LIFE...

It is good to be back in the blogger seat once again.  Life has, as it sometimes does, stepped in the way my desire to do something I love and am passionate about.  Blogging is an "extra"...and when you are a momma of teenagers, those extras are few and far between :) 
Well, for those important few of you out there following my blog, I have been reading a new and exciting book about motivation.  That word, 'motivation' can get an eye-roll or two from teachers, especially this time of year.  But, don't give up on my blog too quickly because Richard Lavoie has changed my mind about this word and I think he will change your mind also.
Everything I thought I was doing right when it comes to motivating my students and own children went right out the window as I have been reading across the pages of this wonderful book.  There are several myths that Mr. Lavoie shares about motivation. I have had it all wrong!  We are all about the children, right?  What it best for each student as they enter our classroom each day....right?  But yet we slap up that poster every year and give every student a sticker for reading a book, having good behavior, doing their homework...etc.  Every student is not going to be motivated by a sticker.  Each child learns differently, right?  So, it makes sense that each child is motivated in different ways.  And, for those of you that have that child or student that you think is not motivated, well, Richard Lavoie differs with that thought all together.  Every child is motivated by something, or motivated to do....or not do something.  As parents and teachers, we must take the time to find out what it is that motivates a child to desire to accomplish something for themselves.  The ultimate motivation should come from within.  Not from a sticker, toy, competitions, etc.  If we could enable a classroom full of students to become motivated to do their best---WHATEVER that may be--what a successful year that would become.
Anyway, wonderful book.  I will try to post some of the myths, if not all of them throughout the next week.  But, for my faithful 3 followers, I love you and hope you will share this with any friends you think may benefit from this book by Richard Lavoie.  Hope to hear from more of you out there. 

Is Your Child 2-D or 3-D?

When I came across this learning pattern that you will read about today, I have been so amazed to see my children work and create in their realm of dimension.  My son has a 2-D and a 3-D learning pattern and my daughter is all 3-D.  My son picked up language, reading, and writing at an early age, yet, at the same time is very creative with his projects and out of the box thinking.  He would rather make a video or act out a play than write a report.  My daughter is all about creating something special and unique for her assignments.  She had a little more difficulty with language, reading & writing because of her language processing disorder.  But, with wonderful speech/language therapy, she is functioning quite well in her first year in high school making A's and B's.
So, what is Three-Dimensional or Two-Dimensional and why does this Learning Pattern matter?...

Research from neurology tells us that many people with great potential or power in the three-dimensional sphere have parallel difficulty with two-dimensional tasks.  The 3-D spheres include science, engineering, mathematics, medicine, architecture, drama, athletics, and politics, not to metion construction and mechanics.  The 2-D realm uses the abstractions of words and printed symbols with no intrinsic meaning of their own.  There is no logic that says a squiggle like s should make the sound /s/. 

When they start school, children confront symbols in every corner of the classroom: letters, whole words, numerals, process signs for arithmetic.  The child with strong two-dimensional capacities absorbs them easily, learning from print.  Without the kind of appropriate training we will see in the section on multisensory learning, the three-dimensional learner, frequently highly intelligent, is confused or lost.

The ratio of children's 3-D/2-D power influences the success or failure of their early school years, distinctly coloring their view of themselves as learners, whic in their own interpretation, determines whether they are worthy or unworthy--loveable or despicable--human beings.  children judge themselves harshly, being more forgiving of their puppies than they are of themselves.

Liberate Your Child's Learning Patterns, Priscilla Vail

So, as parents and teachers, if you can determine your child's/student's 2-D/3-D learning patterns, you could help lead them toward learning in the best way for them to be successful.  How fulfilling would that be?!  As a parent, I love knowing that if I know my child's learning pattern I can help build up their confidence and provide them with a balanced foundation entering into the school environment.  Empowering.

Learning Patterns

Well, after a "girl's weekend" in Austin, I am blogging a little later today than usual.  I have started to receive questions and comments from friends who are reading the blog and I am so grateful for their input.  I have been sharing Dr. Levine's book and now Priscilla Vail's book, because I want to lay a foundation for parents and teachers on what to look for in your child or student that may have a learning difference.  In Vail's book that we will discuss briefly this week, we learn that we all have different learning patterns.  Certain things may inhibit those patterns so that learning is compromised; but, we all have some kind of identifiable learning pattern. 
I think the information this week will be very informative for parents.  Do I know the learning pattern(s) of my child?  What did I do this morning, even last night, to help prepare my child to be available for schoolwork today?
Priscilla Vail addresses this in her book: Liberate your Child's Learning Patterns:

To be available for schoolwork, a child needs to marshal energies, focus interest, and distribute attention.  Together these make up what is call "executive function"...

