Ignore the message below.

First question is what her general intelligence level is. Does she talk? At an adult level? Can she cope with real-life expectations of a young adult? Does she work? If she *only* has a problem with schoolwork, that is one thing; if she has overall low intellectual functioning that’s a different question, and then the other question is how low.

Second question is whether she has other problems. Vision problems? Hearing problems? Other health issues?

Third question is what happened to her in school. Did she miss a lot of school due to illness or other problems? Was she in special ed classes?
It is really important to find out from her or from your parents what interventions have been tried.

Fourth question is how much time you can put into this whole thing. It is a big commitment and you have to stick with it.

I am always willing to offer help and advice in general, but it is necessary to know who you are advising.

Hi
Her intelligence level is what i’d call low, but not drastic. For instance, she can drive a car (although she has no liscence). Her conversation is, while not on the level of an average 20 year old, still ok. I have started taking her out and about, to the cinema, bowling etc. and am making her ask for her own ticket, buy her own popcorn, and she handels it well, like when shes asked if she wants a large or small drink etc The best way to describe it is that she looks more like 15 or 16 than 20. Strangers meeting her, percieving her to be a 15 year old can tell something isnt quite right as her questions are often inappropriate, but she can carry on a conversation fine, providing the person she’s talking to “drops to her level” if that makes sense.

She’s missed a LOT of school, due to epilepsy, which is now, more or less under control. She can recognise ALL letters, she can spell her name(although her handwriting is akin to that of child who has just begun to write) numbers appear to be a real problem, as she seems to have no concept of them at all. My parents have, sparadocially tried to teach her with traditional school books etc, but, to be honest, these attempts are half hearted and dont last long.

The situation at the minute is that, having graduated from university in August, i have moved back to my home town. I will be working full-time from the end of this month, but my plan at the minute is to try to convince the powers that be to allow her to move into an apartment with me in an attempt to change her image of herself from incapable child to responsible adult. As I said, I have forced some sort of social life on her in the last few months and she HAS risen to the challenge.

I obviously cant give as much time as i would like to helping her improve her basic skills, realistically, at this stage I think 2 hours a day would be as much as i could expect, thats taking into account both my working hours and her attention span( I have been getting 4 or 5 hours of work out of her a day, but that takes ALL day, right up until 8 or 9 at night, so 2 hours of actual work, will realistically involve an investment of 4 or 5 hours. )

The work I’ve been doing with her over the past few months, in terms of reading( I have left numbers to one side for the time being as that task seems a bit daunting) has been getting her to read basic reading books (the cat sat on the mat etc..) and, she seems to grasp it, but, I try a trick like saying “quickly, before you go to bed show me how you can read this page again” and its as if we’re back at square 1.

One other thing though, is that often when we’re reading (again, basic books with words like “dog” etc.) often, without her thinking the correct word NEARLY comes out of her mouth, then she stops herself. It’s as if she thinks reading is harder than it is.

Thank you for your reply, I hope this answers your questions, and I’m sorry if its the most long winded post ever :)
Ed

Ed,
I think your best bet is Lindamood-Bell. This program would be particularly approrpriate because you don’t have years to remediate her difficulties. I took my son there and he made a great deal of progress. It’s intensive (4-5 hours a day), and extremely expensive, but it’s one of the more effective programs I’ve found.

You can do a Google search for their website and find out if there’s a LMB center nearby. Good luck!

This young woman sounds like she has global intellectual and social problems. My best recommendation is that there are centers all of the country (would be useful to know where you are), this is more true in larger cities than in small towns. They will help your sister get training in basic work skills and possibly become employed at a slow paced repetitive job. These centers will also teach basic functional math and reading skills. For a start you might look up the Arc. They also have supported living situations if you are not able to look after your sister as well as you need to. If you decide to keep her with you then they may offer supportive services to you, such as respite care, etc. (BTW, it is best to really look at these carefully. Some cities have really wonderful programs and some not so good and some programs are great and some not as good.)

IMO, her main needs are NOT reading and writing at this point— it isn’t that she couldn’t be taught— but what’s she goign to do while you work?
Does she have friends and a social life of her own separate from you?

—des

You are taking on a big job here, and congratulations to you for the effort. I hope you can hang in there and do what is needed. It’s also good to see someone working for improvement, not giving up.

I don’t know if the ARC would be appropriate at this point; I believe they work mostly with lower-functioning people on really basic living skills.

There may be government help of various sorts available. But be careful of the kind of tutoring help offered; often there are low expectations and ineffective reading teaching approaches I (which, when they fail, are expected to fail with the low expectations.)

I congratulate you on trying to get her to have some social interaction. This is important. Keep up the good work. Remember that habits take time to become automatic so be patient and don’t give up.

You are doing some very good things, and some that I think may be counterproductive. You should NOT tell her to hurry and go quickly. As you have already proved to yourself, that is a way to make her freeze up and lose everything gained. Take the opposite tack and tell her to slow down, look carefully, think things over. Understanding and accuracy come first, and speed will come later with mastery.
The basic “cat sat on the mat” books are a good thing, but they need to be backed up with some organized systematic teaching of reading skills; it does not work to just wait until a student catches on, it’s already been proved several times over that she doesn’t just catch on.

