Older Internationally Adopted daughter with CP

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  • KenoCharbHS
    Participant

    I’m wondering if anyone has experience implementing CM methods with a child adopted internationally at an older age.  Our daughter is 10, home 1 year from China, and working at a K/1 Level.  I’ve been homeschooling some of my bios for 4 years, using a classical co-op and supplementing with good library choices.  I’ve pretty much focused on language acquisition and attachment this past year.  I’ve been toying with the idea of sending her to public school, but it is seeming that just wouldn’t make much sense right now.  It’s unrealistic to place her in CC, so I’ve been exploring Simply Classical and now Charlotte Mason.

    I’d appreciate hearing how you’ve approached this scenario.  Her attention span is short, and she definitely can “check out” when things get too wordy. She fatigues easily between the trauma background of 8 years of institutionalization, the lack of education or life experience, and her physical disability.  She has had a hard life, but has not really been asked to do engage or do hard things.  She has diplegic cerebral palsy, so her fine motor skills are lacking.  She was slow to talk in China.  In addition, Mandarin doesn’t have articles, helping verbs, verb agreement, verb tense, and most syllables and words end in a vowel sound, so speaking fluently is a long ways off.  She is doing quite well according to all the experts in terms of language acquisition, but her sentences always are choppy and are a far cry from smooth oral compositions.

    If you’ve been in a similar situation, I’d love to hear what has worked for you, how you’ve incorporated or adapted your method, which parts have been particularly meaningful or effective and how you may or may not approach things from a CM purist perspective.

    Thanks so much!

    KenoCharbHS
    Participant

    Even if you don’t have this exact scenario, I welcome feedback from people who have experience using CM with delayed kids or those acquiring English.  Thanks!

    sarah2106
    Participant

    I am not experiences with your situation, but thought if I responded more might 🙂

    Does she understand English, when you read, even if she can not yet verbalize back?

    I was going to suggest starting slowly and continue what you are doing to help her with her language skills.

    If she is able to understand what you read to her, start out with just family read alouds that are lower grade/ability books. That would give her time to practice her listening and learning skills while expanding her knowledge and expose her to knew things and ideas.

    If you look through the learning library Sonya has a few about teaching children with special needs and using CM methods.

    Found the link to blog posts about teaching children with special needs https://simplycharlottemason.com/blog/category/special-needs/

    I really feel like CM methods are great for children with and with out special needs because at the heart the CM education is about teaching the child where they are at. Also short focused lessons, so that the child does not “tune out” which might be a great fit for your daughter.

    Sorry, not much practical help, but hopefully others will chime in with their experiences and wisdom if your posts stays near the top 🙂

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