...You need to assess whether your child is available for schoolwork physically, emotionally, and intellectually.  If  your child is unavailable, not matter how fascinating the teache or engaging th subject matter, learning will not take place.

Physically Available:

The physically available child can reason, remember, concentrate, listen, carry out instructions, maintain eye contact, and last but far from least, have enough energy left for humor.

How can a child be sitting in a classroom yet not be physically available?

Weary (tired) children aren't available for the active exploration of real learning. 

Hungry children who have skipped breakfast lack the fuel to sustain effort in learning.

Physical sensations of visual and auditory awareness add extra dimensions to what we know of the world, but they also can cause interruptions in availability.  Many children have trouble filtering out such externals as auditory or visual distraction, or ignoring the internal itch of daydreaming. (have we heard this somewhere before??? :) )

This next statement was very interesting to me because my son had a lot of ear infections as a baby and a daughter with severe allergies:

The child with a history of middle-ear infections may have an undetected hearing problem leading to observable but misunderstood trouble with concentration, following directions, and participating in the give and take of group discussion.  For obvious reasons, the same comments apply to children with allergies.

Emotionally Available:

...today's children are frightened by mystery or violence at home, or are bereft at the departure of a separating parent, or are confused by yo-yo-ing custody plans, or mourn the death of a family member or pet.  These children bring with them to school pangs of wistfulness and yearning that spirit away availability on the wings of sadness.

The child who has tasted school failure frequently, abandoned by lost friendship, the child with a guilty conscience, or the depressed child cannot focus on such externals as clasroom attention. **These negative experiences disrupt the availability of increasing numbers of children each succeeding year as our society changes.

Intellectually Available:

Emotion and intellect support one another. The emotional brain interprets incoming stimuli and then sends its interpretation as if you loudspeaker to the rest of the brain.  When the emotional brain notices a stimulus, the sound of a school bell for instance, it decides whether the stimulus is humdrum, or threatening, or appealing.   If a danger message is broadcast, the gears of memory and reasoning lock.  If a message of interesting excitement comes through, pathways to memory clear, new ideas burst forth, and associations blossom.

...the child who feels safe is the one who dares take intellectual risk.  Children in a classroom that offers both safety and exploration are intellectually available.  The emotional climate of the classroom is totally and directly under the control of the teacher.  It is a point of view, not a point of purchase.  The same thing is true at home.  The emotional climate of your home - and, consequently, your child's willingness to take intellectual risks - is totally and directly under your control.

Intellectual availability expands through overall intelligence, adequate language development and the use of methods and materials designed to capture children rather than to make them obedient.  ( I love this statement!)

I hope you can take away a wealth of information to help your in preparing you child, LD or not, to be prepared for learning at school and at home.  We have our child for a time...and all too soon it is over...(I will have a senior this fall)  We must make the most of the time we have by creating safe, loving environments for learning, risk taking, exploring, etc.    And, don't be quick to always blame the teacher if your child is having trouble "behaving" in the classroom.  Take a look at your child's environment & intellect that may be affecting how they perform at school.  Parents are in more control of this than they give theirselves credit.  All of this information pertains to auditory processing issues, ADD, dyslexia, and the gifted child. 
  

What is it like to have ADD?? Part 2

This week will end with the last five things that make life hard for the ADD person.  Next week I will be discussing a book by Priscilla Vail, Liberate You Child's Learning Patterns.  Ms. Vail is one of my favorite authors in this area of learning differences/patterns. 

...people are multifaceted, each person has more than one way of learning.  Vail

We will first look at how you can tell if your child is available for schoolwork: physically, emotionally, intellectually.

Ok, now for the last five things that make life hard for the ADD person:

*Some students with attention deficits have a lot of trouble waking up in the morning to go to school, and some have trouble falling asleep at night.  They stay up very late.  Some kids say they can concentrate much better at night than they can during the day.  Anyway, there are some student with attention deficits who have a hard time keeping alert in school.  they get very tired when they try to concentrate.  Sometimes they feel as if they're going to fall asleep in class.  Other times they just feel like yawning and stretching.  Many of them find that they have to move around a lot in order to stay fully awake and tuned in...