I have a series of posts I have made here that I will send out, outlining effective methods of teaching reading, and one on basic math skills, and you are welcome to them; just email me at [email protected]
I will be getting to sending them out again in the next few days , we hope.
This is a big commitment of time and effort but it works.

As far as getting her to do work, well different students have different needs. I have one adult student who also takes five parts of nagging to one part of work, so I can see where you are.
But you may find things get better by backing off a bit and trying a different approach. Some students can only hold it together for half an hour or so, so try four half-hour lessons with breaks in between instead of one multi-hour block. The breaks can be reward activities (not food!), things she likes to do like a favourite game or art or whatever. If you find a way to get thirty minutes of consistent work and a pleasant break, that is better than ninety minutes of fighting to get thirty minutes of work.

This is a long-term project, a year or two years of basic work and never completely finished, but you seem to have a realistic view and if you can work a little step at a time and keep the long term in mind you should be able to do a lot of good.

There are public organizations for people with disabilities — including mild ones that it sounds like she could qualify under — that can be *very* helpful … in some places. Around here, they like especially to work with people like your sister, because their help can make a huge difference in peoples’ lives.
First place I would go is the library and ask about literacy services.
Just surfing around, though, you can go to http://www.nifl.gov/ which is the “National Institute for LIteracy” and includes a link to http://www.literacydirectory.org/ — which is a pretty extensive listing of helpful organizations and you can look for places in your location.
You can also take on the actual teaching task, but there may be folks in place who have that as their purpose.

>I don’t know if the ARC would be appropriate at this point; I believe they work mostly with lower-functioning people on really basic living skills.

Not true. Most of their best programs are for people in the mild to moderate range. There are other organizations though, that provide programs– and may be better than Arc. So it’s a good idea to look around. Without knowing the city (or anything about the city) it would be
difficult to give better advice. There are programs for severely learning disabled as well.

What you would look for in such programs are clients that *are* on the same level, how do they look (happy, engaged, etc.?), etc. Do they interact with each other and have friendships? What do the facilities look like? ARe they noninstitutional and homey? What is the staff like? Are they helpful, etc.

>You are doing some very good things, and some that I think may be counterproductive. You should NOT tell her to hurry and go quickly. As you have already proved to yourself, that is a way to make her freeze up and lose everything gained.

My mom once tutored a young woman who sounds quite similar in some ways. She had many tutors who came to her house and had had instruction in reading, math, etc. (Like my mom, most of the tutors had no specific skills with disabled people. But she did make some limited progress.) However she had no peers, friends that sort of thing. She did no work like other people her age. So it is good to keep academic skills in context with what else is going on in her life.

—des

My other comment here is that if Arc is not appropriate ala functioning level they may be able to give you more appropriate leads.

—des

thanks guys for those leads. I actually live in Ireland, and we dont seem to have ARC here. We do have state funded assisted living programmes, but they dont seem appropriate. (it may be me being over sensitive, but they seem happy to treat the residents as incapable children, my goal is to help her become a self sufficant adult who can interact with all people, not just those on the same intellictual level as her. I’ve contacted the lindamood centre, the nearest one is in London, but thats fine if it helps. Anyway, thanks again. Any more ideas will be gratefully recieved.
Ed.

Ed, there are also Phono-graphix tutors and clinics in the UK. You might want to check that out, too. It would likely cost less than Lindamood-Bell. The site is www.readamerica.net.

Janis

Gee, that does make the literacy directory a little useless :-)

You’ve probably figured out already that “learning disability” has a different meaning in different English-speaking countries. “Learning difficulties” is a better search term.

I just did a google for “People First” (“an organisation of people with learning difficulties speaking for themselves”) thinking it might be an indirect route to something useful — but the first hit was already on the same continent. (If you put “people first” in quotes it will look for the phrase instead of the terms separately; if you capitalize them it will narrow it even more.)

ed,

If you live in Ireland, then you live in a country that has free and equal access to health care for all people, correct? So, I wonder if you can call a school that caters to folks like your sister and ask them for advice. Like, ask them about where they refer folks to when they reach their legal age of majority, with regards to building up their skills set with socialisation and math and reading…This paragraph is a shot in the dark type of thing that I am just putting out there.
Now, you state that your sister has epilepsy. Do you totally think that her epilepsy resulted in her challenges? If you are sure of that, like if you recall your parents stating that, then your sister should go to a doctor called a neuropsychologist. That is a doctor who will be able to give your sister proper testing in order to determine what portions of her brain were affected by her epilepsy, these portions of the brain govern things like reading and socialisation skills and math…remember that these types of things (that I am totally simplifying) are governed by different parts of the brain. If your sister, for example, has parietal lobe damage…then her math skills might be behind those of other folks in her age group. But this kind of “damage” can be overcome to varying degrees and please do not loose hope with any of that. I really think you should look up an foundation that is for folks with epilepsy because I am sitting here sleep deprived all the way in Memphis, Tn. and I am getting vibes that your sister having had/has epilepsy resulted in her current situation, but her current situation is temporary if she has a brother like you!!!!!!

i am a bad typest, so please pardon that, y’all