical advice on ways that you can help your child?

Make sure that you now what you want and that the assessment will provide it.

Then there is a third type of assessment, an assessment that is specifically designed to give you the information and advice you need to help your child. This type of assessment is new, research based, and exciting. Exciting because for the first time it allows you, the parent, to get the information you need to make decisions about the best way to help your child learn.

I met many parents when I worked with children with learning issues. They asked me what they could do to help their child because they knew that the school was unable to provide the extra support their child needed. I spent a lot of time talking to them, explaining why their child was struggling to learn, and giving them some ideas about what they could do to help.

I realized that there were many parents who needed this kind of support. How could I get them the help they needed?

After several years of research and study I discovered a way to combine what I knew about why children have learning problems with how parents can help. The result is the Leading to Learning 5 Steps to Success Process.

Why am I telling you this? Because if you want a learning assessment for your child you need to be aware of the options. You need to know which type of assessment will meet your needs and those of your child.

Before you get a learning assessment ask yourself what you want to do with the results. What do you actually want to achieve? Then make your choice.

Recently I read (Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail) that the head of a small private school often diagnosed new students as being NBT- ‘Never Been Taught’. She stated that many of the children who came to her school were not learning well because they had not been taught well.

Her school takes a traditional approach to helping children learn. The students are given lots of direct instruction, and are taught such subjects as spelling and handwriting. All mistakes are noticed and the child is expected to correct them before moving on. Great, all children need to spell well and write clearly.

In the article parents noted how much better their child was doing in this school than in the public schools they had been in before.

I think that is wonderful. However, I do not think it is because the student are NBT – as described by this principal. I think the students have been taught, but probably have not been taught in a way that they can learn.

Children learn in different ways.

Some children learn best with direct instruction, they need the discipline of defined goals, set curriculum and strict rules and expectations. Others do not. They learn best when they feel that they are allowed to take responsibility for their learning, and have more choice over what they learn.

Let me tell you a story. I have two stepsons, and I came into their lives as they were about to go to High School. Where we lived at the time students had the luxury of being able to choose which school they went to.

One of them decided to go to the ‘traditional’ school where there was plenty of direct instruction, and he would be expected to do his work on time and reach a certain standard. He said that he needed the discipline that the school would impose.

The other opted to go to the school that had a much more open-ended approach to teaching and learning. Students were encouraged to participate in setting their curriculum, and given plenty of freedom in when, and how, they worked.

Two totally different settings, two totally different learners. Both of my stepsons ended up getting good degrees and having great careers.

So I totally disagree with a child being labeled as NBT. The question is not whether or not the child has been taught, but whether he has been taught in a way that matches how he learns.

Children with different learning styles need to be taught in different ways. In a class of over 30 students it can be very difficult for a teacher to meet the needs of all their students. That is why parents need to be involved in their child’s education, they need to understand how their child learns and what type of education will meet their needs.

Thankfully, the parents who sent their children to this private school had discovered how to meet their child’s learning needs.

When other parents are able to do the same we will be able to get rid of this disrespectful NBT label and ensure that all children get the type of education they need and deserve.

By now the initial excitement of starting school is beginning to wear off. Your child has probably overcome the many of the small anxieties he or she might have had about the new school year. Your child is beginning to settle into the new class and to start learning.

But, for some children the small anxieties about whether or not the teacher will like them, what they are going to wear, who will be their friend, which classroom they will be in …. may not go away. In fact they may become bigger and cause your child the kind of stress that prevents them learning or even effects their daily life.

When children feel that they are in a situation that they cannot manage they can become very anxious and stressed. Examples of the kind of situation that may cause this are;

* Being targeted by a bully – or feeling that they may be targeted
* Disliking their teacher and not understanding what he or she expects them to do
* Finding the schoolwork too hard
* Not being around their friends and having difficulty making new ones
* Feeling that they cannot do things they are being asked to do

And while children may be too scared to talk about this there are often some telltale signs that your child is stressed out. You need to watch for them, do not dismiss them and if they go on for too long (more than a couple of weeks) you need to take action to help your child.

Some of the signs that your child is under stress at school are;
* Sleeping problems, including nightmares
* Complaints of minor physical issues such as headache or stomach ache
* Change in behavior, either becoming withdrawn or reverting to behaviors they have outgrown
* Tantrums – a sure sign that the stress is becoming too much for your child

You may not be able to take away the cause of the stress but you can help your child manage their stress level. Ways to do this include;

* Creating a quiet time for your child where they may feel able to discuss their fears
* Doing something active with your child, physical activity is a great stress buster
* Talk about the fact that you think your child is stressed and that everyone gets stressed at some time or other
* Remind your child of all the things he or she can do, building their confidence will help them understand that they can get through this

BUT if your child still shows one or more of these signs after all your support you need to get help. The first place to go is your family doctor. You may also want to go to your child’s school and discuss the situation with you child’s teacher as there may be something he or she can do to help.