*Many people with attention deficits have trouble controlling their desires for the things they want.  They seem to want things all the time, and as soon as they get the things they want, they don't want them as much anymore.  Instead, they want something else.  In other words, they are too hard to satisfy!...

*Some kids with attention deficits have trouble controlling their moods. They seem to vary too much from being very happy to being very sad.  They never feel quite right, and it's hard to predict how they are going to feel from one moment to the next. 

*There are kids with attention deficits who are hyperactive. (enough said, huh?  But, do be aware that there are children that are not outwardly active with ADHD.  The "hyper-ness" is going on in their brains, while their body is somewhat inactive.  I call this "passive ADD" and I have seen it in girls more than in boys.)

*Kids with attetion deficits do not have problems with attention all of the time.  ...their attention is strong sometimes, but it is also often weak.  This means they are inconsistent.  They concentrate sometimes, and then they lose their concentration at other times.  (I see this a lot in the students that are referred to us.  I call it the "consistency of the inconsistency"...think about that for a minute...)

Keeping A Head in School, Dr. Mel Levine

I hope you enjoyed the last two weeks with Dr. Levine's book: Keeping A Head in School. Join me right here on Monday for Priscilla Vail's book: Liberate Your Child's Learning Patterns.  I have a link attached below for easy purchasing. 

Liberate Your Child's Learning Patterns

What is it like to have ADD?? Part 1

If you are a teacher and have had the priviledge of experiencing a (or many) ADD students in your classroom, you might have the tendency to say "duh!" to the following list of what makes life so hard for kids with attention deficits.  However, for parents along with new & seasoned teachers, knowing what an ADD child is dealing with on a day to day basis is empowering...for you and for the child.  Hopefully this information can be use to help your child or students be more successful.  The ADD child is misunderstood and as you will discover as you read today, they can be embarrassed that they turn in messy work or do things impulsively. Most of the time I have witnessed (even in my own ADD child) that they cope with the embarrassment by acting as though they don't care.  They need someone who understands how they "tick" in the school environment.  What better person than their teacher to come along side and give encouragement and understanding.  I hope this is a great help to all my fellow teachers out there.

What It's Like to Have an Attention Deficit

*First of all, they all have serious trouble concentrating.  It is hard for them to find the right channels to tune into.  Also, their distraction filters don't work very well.  When a student needs to be listening to a teacher, he or she might be staring out the window, thinking about plans for the weekend, or dreaming of buying a fantastic new bicycle.  Such a student is "distractible."  His or her filters aren't working the way they should.

*Most kids with attention deficits don't like a lot of details.  They get bored when there is too much information to concentrate on.  But as you go through school, there are more and more little details to concentate on, and there are more distractions too.  So, concentration is a real challenge.

*Kids with attention deficits may hand in work that is embarrassing to them and confusing to the teacher.  The work might be messy, or it might have ideas in it that are not as good as the ideas in their heads. ( **have the student tell you the answers or their ideas for a story orally and then grade accordingly)

*Many kids with attention deficits are impulsive.  They do things much too quickly and without planning and organizing.  They have trouble slowing down and concentrating when they work, so they make too many careless mistakes.  Also, they don't do self-monitoring.  Remember, self-monitoring means looking over what's been done to make sure there aren't any silly mistakes.

*While some students with attention deficits are impulsive when it comes to schoolwork, others are impulsive in their behavior.  (Some are impulsive in their behavior and their schoolwork)  In terms of behavior, an impulsive person might get very angry and then all of a sudden hit someone.  She wouldn't really mean to do it.  It would just happen so fast that there would be no time to think about what she was doing and to come up with other ways of handling the situation.  Some impulsive students get into trouble because they do things they don't really mean to do...

