Teaching stratagies

We have found that the MOST important factor for our son’s success in school is the right teacher. This is the list we came up with for our SPED director in the fall. I’ve taken out my son’s name, and inserted “the child”, so that you can just cut, paste, and modify it to suit your situation. The good thing from the school’s standpoint is that NOTHING on this list costs any money… It’s mostly just an attitude shift. (which, admittedly,can be a challenge with some teachers!)Hope it helps!

Karen

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What we need from the teaching staff:

· Open and frequent communication between parents and teachers (not through the child!)

· A solid understanding of NLD or the willingness to learn about it.

· Teachers who will encourage the child to work without pressuring him. This child is easily over-faced, (particularly in the beginning of the year) and his output goes down dramatically when he is.

· Teachers who realize that this child is strongly motivated by praise, and really likes to do a good job. Negative reinforcement is counterproductive.

· Teachers who recognize that an NLD child can often “hold it together” during the school day, only to show the stress they are under outside of school. Teachers who will accept this feedback from the parents and help modify the demands without feeling that the child is getting “special” treatment.

· Teachers who will honor the parents’ decision to cut a homework assignment that we feel is overwhelming, particularly when it is not possible to contact the teacher at the time the decision needs to be made.

· Teachers who understand that novelty directly impacts processing speed, and will give the child the time he needs to learn new concepts.

· Teachers who will first think of how the child’s NLD may have impacted a situation without assuming that it is a behavior issue or a “pre-adolescent” issue.
o Pragmatics
o Visual/spatial issues
o Body awareness/spatial/safety issues
o Fine motor issues (output speed)

· Teachers who will deal with these instances as they occur, in a matter of fact, non-punitive manner, and then let them go.

· Teachers who will try to be very clear when communicating with the child, and in cases where he seems non-compliant, to look for what he may have misunderstood.

· Teachers who will alert us (directly, not through the child) of real or perceived behavior problems so that we can help problem solve the situation.

I was hoping someone would be able to tell me what NLD is? I am not familiar with this term.

Thanks,
Glori

Glori you will find many people on this site who can help you with this as they have me. Click on LD in Depth on this page and you will get to select NLD, many in-depth articles, well written; they will really help you to understand this problem. Kids who have this particular disorder really need your full support NOW!!! If you snooze or don’t advocate 100%, everybody loses, and most importantly your child!!! Early identification and intervention MUST BE DONE!!! I have seen what can happen if the right things are not done early and have just begun with one in the early stage: My feeling is move heaven and earth to help, for this child it is the most important thing you will ever do!!! When you read the articles you will recognize where the kid is at if NLD is the disorder. Don’t let anybody put you off, you know your kid better than anyone else, no love is stronger than his/her mothers Go for it girl and you will do us all proud. God’s Speed & God Bless

Karen,

What a great outline you have made my son is ld but it would help him.

I hate to sound ignorant but what is NLD?

NLD (sometimes also written as NVLD) is Non-verbal Learning Disability (or Disorder).

There are several articles about it on this site, but in a nutshell, it’s a right-hemisphere brain disorder that affects a child in 3 main areas; visual/spatial, fine and/or gross motor, and social. They tend to be strongly verbal, probably as a way of compensating for their right brain deficits. Often they have a large split between their verbal and performance IQ’s, with the VIQ being higher. Because of their strong verbal skills they are often not noticed until late elementary or middle school grades, when the global nature of their disability makes it harder and harder for them to compensate.

NLD is much less common than the language-based LD’s, and even now that it is being recognized more frequently, it can be very, very difficult to get the help an NLD child needs. They tend to need more and more support as the demands in school increase, and without it, by the time they are teenagers many also suffer stress-related secondary emotional disorders.

Those of us with younger NLD children are fighting a race against time to get our kids the help they need BEFORE they develop severe emotional problems.

Karen