I think you have received some excellent encouragement and ideas.
Let me make a few suggestions from TGK’s comments. I have learned that sometimes we need to increase the amount of input we give the child, especially apraxic, and quit asking for so much output.
In a public school setting they measure a child by output, but in our home settings, we don’t have to measure the same way. When a child is struggling, or has difficulty expressing sometimes, we just need to keep on giving the input- letter names, letter sounds, math facts, sight words. I would suggest you continue to be a bit systematic about it, but in my daughter’s case, the output came when she was ready…..this may have meant I gave her 100+ more inputs than her older sister, but frustration decreases when we continue to be positive about our input, knowing they will blossom.
Songs are awesome, but my apraxic daughter is tone deaf and struggles and struggles to sing. For many years, she couldn’t even do it. Once I realized I could make her mP3s on the iPad of math facts, months of the years, etc of things she needed to start memorizing, it started to stick. There was no song, it was done in a monotone voice, and I kept most of the recordings to about 60 seconds. I have made her over 30 recordings, but she finally has learned skip counting, days of the week, alphabet song, etc. Yeah!
Finally I started to look more into mixed brain dominance about two years ago. My older daughter seemed to be losing pieces of information I was teaching her. My apraxic child would one day know something and then the next day not know it at all. I found an organization that gave me brain exercises to help overcome this issue. It was tremendously helpful.
The route I went to address this issue was costly, but since then I have found some other groups that have ideas out there to help. If you ever suspect this as an extra issue, I would look into it carefully. Some brain programs are pricey and not all researched based. 🙂
Thanks for those suggestions. I’ve wondered about the repetition sometimes, if I should keep it up or if it was boring him. I’ll keep it up though.
So glad to hear there is hope for skip counting. At this point I feel like we’ll never get it. I’ll keep up just counting by fives while we brush teeth. It us more to a rythum than a tune.
We also deal with the learning/forgetting/learning/forgetting pattern. I used to think it was just him being difficult, then realized there was a pattern. It has only been recent that I learned others experience this also. I would love any direction you could send me in that might help with this. When I tell others they don’t believe me, ’til they experience it.
Thank you all SO much. This has all been so helpful and will continue to be so because I know more than just a few months ago. I believe it is easier to handle tough situations if you are prepared and you have all been doing that for me.
When it comes to brain dominance, we assume because of the stroke he will be right brain. The left hemisphere was significantly damaged. The doctors won’t do another MRI unless necessary so we really don’t know what is happening on the damaged side. More research for what that really means later for me.
Repetition it is. Dad is great at helping with that so DS gets lots. I just need to find more songs/saying for our time of learning.
TGK I will send you a message tonight. Have you ever looked at Dianne Craft’s website? I have very limited exposure to her resources, but I think mrsmccardell has used her? Was it helpful for your apraxic child?
I used some of Dianne Craft’s supplement program for behavior change. I agree that more input now equals more output later. We do a neurodevelopmental home therapy program based on the input/output idea. We have seen tremendous growth in my dd! It’s called Hope and a Future.
Digit spans are a great tool for helping with retaining the learned info. My dd8 would forget things all the time. We have seen a huge improvement since doing the digit spans.
Digit spans are when you slowly say a series of numbers/digits (3….2….9….7) and the person has to repeat them back to you in order. You would have to test them starting with 3 numbers first to see where they are. My dd is now at 6 digits having been at 3 two years ago. You can also do objects (shoe…tree…yellow…cup). There are some more how-to’s I can explan before you attempt this though…just send me an email…my name at gmail .com
It improves processing and short term memory.
Digit spans were so important in my daughter’s development. It is amazing how we can strengthen their brains and then other things start to fall into place.
TGK I sent mrsmccardell an email, so if you want to chat some more with us about what we have learned from our neurodevelopment programs we can.