Keeing A Head in School, Dr. Mel Levine

She Speaks Scholarship Contest

I know this is a very different subject than you are used to seeing on my blog.  But, I am blogging tonight about the She Speaks Conference this summer.  It is a wonderful opportunity for women to gather and learn about speaking, writing, leading women's ministries and I'm sure much more!  You can learn more about it at: http://www.shespeaksconference.com/
I have been receiving Lysa Terkeurst's devotions (as I call them) for about a year now.  I have seen information on her website about She Speaks and now, that I have started a blog of my own, I am very curious & interested about attending this conference.  This year Lysa is having a contest to win a scholarship to the conference in North Carolina.  I would absolutely love to win a scholarship to the conference because I would love to learn more about writing and how to make my blog more effective.  I have a lot to share about the wonderful and unique children out there that learn differently.  I want to get information out to parents about how to help their children in school and at home. Attending this specific conference would, I believe would give me insight in how to use my blog to further God's Kingdom, even though my topic is not necessarily a "Biblical" subject. 
 I hope you will take some time to check out Lysa Terkeurst's website: http://www.proverbs31.org/ .  I have added an amazon.com link to her newest book: Becoming More Than a Good Bible Study Girl, above on the left. 
Well, I will let you know in April if I won, one of three scholarships to the conference!  I sure wouldn't mind any prayers offered up on my behalf :) 

Two more important Attention suggestions...

Thinking about what you are thinking; "watching" yourself work; these are some of the things we can do to "self-monitor" ourselves.  I have found over the years that doing my best really is about creating mental images in my head of how I want to do something.  When I was studying voice in college, my vocal coach always encouraged me to mentally think about the pitch, or to make a 'movie' in my head about the words I was singing.  It always turned out so much more successful when I thought through what I was going to do ahead of time.  Now, with two teenagers it is even more vital that I think and pray through what I should say to them about any given situation.  It is all about timing...when I say it and how I say it. 
Here is what Dr. Levine has to say about Self-monitoring and Being Alert:

You even need to go back and concentrate on what you've finished.  This is called self-monitoring, and it can be one of the hardest jobs of all.  A monitor is someone who makes sure things are done right and who reports back when something or someone has gone wrong.  In the same way, there are "monitors" in your brain that check on what you've done so you can make corrections or changes if they are necessary.  When you take a spelling test, for example, a monitor inside you might go back over the words to make sure that they look right before you hand them in.  Wheyou do a math assignment, your brain acts as a monitor when you check over the problems to make sure they're accurate.  After writing a book report, the monitor helps you look it over to find any mistakes in spelling , punctuation, or capitalization.

So, we can see that you have to have good attention before you start something, while you're doing it, and even after you've finished.

So far we've discussed five important things about attention:

1. Choosing the right "channel" to focus on at the right time and for the right amount of time.

2. Filtering distractions

3. Planning things and controlling impulses

4. Regulating speed

5. Self-monitoring

Dr. Levine also warns about not getting enough sleep.  Being alert is important in order for your attention to work well.  When our kiddos have been up late for whatever reason, it may cause them to have a bad day at school and/or miss important information.  We want to be our best as often as we can.  I think Dr. Levine has given some great information in his book to help anyone be their best. 

I am excited about tomorrow and Saturday's post!  It is a brief insight into what it is like to have an Attention Deficit.  It should help parents and teachers to see into our children/students that are struggling in this area of attention.  Then on Monday, I want to start discussing a new book by Priscilla Vail: Liberate Your Child's Learning Patterns.  This book gives very good approaches to helping children of all ages with their particular Learning Patterns.  I have added a link to Amazon.com if you would like to purchase this book and read it before Monday.  I would love to begin discussions with my blog readers.  It will help us to gain all kinds of insight into learning patterns.  This book is great for parents and teachers.

Liberate Your Child's Learning Patterns

Plan, Control...all at the right speed!

Since this week's blogs are all about attention, I would like to continue with the five important things about attention.  Monday and Tuesday I blogged about:

*choosing the right "channel" to focus on a the right time and for the right amount of time.

*filtering distractions

Today I want to talk about planning things, controlling impulses and regulating speed.   I love how Dr. Levine writes as though he is talking right to a child.  This is great conversation to have with your child/student to see how they are feeling about their attention and give you great insight in how to help them.

Keeping A Head in School, Dr. Mel Levine

Reflecting or Planning

When you reflect or plan, you concentrate on things before you ever say or do them.  By planning things, your brain predicts what you will do and how it will sound or look.  If, during the time you are palnning , it looks as if the results will be bad, you can think of some other way to do what you need to do.  In fact, you can keep tinking up differenc ways of doing something until you come up with the very best way.  Planning takes time.  When you're in a hurry, you can be impulsive.