Remember, new class nerves are something every child has at the beginning of the school year (and every teacher too! I never slept the night before school started, even after 35 years teaching). But if these fears and anxieties do not gradually disappear you need to find ways to get your child the help he or she needs.

This is the startling finding of a recent study at the University of B.C. They found that only 70% of children entering kindergarten were able to follow instructions or tell a story- basic skills that children need if they are going to learn.

They even went so far as to state that these unprepared schoolchildren cost the Province $400 Billion in lost opportunities and potential.

This report is being used by the business community to press the government to support parental leave, child care and income support policies.

But this is not the only way to support families. Parents need to know how they can help their children be ’school ready’. Parents need to know how to set the scene for learning.

My research indicated that many parents do not know how to help their children develop the foundational learning skills they need to be able to benefit from their schooling. As a result children struggle to learn in school and if they are not helped to develop these basic ‘learning how to learn’ skills they never achieve their full learning potential.

Parents need more than financial support so that they can stay at home with their young children, they need to know what to do with their children when they are home.

One of the steps in my 5 Steps to Success Process is to discover which foundational learning skills a child is lacking. If children do not know how to learn they cannot benefit from the eduction they get in schools.

I knew it was a problem, I just didn’t realize it was such an expensive problem!

Actually you are probably not missing these signs as they are so apparent, but you may be missing the reason why they are there!

In my last post I wrote about seven early warning signs that your child has a learning difficulty and is underachieving in class. These signs were related to schoolwork. Today I want to warn you of the early warning signs that are emotional in nature and not specific to how your child does his work.

Most often these signs occur shortly after your child starts to have learning difficulties; occasionally they may lead to problems learning. So, these are the emotional early warning signs of learning problems that you need to watch out for.

1. Clowning around
All children like to have fun but for some children clowning around is a way of taking the pressure off being unable to do things. By clowning around, either in class or at home, your child is saying, “Look at me! Look how silly and stupid I can be!” It can be a way of hiding fears of failure by covering it up.

2. Endless talking/never talking
O.K. I admit it. When I am worried about something I stop talking. It drives my husband nuts! I have a friend who does the opposite. If she is worried about something I will now because I can never get a word in when we are having a coffee together!
If your child is mindlessly chattering away or refuses to discuss things with you chances are he or she is worried about not something and this something can be school related.

3. Lack of friends
When children have problems learning they are often spending so much energy worrying about what they can do that they have no energy left to give to other people. As a result it can be hard for them to make friends. And, did you ever notice how the most popular child is class was always the one who seemed to just breeze through the day with no problems? If your child is not making friends it could be because of learning issues. Crazy but true.

4. Restlessness
We all get restless at times, we all want to change things and make them better. But when your child is restless most of the time, unable to settle down and do things, always wanting to be moving and unable to concentrate on one task until it is completed, your child is sending you a message that he is not happy with what he is being expected to do, that he wants things to change because he is having problems doing what he is supposed to do. A sure sign that things may not be going well in school.

5. Lack of motivation
I hate to see students who never seem to be interested in learning because I know that something has happened to get in the way of their natural motivation to learn. This ’something’ is usually a learning hurdle they have come across and not been able to get over or around. They probably spent a lot of time and energy trying to do something and it never worked. As a result they begin to think that learning is a waste of time so why bother?

If your child seems unmotivated and even lethargic when it comes time to do schoolwork you need to find out why.

6. Blaming others
Not every child does this, but when it happens it is a sure sign that a child does not want to take responsibility for something, wants to get away with either not doing it or not taking the blame for something that he has been involved in. Why do children do this? It is not because of fear of punishment it is because of fear of seeming stupid or having to take responsibility for something they feel incapable of handling.
If your child only does this once or twice it may not be a problem. But if your child is constantly blaming others – even you- it is because there is something they are not willing to admit, even to themselves, and this lack of awareness will prevent them learning.

7. Everything is ‘boring’
This is closely related to #5, lack of motivation. It is another way of your child saying that “I can’t do the work because it is too difficul, and by saying that the work is boring or stupid I am giving myself a reason for not being able to get my work done”. Now I admit that some work your child might be asked to do may be boring but when you get this response to all your questions about school and schoolwork it is time to wonder what the problem is.

So, now you have some cognitive and emotional warning signs. But that is not all. My next post will be about the physical early warning signs that indicate learning issues.

If your child is underachieving in school you need to do something to help. Many parents think the problem will resolve itself, that their child is just going through a phase, and that everything will be OK in a few months.

This is just not the case.

