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Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

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Re: Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

#41
post #28

I work with children with special needs. There are lots of things you can do in everyday interactions with your child. When he speaks to you, articulate back what you think he said clearly as a role model for him. Wherever possible, try and help him be as independent as possible. If I had a pound for everytime things are done for children, when it's completely within their means to do a task independently (e.g. getti…

"After a long time of being dependent on an adult, children give up and wait for things to be done for them and they can become very passive and almost 'lazy'."

The obvious HN analogy is anyone who's ever observed users vs IT. "You mean you spent 15 minutes opening a ticket with IT to get them to put paper in the printer? Seriously?"

Re: Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

#42
post #3
post #2

Don't look for hacks. Look for ways to instill healthy habits and skills that he can use for the rest of his life. I'm glad you brought up potty training and speech, because those are both great examples. For speech, I recommend having conversations with him as you would an adult, and try to keep eye contact often enough that he sees your mouth as you speak. Don't hound him on mis pronunciations but feel free to corr…

And, there is no rush. Do not rush. The goal is to create a happy, healthy and capable person - not an impressive 5 year old. This is coming from someone who's wife spends most of her time educating and caring for his kids, who are therefore advanced relative to peers: it's not that important. It IS important for kids to have caretakers who give them attention, opportunity to be capable for life and economy, and a ha…

"The goal is to create a happy, healthy and capable person - not an impressive 5 year old" I totally agree with this. This is a life long project. What you are looking for has to come from within, it can't be imposed from without.

If I could/had to do it all over again I would be keeping these things in mind: Pressure is bad. It's probably easier than you think to makes kids afraid to try. Keep him away from computers/TV as long as possible. Imagination is a pale and shabby thing beside them. Books build a different mind.

I would also echo the nutrition thing. I would suggest maybe a shake for breakfast with a variety of fresh/frozen fruit and some Vega One: http://myvega.com/product/vega-one-nutritional-shake/ Take a good look at the nutritional content. Hopefully that will be a habit that will sustain the kids nutritional needs while he goes through the dreaded "I'm only eating white bread and dry pasta" phase.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

#43
post #35
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that once; then she and I broke up and I haven't seen the kid since (sadly). So it goes. I don't, honestly, think that possible outcome is something worth dewelling on; once you start feeling like a parent, the whole 'apply love' thing is entirely unavoidable. But please do remember that "I fully intend" may at some point make contact with a reality hostile to your intentions, and at least consider the poss…

She is my childhood sweetheart and we have been through an awful lot together. She has stood by me in times when I didn't even care or stand by myself, when I felt disgusting and unloved (I suffer from a mood disorder which produced psychotic symptoms at its peak). She was there when even some family refused to be there. To be poetic, my love for her transcends that of anything I'be ever known or witnessed. It seems…

It sounds like you have a significantly lower than average chance of needing a plan Z. That wasn't really my point.

"Having an appropriate will" is another form of having a plan Z; reality is not fair, not kind, and not your friend.

(trying to steer clear of doomsaying but there's an underlying "no matter how reliable your RAID array is an offsite backup is still a good idea" point I'm trying to make here :)

Re: Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

#44
post #40

I see you're in the UK. I would suggest going to the child's GP, raise your concerns about speech and language delay and ask for a referral to speech and language therapy. If you have other concerns, raise them with your GP as well and you may get other referrals. You'll have to have the child's guardian involved obviously, and depending on procedures, there may be a visit from a social worker to get a sense of the c…

"Your job is to get the little guy the services he needs and be prepared to be stubborn and insistent that he gets them." My personal experience is the entire medical community seems to have an avoidance issue WRT food allergies. Oh who knows some kids are just like that. Thats just how some kids are, why don't you wait and see if he catches up. I'm sure that's not the case. Well some kids just develop at a different…

This is a very good point. Our guy turned out to have similar food allergies. The soy one is a nightmare, because soy and soy derivatives seem to be in just about everything. But if he does have any allergies, there are lots of alternatives and a dietician would be able to help.

Also OP, the other test I would recommend (though hopefully, the team you're dealing with will do it as more or less a first step) is a hearing test. He may have glue-ear or similar common childhood hearing issues without showing any symptoms (i.e. earache). Even a small percentage drop in hearing at that age can have an impact.

And if the poor guy does have food allergies as mentioned, that would exacerbate the problem (basically, hay-fever like symptoms causing his nose to become blocked and therefore his ears).

By the way, these may sound like a really big deal but they are not. All this things are easily fixable. They're also incredibly common.

Re: Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

#45
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your job is to get the little guy the services he needs and be prepared to be stubborn and insistent that he gets them." My personal experience is the entire medical community seems to have an avoidance issue WRT food allergies. Oh who knows some kids are just like that. Thats just how some kids are, why don't you wait and see if he catches up. I'm sure that's not the case. Well some kids just develop at a different…

This is a very good point. Our guy turned out to have similar food allergies. The soy one is a nightmare, because soy and soy derivatives seem to be in just about everything. But if he does have any allergies, there are lots of alternatives and a dietician would be able to help. Also OP, the other test I would recommend (though hopefully, the team you're dealing with will do it as more or less a first step) is a hear…

"just about everything."