An impulse is a feeling that you get that makes you do something very quickly without thinking or planning.  You might have the impulse to say something mean or to take something away from someone or to guess at a question on a test.  If you are impulsive, you sometimes act too quickly, and often you don't take the time to notice how things are going.  By slowing down and concentrating before doing something, it is possible to control impulses so that you get better results.  You can see that control over impulses is needed for good behavior and for good learning.

          Concentrating While Doing Something

It is also important to be able to concentrate while you are doing something.  By concentrating at that point, you can control what's happening.  You are much more likely to get the right answer or do the best job when you're watching what you're doing.  Unfortunately, concentrateing while you're working also takes time.  If you don't concentrate, you can work much faster, but then the results are often terrible, loaded with careless mistakes.  So, you can see that working at the right speed--not too fast and not too slowly--plays a big part in attention.  It takes time to concentrate, and it takes concentration to do things a the right speed!

Let's get our filters out

Filtering Out Distractions

Let's continue with the comparison of doing well in school and watching TV.  To pay attention to TV, you hav to keep your eyes on the screen.  In school, if your attentionis ging to work right, it must filter out all kinds of noise and distraction.  Many machines have filters in them.  Air conditioners contain filters to remove dust from the air.  There are filters in a car that keep the gasoline and oil clean.  Chemists use filters to purify chemicals.  People use filters to make coffee.  That  way they can drink a pure liquid with out having to taste the coffee grounds.  You can think about your brain in the same way.  You can imagine that your brain also has filters to help you clean out distractions.  Distractions are sounds, sights, or ideas that are unimportant or have nothing to do with the important thing going on at the moment. 

Here are some of the distractions you have to filter out.

1. Unimportant things you can see.  There is no use in looking out the window when you're supposed to be reading.

2.  Unimportant sounds you can hear.  It's a waste of time to listen to an air conditioner when a teacher is explaining your homework assigment to you.

3.  Your Body.  You can't keep thinking about how you look, about how you feel, or about how little body sensations such as the ichy feeling of a wool sweater against the back of your neck.

4.  Daydreams.  You can miss a lot if your imagination carries you away from reality.  Somehow, you have to be able to filter out your daydreams most of the time in school, even though you think up some good ideas and exciting possiblilities while you're daydreaming.

5. Thoughts about the future.  If you should be concentrating on the present, you can't be thinking about the coming afternoon or night or weekend.  To pay attention to the present, you have to filter out the future (at least for the moment).

6. Things you want.  We all have needs and wants.  Some of them have no connection with what we're doing at the moment.  Concentrating too much or too often on such wants makes it hard to focus on anything else.  If you keep thinking about chocolate or about a new game or some clothes you'd like to buy, you will find it hard to stay tuned in when there are important ideas to understand in class.

7.   Other kids.  Fellow students are sometimes the hardest things to filter out!  In a classroom, they surround you.  it's almost impossible to ignore them completely.  But, for at least some of the time, you need to filter them out so that you can read a book, listen to the teacher, or think about your work.

You don't need to filter out all of these seven kinds of distractions all the time.  You need to pay some attention at certain times to friends, to the future, to the things you want, to sights, to sounds, to your body, and to your original ideas.  There are event imes when it's good to daydream.  You can come up with some excellent ideas when you let your mind wander off.  There are also times when it's good to gaze all around you at interesting things.  A lot of artists are good at noticing things other people miss.  It's really a matter of how you divide up your attetion and when you concentrate on what.  When your attention is working properly, your "filters" are adjusted just right.  They know exactly how much distraction to let in.

So, we have talked about two important controls over attention: choosing the most important thing to concentrate on and filtering out the unimportant things.  These controls affect information coming into the brain.  but there is another kind of concentration that is just as important; it is called reflecting or planning.

We will talk about reflecting or planning on Wednesday.  Please feel free to share your insights, knowledge and suggestions. 

Attention, Please!

Paying attention can be a struggle for most people.  Many circumstances can affect concentration/attention.  Is the topic something interesting?  Are you tired?  Is there added stress in your life? In today's world of getting things in an instant, no wonder there is a struggle to keep and maintain attention.   Adults can have better control of their attention than a child.  Remember our discussion about the brain last week?  A child's frontal lobe is not fully developed until their mid-twenties so, decision making is not at its best.