I have worked with many, many parents who say they noticed something was wrong when their child was seven years old but did nothing about it until they were ten or even eleven. By that time their child’s issues with learning had become much harder to sort out.

So, don’t miss the early warning signs that your child is struggling to learn. Chances are you will notice these signs when your child is doing homework or when you get a report card.

Here are some things to look out for.

1. Inconsistent patterns of achievement in different subject
A child who is good at math and has very poor writing skills is definitely underachieving in the language skills area. If your child is good in some areas and poor in others you need to find out why.

2. Lack of concentration
When children are struggling to learn they quickly ‘tune out’. If your child day dreams and seems to have problems with attending to his work chances are he has a learning issue.

3. Poor study skills and study habits
If your child doesn’t know how to study, or has developed some bad study habits, there is no way he is going to be able to do well in school. These bad habits may have developed because of a learning problem or they may create a problem with learning.

4. Not completing assignments/avoiding doing work
There are many reasons this happens, but whatever the reason these are signs that your child is underachieving in school.

5. Not actually getting anything down on paper
If students think they cannot do what is expected of them they may actually refuse to put anything on paper because they know it will reflect badly on them. These children are often called lazy but this is not the case.

6. Inability to deal with failure or success
If your child cannot handle getting things wrong, or never acknowledges when he does good work, it is because he does not actually think the work reflects his abilities. Chances are he is right.

7. Poor literacy skills
Children who struggle to read, write or develop language skills, never have the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned. They will never be able to show how well they can learn.

These are seven early warning signs to look for in relating to your child’s schoolwork. There are other signs – more in the next post.

It has been estimated that as many as 1 in 5 children underachieve in school.

What does that mean?

It means that 20% of children do not perform in accordance with their age or talents. In other words they have unfulfilled potential.

It is difficult to identify underachievers as there is no specific test that shows a child is underachieving. Identification is based on experience and knowing children over a long period of time. So who is the best person to know when a child is underachieving in school?

Perhaps not the teacher who may not have known the child in question for more than a few months.

Perhaps not the child who might just think they are too stupid to learn.

Perhaps not the doting relatives who think that whatever the child does is wonderful.

So who?

The best person to know if a child is underachieving is someone who has had a close relationship with the child over many years. Someone who knows the child well, and knows how he behaves and what he is capable of doing. Someone who can observe the child in many different situations and at close quarters.

Who could that be?

Well, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that the best person to know when a child is underachieving is a parent – usually a mother because, even in this day of gender equality, it is often the mothers who are the ones helping with homework, talking to the child’s teacher, watching a child’s self esteem disintegrate.

Mom’s know.

They just know. They watch, and they worry and they know when their child is struggling to learn. I have learned to trust a Mom’s intuition even when I do not see a problem in class.

Mom’s know. And if you know that you child ‘could do better’ you must act, and act quickly, to stop your child’s self esteem from spiraling downwards and turning a small problem into a major learning issue.

Last night I watched a short documentary about three young adults with autism. They were all very articulate, although one communicated through a computer speech program rather than actually talking. One of them worked as a researcher in a university.

They were talking about being autistic and what it meant to them. They all denied that their autism was a problem for them. In fact one of them said it was a gift as it allowed her to comprehend things in ways that ‘normal’ people could not.

They all rejected the notion of being ‘cured’ of their autism or of modifying their behavior to fit that of society in general. They were happy in their skin – and how many people can truly say that.

Had their life been easy – no – but the difficulties had been caused by others reactions to them rather than by their autism itself. They saw themselves as ‘different’ rather than ‘difficult’.

Only one of them was able to look into the camera and I found it a bit disconcerting listening to one woman who constantly moved her head side to side to avoid eye contact. But when I listened to what she was saying ( I closed my eyes) I realized that she her ideas and perceptions were indeed remarkable.

A mother of a young autistic child spoke about the adverse comments she had received about her child’s strange behavior and how she should stop him doing certain things. Her response was that she celebrated who he was and that his sometimes strange actions were his way of learning about his environment.

One of the older autistics was lobbying for autism to become recognized and protected in the same way as a person’s color, race and religion. He described autism as just one part of the broad spectrum of people who make up a society.

Homosexuals were once seen as deviants who could be cured – maybe it is time to consider people with autism in a similar way.

After a week on a tall ship traveling from Halifax to Sydney Nova Scotia I am ready to get down to business once more!

For information about this floating school check out -

http://www.worldoceanschool.org/

This is a blog post from a colleague of mine. Try it out – maybe it will get you thinking how you think, and what about how your child thinks?

Why not ask them to do the exercise and see what happens?