Yeah tell me about it, I've been living it for about half a decade and its in almost everything heavily processed. In the "real food" aisles, other than raw soybeans and tofu and some soy "milks" (and soy milk is getting pretty far away from "real food") its pretty easy to avoid soy. If it comes in a box and/or maybe a bag its nearly impossible to avoid soy, wheat, or casein (milk).

Which leads to "hmm, sounds like we're about to live the Paleo diet" which at least on HN leads to ridiculous responses against it, about God intelligently designing us to evolve over the last couple decades to live exclusively on "hot pockets", candy bars, and high fructose corn syrup and cooking at home should be illegal and/or only for rich people and/or only for poor people or perhaps both at the same time but definitely not for us, therefore trying to avoid junk food is a religious sin and ethically immoral and anti-american and everyone should eat as much fake food as possible, err, and well lets ignore the allergy people they can just go curl up and die somewhere. Ah, paraphrasing a bit from a slightly biased perspective.

Lets just say my family eats a heck of a lot of salads with a side of a little roasted, baked, steamed, or grilled meat. Last night was big spinach salad with some kinda vinaigrette and (admittedly non-paleo) sliced seasoned baked potatoes (I think dill and rosemary?) and some overly spicy bbq flavored homemade baked chicken. Want to cut back on meat consumption? Spice the heck out of it till you can't stomach more than a couple oz. You can eat paleo pretty cheaply and healthily if you want, or you can use it as an "excuse" to eat nothing but 32 oz of grilled beef tenderloin each night and then complain.

Re: Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

#46
post #24
post #19

About speech: model correct words, but don't force corrections. So when he says "yewwow worrwy" you say "Yes! That's right! Yellow Lorry!" Use that sing-song voice. Some people say it's annoying and stupid, but children do react to it. (Don't have the sources to hand, sorry.) Offer him choices. Don't say "Would you like a drink?" but say "Do you want milk? Or do you want water?" to encourage him to say stuff. If he's…

> when he says "yewwow worrwy" you say "Yes! That's right! Yellow Lorry!" Yes, I was looking through this thread for this. It's counter-intuitive, but I really believe it's best to nod and encourage any behavior that is headed in the right direction. I learned this trick from a foreign language teacher.

The thing to understand is that he IS saying "yellow lorry". His muscles are simply not developed enough for it to sound correct. But if you tell him, "no, yellow lorry", he'll get frustrated because HE IS saying it to the best of his ability.

Re: Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

#47
Tread carefully. You are in a relationship with someone who really is the new parent, and whilst you may act like a father figure, and have ambitions, don't get that confused with who's child it is. I only say this, because the last thing you need is resentment to build up because you might be able to do something that the real parent was not able to do.

I'm sure you have talked this all over with the parent, and like you say there were mitigating circumstances, but it is the other person who has the right to the decision-making. Just keep that in mind that's all.

Re: Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

#48
post #29
post #2

Don't look for hacks. Look for ways to instill healthy habits and skills that he can use for the rest of his life. I'm glad you brought up potty training and speech, because those are both great examples. For speech, I recommend having conversations with him as you would an adult, and try to keep eye contact often enough that he sees your mouth as you speak. Don't hound him on mis pronunciations but feel free to corr…

I recommend this book: "Happiest Toddler on the Block: How to Eliminate Tantrums and Raise a Patient, Respectful and Cooperative One- to Four-year-old" by Harvey Karp. The book actually has plenty of "tricks". Contrary to what I have read in this page I found (and this is the point of Dr Karps' books) that there are plenty of tricks that are absolutely not intuitive. For example to avoid a tantrum you repeat to the c…

I'll probably check it out, thanks. Raising kids can be very unintuitive from my experience - I'm extremely lucky to have a very skilled mother for a wife (who is more scientific than intuitive).

Re: Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

#49
In your spare moments for reading, I think you will really like this newly published book on child development:

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0857027581

Child development is very complicated to understand, but delightful to observe. (I am the father of four children, one now fully grown and living independently.)

This list of books on language development of children, one of your concerns,

http://learninfreedom.org/talking.html

is a bit old, but quite useful for parents.

Re: Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

#50
post #26
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I am wrong for seeking hacks or word it as such. I guess what I was asking for is clever andgood advice from a community I know from first hand experience is full of smart people, some of which I'm banking on them having children. Truth is I'm young and I've never been in this position before. I've also missed out on those first two years with no idea of the damage done. Thanks to both of you for taking the t…

Converse. Asking questions like "what flavour of juice do you want?" will encourage a reply of "apple" or "orange" rather than a monosyllabic yes/no. Being ok with whatever the closest approximation of that word you're going to get is and then repeating back the correct pronunciation (as mentioned in another comment) makes this a lot less stressful than it sounds. If the kid's mother is the primary source of uncondit…

I've also seen suggestions[citation needed, sorry] that when offering kids a choice, narrowing it down to just two or three things can help them start getting used to making decisions without being completely overwhelmed by the options (e.g. if you're at the grocery store and you decide to give him the opportunity for some input into the purchases, ask, "do you want to get apple or orange juice?" rather than taking him to the juice aisle and saying "what kind of juice do you want?")
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