Dr. Levine has some great insights and suggestions about the importance of attention & some great ideas to share with loved ones that may struggle in this area:

The Importance of Attention

Paying attention is sometimes called concentrating.  In this chapter we will use both terms attention and concentration, since they mean about the same thing.  The ability to concentrate or control your attention is needed to do well in school, although just about everbody has some trouble with attention sometimes.  Most of us have been warned: " Pay attention, " "Watch what you're doing," or "Keep your mind on your work."  Yet, as we will see, concentrating is not always easy.  Attention is a complicated function.  For some students it's especially hard because their minds get out of control.  They find that they keep "tuning in" and tuning out" as their minds wander or drift off in a classroom.  They may not listen well or hear what the teacher is saying, and this causes problems for them.  To understand attention and problems with it, it is important to understand how attention gets controlled by our brains.

Deciding What to Concentrate On

In school there is so much to watch, to listen to, and to think about.  when you sit in a classroom, you can watch the teacher, the other students, the chalkboard, the bulletin board, or the tree outside the window.  You can listen to the teacher, the clock ticking, some noise in the corridor, or the ventilation system.  You can be thinking about what your teacher is saying, about what you're going to be doing after school, about the clothing that the kid next to you is wearing, or about some problems that you're having with your brother or sister.

Doing well in school is in some ways like watching television.  In order to see what you want to on TV, you have to tune in the right channel at the right time. Not only that, you must concentrate on the right channel for the right amount of time if you want to get enough out of the program.  In school, attention is your brain's channel selector when you are trying to decide what to watch, to listen to, to think about, or to ignore.

Share this with your children and friends who may be empowered by this information to help them begin to be the best they can be in school, work, life, etc.  Tomorrow's post will take us further on toward controlling our attention.  We will discuss filtering out distractions.

Keeping A Head in School, Dr. Mel Levine

Let's wrap up the week

This week has been all about the brain & details about the different areas of the brain.  The book I have been referencing all week is Keeping A Head In School by Dr. Mel Levine.  I have added a link to Amazon.com for anyone interested in purchasing the book for themselves.  I reccommend the book for parents of LD children, teachers, & high school - college aged students who are struggling to understand their learning difference. 
I hope everyone has enjoyed learning some details about the brain this week.  Next week, I will be posting some helpful strategies for controlling our attention and the importance of attention for our children & us, as parents, teachers, etc. 
Just a side note:
I am reading a wonderful book by Priscilla Vail - another great author to look into!  The book is called: Learning Styles, food for thought & 130 practical tips for teachers K-4.  I have a link added for your convenience.  Also, in the "Resources" area of my blog, I have listed books I reccommend.  There are other Priscilla Vail books listed.  I will continue to add to that list, so keep checking for new listings.

Please tell your friends about my blog.  Thank you for reading this week and I hope to see more viewers in the weeks to come and develop some good discussion :)

Empower your child...

At the beginning of the school year, "dyslexia guru" - the wonderful woman I work with & I always discuss with our dyslexic students about how their brain works. We end each lesson with them listing their strengths & desires for the future. We want to empower these precious children to embrace the way they were created. Knowing that they are dyslexic is a gift. They do have strengths and they need to focus on building these, thus building their self-worth and passions. If you have teenagers, you know that those two things are very important in a young person's life.

We have been discussing the brain this week and today I want to share some of the main points we cover during one of our "brain" lessons:

This is your brain on dyslexia...

The brain has two cerebral hemispheres:

The Left Hemisphere

controls language and information that comes in

or goes out a particular sequence or order.

It likes to work quickly.

The Right Hemisphere

controls visual patterns and information,

like parts of someone's face,

that comes in all at once. It works a bit slower

than the left hemisphere.

There are 4 major lobes that the two hemispheres are divided into:

Lobes of the Brain:

frontal lobes: right behind your forehead. They are the "orchestra leaders" of the brain. They help you concentrate, "light up" the part of your brain that figures out language with someone is talking to you, and control your behavior and your emotions.

parietal lobes: contains the sensory cortex --the part of the brain that receives information from all of your sensory organs, like your eyes, ears, skin, and sense of smell. Getting your muscles to move takes place right in front of the parietal lobe in the motor cortex. Something interesting about the motor cortex is that the right hemisphere controls the muscles on the left side of your body and the left hemisphere controls the muscles on the right side of your body.

occipital lobes: just behind the parietal lobes. It helps you understand information taken in through your eyes. These lobes help you catch a ball and do other similar things with your eyes.

temporal lobes: these are located right beneath the parietal lobes. This area has a lot to do with information such as language that comes in through your ears. These lobes are also needed for memory; however, memory is scattered everywhere throughout your brain. There are many different kinds of memory - memory for faces, vocabulary words, spelling, and smells.