I taught neuropsychological research with an emphasis on special education for 25 years. I got started in this area when I told a friend that I did not have visual imagery. Her reaction was, “How do you think?”
I think by talking to myself but she thought via mental imagery. From there I developed a theory of the causes and remediation of reading disability.

A closing question: When a song runs through your head, who is doing the singing?

Send me your comments and I will forward them to him.

First. let us define what we mean by an educational assessment.

The dictionary says that an assessment is a measure of the size or quality of something. So, an educational assessment is a measure of the quality (or amount) of a someone’s educational ability.

It is a measure of what someone knows or can do.

So far so good. We can all agree that information about the amount of knowledge or skill that a person possesses is a good thing. But it is only a good thing if two things happen.

First, the assessment has to have validity.
Now I know that, in the field of assessment, the word ‘validity’ has a special meaning. But I want you to think of the word ‘validity’ as meaning ‘being of value’, something of worth, something useful. What is the point of putting your child, and yourself, through an assessment process if the results are not useful in some way?

Secondly, the assessment process has to lead to some type of action.
Why assess a child unless you want to know what you can do to help him or her become a better learner? An educational assessment should tell you what support your child needs and how that support will be provided.

As a learning assistance teacher I worked with many children who had been assessed by educational psychologists because there was concern over their learning. I am not a registered psychologist, but I do understand what most of the assessment tools measure and can usually interpret the results. Some assessments were very useful, others less so.

The useful assessments helped me decide the best way to help the child learn, they pointed to practical ways I could support a child’s education. The results were translated in a way that allowed me to adapt the recommendations to fit in with school work.

The less useful ones were those that seemed to take no account of the practicalities of school life. They might suggest that a child need special coaching or placement in a special class or school. All I, or anybody in the school, could do was to put the child on a wait list and do the best we could until this extra support was available. This became very frustrating, and at one stage we were even told that we could not give children a certain diagnosis because there was no way the school system could support those type of children.

As a teacher I had put a lot of faith in these assessments. They were the key to getting the children the specialized help they needed. But I soon learned that the assessments were not really done for the child’s sake, or to help the child’s family or teachers provide support, the assessments were done for the school system. They helped the school system organize special classes, restrict entrance and share out precious resources. And this is what they had to do, this is what was needed for a school system to go some way to providing extra support for children with learning needs.

So, if these assessments were mainly for the school system, where did that leave the teachers and parents who were struggling to find ways to help a child handle learning difficulties? It left them confused, frustrated, and upset. It left them without the information and advice they needed to help the child succeed. I know because I often had to handle the fall-out from such assessments. I could usually interpret and adapt the recommendations to what I was doing in the classroom, but parents without my background in education were often at a loss about what an assessment meant and what they could do to support their child’s learning.

I found myself acting as an interpreter. I would read a report and try to explain the results to the confused parent. I would then take the report’s recommendations and translate them into things the parents could do to help their child. In this way I tried to make the assessment results useful for parents who wanted to support their child’s learning.

So, before you get your child’s learning assessed you need to ask yourself the following questions:

– Who is this assessment really for? My child, me, the teacher, the school system?

— What is this assessment going to tell me that I don’t already know?

— How will I be able to use the results to benefit my child?

If you don’t like the answers keep asking more questions until you do.

I have learned always to look for a simple answer to why a child is struggling to learn. Firstly,if there is a simple answer, chances are that there is a simple solution. Secondly, I have seen too many children suffering from learning difficulties because of the need for an answer to a simple problem.

I use a three stage process when diagnosing children’s learning problems and have been amazed at how often I can stop at the first stage.

The three stages are looking for a child’s physical learning skills, then checking on a child’s emotional learning skills, and finally, working out a child’s cognitive learning skills.

So, the first stage checks a child’s physical learning skills and one of the main skills a child needs is good vision the ability to use their vision well.

I always ask whether the child has had a recent eye exam and who did it. If the child has not had their vision checked recently I ask that this gets done by a well qualified person who can pick up on small symptoms.

Then I ask whether or not the parent has any concern re their child’s vision. They might have noticed signs such as the child rubbing their eyes, eye tiredness, or head tilting when looking at things.

But there may also be other signs that the child’s learning problem may be caused by poor visual perception. These can include omitting words when reading (and therefore failing to get the full meaning), confusing similar looking words and even day dreaming and lack of concentration.

I worked with a child once who had trouble concentrating in class and finishing homework. She seemed bright but was getting frustrated at her lack of progress. After working with her for a few minutes it was obvious to me that she had visual perception problems. She kept turning workbook pages round in order to try and make sense of them. Once she had hr eyes tested and given glasses for her astigmatism she overcame many of her learning issues.

A simple solution to her problem.

Learning difficulties are caused by many things, but it is always a good idea to check the basic issues first. You never know, there might just be a simple solution!