Q: My daughter has just started in year 2 and her reading has gone backwards from year 1 and her teacher feels she may have a slight audio processing issue. We have just had her tested… awaiting feedback. They say she is a very visual learner. I need help as to how to help her read and pick up her confidence. Can you please assist?
[And later…]
I spoke with my daughter’s speech pathologist today in regards to the … test. Results were patchy. She feels that my daughter may have had a slight audio processing issue underlying as it is her vocabulary or possible interpretation of words that may be her weak point. My daughter has a very good memory, good concentration; she has always taken her time and tries very hard. I really want to give her all the support and know how to guide her teachers without isolating her to special classes in school, and don't want her falling behind as this is affect her self esteem. The speech pathologist said it has nothing to do with intelligence just the way she learns.
It’s strange how it wasn't picked up earlier. They say she is relatively quiet in class, she chats away with me and that’s where I sometimes notice that when she talks fast, it is hard for her to locate some words in her word bank to string together.
A: I think every child differs from the next in how they learn, what their strengths are, and in what they prefer as they learn. Within the traditional school system, many children struggle (ie: don’t perform perfectly) and some are more sensitive than others to the fact that they are not keeping up. Sensing they are not keeping up adds an emotional layer to the difficulty they are already having.
When a child is struggling, I believe in looking at the child first (hence our name) and uncovering the beauty of their design. Next, I believe in tailoring instruction to them. When a child is in school, most of the time that will not happen. Testing will come up first and the child will be evaluated. For sensitive children, this testing is a huge red flag telling them that something is wrong with their brains/abilities. And this is sad.
If there is any way at all you can minimize the focus on testing or on identifying her PROBLEM and focus instead on her strengths, she will gain the confidence and the belief in herself she needs to fuel her success. Having said all that, I would recommend taking a low key approach to working with the SnapWords™ sight word cards: sit in a comfortable place, make it fun, look at the pictures together, etc.
With any order of the 306 SnapWords™ cards, we include a booklet of activities and games you can play to learn and review the words. If your daughter responds to the words like I believe she will, you will have gained some valuable information that will help you help her, AND that will help her understand how she learns best. This is critical because armed with this knowledge, she will be able to help herself learn (like I did for myself all the way through school and graduate school).
As far as audio sound processing… if your daughter is a visual/right-brain-dominant learner, she will NOT be best at verbal linguistic skills. This means she will struggle at times to find words that match the pictures she is making in her head. These people (and I am one of them so I speak from firsthand knowledge) THINK in pictures. Sometimes it is easy to communicate our thoughts, but when we are attempting to put into words what we see in our heads as an image, immediately some difficulties arise:
1. What do I communicate first? In an image there is no start and finish like there is when someone thinks in words.
2. The expression “Words fail me” applies very well. Images are so vivid – so how do I find words to adequately express what I see?
3. I am seeing the whole thing at one time and words are not that way. Words come out in a line, or a sequence, and so for someone like me, keeping the sequence requires thought and practice and patience on the part of the listener.
If you can share with your daughter and her teacher, etc., that she is a picture thinker, NOT disabled in any way, this will help. I helped myself even in grad school by organizing my thoughts on paper using crude little drawings to show the various parts of my mental image. I could then organize the information in a sequence that I could put into words. I recall also that the more deeply I felt something, the more my words failed me. So if your daughter is under stress, her word retrieval will diminish. She can chat away with you because she obviously feels at home and safe.
Even dyslexic students can succeed if they are allowed to:
1. See the whole (like we do with our SnapWords™).
2. Use images to help them remember learning concepts.
Enlist your daughter’s help as you learn what helps her the most. If she responds to the images in the SnapWords™ cards, point out that images help her because she thinks in pictures. This is NOT a disability. This is a gift! So for the rest of her life, she can draw little pictures to help her remember material that is communicated via words.