Now, that is a very quick snapshot of the brain, but easy enough for a child to understand. I encourage all parents out there with a child who has a learning difference, to empower them with knowledge about their difference, their strengths, & with the understanding that they can become/do anything they put their wonderfully created mind to doing! Once a student understands what they are and how they work, life will be a whole bunch easier.

*information from: Keeping A Head in School, Dr. Mel Levine

Bet you didn't know about these "guys"...

The Hypothalamus and the Thalamus: Up above the brainstem are two important parts of the brain called the hypothalamus and the thalamus. The hypothalamus performs many crucial functions. It helps control your appetite, your thirst, and the temperature of your body. The hypothalamus also has a lot to do with certain felings that you get. For example, the hypothalamus helps you deal with both angry and peaceful feelings. The thalamus, which is right above the hypothalamus, is like a great relay station. It receives all the signals from lower parts of the body, such as our arms and legs, and sends them up to the higher regions of your brain. Every sense except smell goes up through the thalamus. You can also say that the thalamus is like a fuse box. Just as electricity comes into your home through the fuse box and then gets sent on to various rooms, information from your sense goes through the thalamus on its way to the regions of the brain that will think about it and use it.

Keeping A Head in School, Dr. Mel Levine

The Brain and the Brainstem

The Brain: Your brain, located inside your
skull, is made up of billions of tiny nerve fibers that connect with each other
in many different ways. The brain is so complicated in its "wiring" that
it should not be surprsing that no two brains are exactly the same. This
means that there can be a great number of different learning strengths and
learning disorders among people, including kids in school. Sometimes it's
hard to be sure what's normal and what's abnormal.

The Brainstem: The brainstem is just above the
spinal cord. It gets information and sends out signals to the skin and
muscles of your head and neck. The brainstem also works like an extension
cord for some of your senses, including hearing and touching. For example,
if you touch something with your left thumb, the feeling that you get has to
pass through nerves that go through the brainstem to get to parts of your brain
that can think about what you've touched. Incidentally, smelling and
hearing do not have to go through the brainstem. They are allowed to
connect directly with the thinking parts of the brain (without an "extension
cord"). Your brainstem also has other responsibilities. It controls
swallowing, breathing, talking, heartrate, the flow of your blood and your
ability to see. By the way, the brainstem does not have only pleasant
chores; it's the part of the brain that makes you vomit!

Keeping A Head in School
Dr. Mel Levine

Causes of Learning Disorders

When you discovered a learning difference in yourself or with your child, did you think, "Is there something I could have done differently for me or my child...read more to them, drank 2% milk instead of whole, taken more vitamins, Nursed my baby longer...?? Well, learning differences usually are differences in the ways people's brains work. Because my specialty is Dyslexia, I can tell you that it is caused by a "glitch" in the brain. Usually, if you look hard enough, you will find another family member(s) with dyslexia, too. It's genetic.
So, I think looking into how the brain works and breaking down each part of the brain & discovering what it does will help us in discovering how our brain affects our abilities. Over the next several postings, I will post Dr. Mel Levine's insight and knowledge on the brain system.

How the Brain Affects Abilities

In most cases, a student with learning disorders has part of his or her brain that does not work well when it has to do certain things. In fact, though, nobody's brain is perfect. Some people can't learn to whistle. Others have trouble remembering names. Some people can never learn to play the piano, juggle, sing, or recall telephone numbers. Because everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, we are all different from each other in the ways in which we function. That's why kids with learning disorders are really not so different from everybody else. But, unfortunately, kids with learning disorders have differences that interfere with their academic lives. For example, if you're not so good at juggling, you can still do well in school. However, if you are not so good at remembering what certain words look like, school can become a big problem for you. Fortunately, we can work on learning disorders even when we don't know what caused them. Of course, we do need to figure out what kinds of learning disorders are causing a student to have trouble when he or she is trying to succeed in school. Since most learning disorders have something to do with the way our brains operate, it is probably a good idea to present some facts about the human brain and how it is supposed to work.

The Central Nervous System

As you may know, your brain and your spinal cord, which runs down your back, make up your central nervous system. It is called central because it serves as the central "office" for all kinds of information an jobs.

