Learning difficulties

[Avanti]

I'm basically very fustrated and desperate and i'm not sure who to turn to for help. Hopefully some of you may have some advice?

My mum's close friend has a daughter with learning disabilities. She's in yr 7 now but she's already struggling. They are Chinese like my family and have limited english skills and hence they haven't really corresponded effectively with the proffessional teachers and people who have diagnosed her disabilities. She never really revealed the extent to my mum either. This year after I started uni and started looking to tutor students to earn some money, she asked if I could tutor her daughter in maths.

I thought I would try and do my best.....I realised firstly she did not understand what fractions were. I have tried and tried and tried for weeks now, doing the same problems over and over, using pies, mandarins, money, EVERYTHING, to try and help her understand what a fraction of so and so meant. How it is one part of a whole, etc. I realised the full extent of her situation when I asked, " if you have $5 and your friend has $5, than how much money do you have if you put your money together?" and she answered: $5? She can recognise what to do if you give her 5+5. She knows her times tables, can do division and multiplication, but she doesn't understand why. She mimics in other words. She can read and write and spell fine, but she has no idea what the sentences mean. Hence she never reads books.

Her school has already asked her mother to have a meeting and suggest she get proffessional help. She is getting help once a week but it's not helping for another reason. Her mother hated school, and isn't interested. But like most asian parents, she somehow just expects her daughters to acheive the highest marks. She herself never gives them the proper enviroment to study. She's always taking them to parties, ice-skating, dancing, which is FINE but it's done too excessively and it stems from her own self interest to get out of the house and socialise. She can't sit still. When i'm tutoring her daughter, she's gossiping with my mum enthusiastically.

Her daughters subsquently spend minimal time doing homework and is always thinking of what activities are planned for the day. Her younger daughter of normal ability can probably get through school, but her oldest needs extra attention. She needs to be encouraged to review her lessons constantly, and apply it to help her understanding, because she can't bludge her way through like her younger sister. She also needs more proffessional schooling. I can't keep going on like this. It's not just an intelligence thing anymore. If it's an input output brain function problem, it's beyond my ability to solve.

Ok, so i've ranted enough. You're wondering why I haven't just told her mum? I have, but asian parents have this thing about respect to elders that is quite frightening. My mum has forbidden me from pushing the topic too far because it'll upset her friend. Her friend knows, and simply doesn't care anymore, she says " i'm so tired, can you please just do the best you can?" and promptly drops the subject. I'm EIGHTEEN!!! for gods sake I don't have any experience with learning disabilities, I have no idea what I could possibly do?:awilly:

Does anyone have any suggestions? Maybe know what type of options in terms of help she can receive? Maybe even how to deal with her mother? I live in Australia though...but the system to helping children should be similar. I just don't know where to start looking for help. :(

[Cindlady2]

WOW! 2 of my kids have dyslexia and it sounds like a maybe.... But your biggest issue is dealing with her parents and getting them to realize that it's not a big disgrace to have a child who dose not learn in the same way. I relay do not know how you can deal with that. I would say try to find out what it is she has and find out more about it. Ask your mother to ask them.

Sorry, best I could think of.

[Cat]

There are special strategies for helping kids with learning disabilities. I don't know what they are, myself, but the information should be out there. Try:

http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson115.shtml

It has a list of resources.

[business voodoo]

first, by year 7, i assume you are talking about 7th grade and not 7 years old ... in which case she would be about 11 or 12; but these days you never know ... if she is 7, my advice would be different than as follows, but not by much.

if she is in a conventional school, and you are tutoring her and her parents trust you, you may want to approach numbers from a 'meaning' stand point ... what 0 means, what 1 means, etc. she may connect 'strange' or otherwise more personal meanings to the numbers and then when using them, she has a personal context for them. otherwise, i would try, for teaching fractions ... an artistic approach, showing her the meaning of fractions through pictures she creates. my daughter loves video games and math blasters is one of her favorite "games" ... sometimes its the simplest answer.

if you have access to it, look at her astrological info and see where saturn is transiting ... it could just be there is no opening at this time for this information to enter into her linear structure, in which case, she is destined to 'fail' in a conventional school setting without serious parental care and intervention into how she is integrating into the learning system ... e.g., there may be a serious need to change school philosophies and methods.

finding how children connect to information is as individual as they are ... parents have to be willing to adjust their expectations to what is 'normal' for their child as opposed to what society claims as 'normal' and then empower the child's unique way of learning.

if you need support for the parents ... have them look at alternative education philosophies like www.sudbury.org or the waldorf system, so they realize that their child is not that different after all.

good luck! you are wonderful for sharing your life with this family!

[Tanya]

I am dyslexic, and after a while you learn how to get around your problems (spell check .. for me helps tons as does rote memorization techniques) but it is really important to have support from family and teachers that your not stupid, its just like having a hearing problem, it has to be delt with... and move on, no value judgement attached.

Teachers have to know the kid isn't being willful or hard headed.(I got that a lot 'We know she's smart, why does she insist on being so pigheaded about spelling!")

All schools in America are bound by law to offer special learning programs for kids who need it. The family HAS to get into the school get the child proffesionally evaluated and set her on the track to dealing with the problem. Otherwise she's going to feel like a failure.

Its amazing how ignorant folks are about dyslexia. In Uni I once got an in-class essay test back marked "A+ thoughts, C- spelling"

I pointed out to the prof that all my take-home assignments were properly spelled, that the test was timed, so I couldn't consult a dictionary constantly, that the uni knew I had this problem but had never asked for any breaks until now.. He just shrugged and said "Maybe you shouldn't be here then... as if I hadn't proved myself by being in my last semester with a 3.8 GPA and two majors"

I wonder if he would have been such an ass if I had been blind.

[Avanti]

What an awful attitude from an uni tutor!

This girl isn't dyslexic though, not in the sense that I understand dyslexia to be. She can spell perfectly, (better than me sometimes I must admit, as my spelling has gone down the drain after relying on spellcheck), and reads and writes well. She just finds it hard to understand meanings of phrases sometimes. She also doesn't understand most subjects.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys! I'm gonna look at those sites and maybe try and restructure my teaching. In the long run though, I'll need her parents to get it into their heads they need to finde her a proper teacher. Her school has already given up on her and has hinted she should drop out. She's being failed by everyone.

[Cindlady2]

Good Luck to You and her!

[Seren_]

I believe discalculus is the maths equivalent of dyslexia. My ex-boyfriend had it...when he started at school he didn't think in numbers in the same way as the other kids. He thought of the number three as a triangle, for instance; four was a square and so on. Then a green triangle represented the number three, whereas a red triangle was thirteen, and so on. He couldn't read numbers, just the shapes and he did fairly well using his own system until he was told not to use it anymore. After that, he just didn't get maths anymore.

Perhaps there's a particular way your student views maths - or just learning stuff - that she's best adapted to?

[Avanti]

See that's the problem. How am I to find out how she learns things? She is your typical shy whispering girl, who doesn't say anything. I would never be able to guess in a million years if she uses a special system of shapes, or anything else as frankly i've never heard of them.

What she needs is a proffessional who has experience and knows what is happening in her mind. I'm probably more confused than she is.

sigh...I sound grouchy I know...it's just appalling when the system fails and needs to rely on an eighteen yr old.

Thanks for the discalculus name, but i'm not going to be able to have time to learn enough about it. I'm bogged down by exams. I'm focusing on pestering her parents about this again.