Did you ever hear someone say If you say “I can” or “I can’t” you’re right ? Well, I think this is a terrible saying.
~ Peter Flom ~
Valentine’s day is an odd holiday. Schools are open, work is open, everything is open, yet it’s celebrated anyway. And it’s a horrible holiday for many NLD children (and adults) because we often have problems with friendship and romance and Valentine’s day is all about romance in adulthood and the precursors to romance in kids. […]
Say WHAT? Less organized? Has Peter finally flipped his lid? Well …. maybe :-)! But let me explain.
Children who are twice exceptional (2E) by definition have areas of great strength (gifts) and areas of great weakness (deficits). The traditional model, inasmuch as there was one at all, was to treat only the deficits, figuring that the gifts would take care of themselves. This ignored the fact that the gifts often made the […]
When I was a kid, my report cards often had comments like “Peter would do better if he applied himself”. This always made me want to apply my fist to the teacher’s face! (I never actually hit a teacher, I made their lives miserable other ways). It’s the same message as “try harder”. No. You […]
Juggling is an interesting activity that can be helpful to many special needs children (or adults). It’s got several advantages, which I spell out below, and is much easier than most people think. MANY people can learn to juggle. If you can toss a ball from hand to hand, you can learn to juggle. If […]
When trying to find a good school for a child with learning disabilities (particularly NVLD), one decision is mainstream vs. special education. I talked about that in an earlier post: Drowning in the Mainstream. But another decision, particularly if you decide against special education, is the size of the school. Clearly, schools vary in size […]
In the field of learning disabilities there is a lot of talk about executive function. The NCLD has a whole page about it. It involves Executive function is a set of mental processes that helps connect past experience with present action. People use it to perform activities such as planning, organizing, strategizing, paying attention to […]
We often expect kids to learn from examples. In a text book, this might include Looking at the example Reading the instructions and Doing the same in an exercise That might seem straightforward to NT adults, but it can be confusing to NVLD people, particularly younger ones but even adults
Poor report cards, requests for a meeting, notices of problems in the classroom …. These happen. Sometimes, teachers need to communicate bad news to parents. Communication is good, even if it’s about problems. But, all too often, the children have to take the bad news home to their parents. This is a bad idea. […]
Does your kid sometimes seem to react one way to something and then, another time, react totally differently? Does a particular thing sometimes delight her or, at least, not bother her and other times cause a meltdown? Does this puzzle you? Well, a lot of you NT people (maybe all …) are exactly the same […]
I was away over the weekend and stayed in a large hotel. Like most such places, the rooms were all along long corridors. I think I went to my room (and out again) 6 times or so over the weekend. And …. I never knew which way to go! Each time I went to my […]
CAVEAT: I am not a trained therapist. This is not professional advice. I do have a degree in special ed, but it’s been 30 years since I took those courses. This is just my opinion based on my life and observation. It may seem odd for me to be writing about friendship because – […]
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