The Spinal Cord: The central nervous system is divided into regions, each with its own jobs to accomplish. The region at the bottom is the spinal cord inside the middle of your back. The spinal cord receives all the information from the nerves in your skin and muscles--information about things like temperature, pain, and your position in space. the spinal cord is also respoonsible for sending out orders through nerves that connect with muscles so the muscles can move the right way when you want them to. his information that keeps coming into and going out of the spinal cord connects the higher parts of the brain to various parts of your body.

Keeping A Head in School, Dr. Mel Levine

In the next post, we will look at the brain and brainstem. I know this may seem boring at first, but it really was the most interesting part of my studies to becoming a Language Therapist. And, it is the foundation for understanding learning differences.

Please feel free to leave a comment. Share your insights into Dr. Levine's information.

The Positive & Negative Sides of Learning Disorders

Learning disorders are varied and some can cause some big problems for kids. LD may make it harder to: read, write, spell, or do mathematics. Did you know that learning disorders can make it hard for your child to socialize and make friends, to concentrate, it can affect your memory or your ability to understand and use language? My daughter struggles with an auditory language disorder. This affects how she processes what she hears and her with writing. She went through extensive Speech/Language therapy and was given strategies that are helping her be the successful student she is in high school today. The majority of kids today who have school problems, have multiple learning disorders. My advice to those of you facing the challenging task of trying to identify what is keeping your child from doing his/her best in school, is to research online, listen to your child's teacher - what is she seeing in the classroom? Pay attention to what you are "seeing" at home...with homework, socializing, etc, and seek professional help. I will post a list of great professionals/institutions this week that you may help you in your "journey". Learning disorders can manifest themselves in different ways; for example, we thought for the longest time that our daughter had ADD, well, after researching online and having testing through Scottish Rite Hospital, we learned that children with an Auditory Language Processing Disorder can seem ADD. This is because sitting and listening is difficult for these children. Their processing speed is slower and they fall behind quickly during lectures and whole group instruction. Getting distracted by pencils in their desk, something outside the classroom window or even the hum of the air conditioner can be very inviting for this kind of student.
Well, I said in my last post that I would quote Dr. Mel Livine from his book, "Keeping A Head in School", so here is an informative & encouraging passage:

The Positive and Negative Sides of Learning Disorders

A learning disorder is not a disease. When you have a disease or an illness, it usually has a definite cause. The disease is abnormal, and we hope it can be cured. A disease is like chicken pox has no good parts to it. but learning disorders are not completely bad for you. In fact, sometimes, having learning disorders can help you develop your strengths. For example, dealing with learning disorders can teach you how to bounce back from feeling low, how to solve problems, how to come from behind and end up a winner. Some students who have nothing but success all through school never really learn how to deal with problems. Such students may not be ready for the real world when they grow up and have problems at work or at home. So, there really is a bright side to learning disorders! Unfortunately, though, certain learning disorders can make school very rough for you at a time when you'd like to be admired and in a place where you should be feeling successful. Also, if you can't learn and work very well in school, you may have a hard time becoming the kind of adult that you would like to become. So, if school is a problem for you because you have learning disorders, you need to understand them and try of overcome them so they won't stop you from having success when you grow up.

-Dr. Mel Levine (Keeping A Head in School)

So, what is a Learning Difference?

For the next several postings I would like to quote from Dr. Mel Levine's book, "Keeping A Head in School". I hope this will bring about a lot of discussion and questions, so please post your comments below. I would love to hear from you!

'How Learning Disorders Affect Your Life'

"Learning disorders are problems that affect some students. These problems make it hard to keep up in schoool. This doesn't mean that students with learning disorders are dumb. Their problems are not their fault. In fact, a student can be born with a learning disorder, but no one will know about it until the student tries to do certain things in school. For example, it is possible to be born with a weakness in your memory that doesn't cause any trouble until you try to learn the multiplication tables or write a book report. Leaning disorders can affect just about everything you try to do in school and also many things you try to do outside school."

Tomorrow I will post about the postives and negative sides of LD. Looking forward to your comments!

Getting Started

Today I am beginning a new adventure! My purpose for this blog is to empower parents of children that have learning differences with information to become your child's best advocate.

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions or need resources. Also, share this new blog with your friends!

My goal is to make a difference for parents and children as they pursue their goal for an educational environment in which they can learn best!