Less, Not More

One struggle many homeschoolers face is the feeling of not doing enough. To prove we are doing a good job, we push our children harder and teach skills earlier. With special needs children, the stakes seem higher because some tell us we are not qualified to teach. That seed of doubt tempt us to forget that children are born persons. They have their own timetables. While we may know typical developmental patterns, we cannot force development to go any faster than it is. Pushing harder may very well train the habit of frustration, creating setbacks instead of progress.

It is okay to step back and table a goal when tasks cause tears. It is okay to slow down or to reevaluate what you are doing. Last year, I felt rushed to get everything done some days. This year, I cut the amount of reading by 13% (measured by word count). Rather than spend ten minutes on a book three times a week, we read for five minutes a day if ten minutes is too long because of the complexity of the language. The benefits of a more leisurely pace became evident last week.

One book was written in the 1960s. A passage describes a large room full of computing machines. That unusual turn of phrase caught Pamela's eye. She stopped our reading (we alternate reading aloud sentences) and asked, "What about computers?" I explained that back in those days they called it a computing machine, which filled a whole room. Computers didn't work very well, and they were huge. We continued the reading, and she stopped me again when the book described a long tape being fed into the computer. "Just like tape recorder. No CDs, yet," she added. I explained that, in those days, computers had reel-to-reel tapes and people used cards with holes punched into them. While Pamela said very little, the questions revealed much about the thinking going on in her mind.

Two thoughts come to my mind. First, living books have a way of shining light on other subjects. While the passage came from a literature book, the ideas led to a conversation about history and science. Second, the sign of understanding isn't the ability to answer questions. It is the ability to ask them. "The mind can know nothing save what it can produce in the form of an answer to a question put to the mind by itself" (Page 16). Each time Pamela stops and asks a question, she reveals what she knows and how she thinks. A good friend who is new to Mason's ideas points out how much teacher training she received on asking the "right" questions to elicit critical thinking skills. Now, my friend realizes we take the opportunity to apply these skills in the act of reading when we do all the thinking to ask the "right" questions.

Pamela stops and shares her thoughts through reactions or in words far more frequently than she did last year. In one book, she laughed out loud at one angry character telling another to sit on a tack, just as she did with the wild inauguration party at the White House during Andrew Jackson's presidency. She applied "together or alone" thinking and said "just like RDI" when characters assessed the possibility of one character pulling all the pranks described without help. Her face lit up in another book when she learned that one character is the cousin of a president she studied last year.  While taking turns reading lines from a poem about language, she suddenly felt inspired to read aloud in unison with me just as the topic switched to conversations and dialogues.

I scaffold Pamela whenever possible. I suspected she wouldn't understand the meaning of deductions in a story about sharecroppers, so I linked it to a word she already knows: debt and debtors. I told her the sharecroppers had too many deductions whenever they shopped at the store. They gave them too much debt, and they became debtors. I found a pattern in the books that didn't work for her last year. Nearly all of them have very short stories that only take a few days to breeze through. I believe she needs to live with a character or event for much longer. So, instead of reading books that leap from story to story, I substituted recommended books with Hawthorne's A Wonder Book for mythology and Tappan's In the Days of Alfred the Great for English history (part of our own history when you think about it). Perhaps, in the future, with an imagination warmed toward a few more key monarchs and stories, Pamela can start to take possession of a pageant of our historical roots.

It is a great thing to possess a pageant of history in the background of one's thoughts. We may not be able to recall this or that circumstance, but, 'the imagination is warmed'... (Page 178)

Expressiveness

Pamela gave a couple of priceless narrations that reflect her personality and her growing vocabulary. She kicked off the day, narrating what she had previously read in Genesis:

Abraham is sad and blue because Sarah is expired. Got to bury and buy a cave. It is almost time for the debut of Rebekkah.

From a person who has struggled with aphasia most of her life, that narration was fantastic! Debut entered Pamela's vocabulary when she started researching the history of television. Last spring, she loved juxtaposing debut and debt "From the Lord's Prayer" which stood out to her because our old church used the more familiar trespasses. I have no idea where expire came from but she's been sprinkling many narrations with it.

When she read the word anxiety in the passage on Caesar, she related it immediately to her own anxious feelings and narrated,

Caesar was mad. He was freaking out. He broke his camp. He marched! Humpf!

She borrowed some language from The Big Comfy Couch when she related a story about Andrew Jackson's inaugural party,

They put mud on the couch. Who made this big mess with Andrew Jackson? They got into big trouble.

Pamela also showed spunk when she narrated the first snow of the winter for a little brother she sometimes calls a brat,

Prediction - Pinch get into trouble ice skating. He disobey.

What Really Happened - He put stone in the snow. He make a stupid stone on snowball.

Today's Artistic Expression
Pamela also expressed herself in pictures today, drawing a mosaic we found at the art gallery, for her review of ancient art. She painted the sky again for science and added monkey grass to her nature notebook.


First Turtle
Pamela started watercolor classes in August. Every time the class meets, each painting, guided by the same instructor on the same subject, looks completely unique. People accept individuality in art, but somehow that idea doesn't translate as well to reading a passage from a book. We are tempted to look for certain facts that must be recalled and certain ways in which ideas must be expressed. That is not the point of narration. Just as art reflects the personality and reaction of the artist, a narration too reflects the personality and reaction of the reader.

We loved Pamela's turtle so much that we framed it and made a latte cup for Steve.



Pat Terry's Traveling Turtles
Pamela's first turtle was based upon a picture. Her second turtle was even better because she had live models! A friend found wild slider turtle eggs and built a nest for them. She took strong measures to protect the eggs from crows. A few weeks ago, they hatched and she has been taking them to classrooms and other settings where people can study them. The adorable baby turtles inspired the whole class. Today, Pamela added the finishing touch to her watercolor.



Watercolors from August

Some Minutia about Our Language Program

We are wrapping up our current objective in which Pamela takes responsibility for keeping me on track with joint attention. I found the coolest graphic illustrating the kind of joint attention Pamela learned: like the person with no hat, she is gazing at me (the purple-hat person) to make sure I am looking in the right direction.



We focused on Pamela using more elaborate language to redirect my attention. While she writes or types in complete sentences when narrating books, real-time interactions flow so quickly that Pamela either relies on vague language ("Over there" or "Wrong way") or nonverbals. RDI emphasizes nonverbal communication in early stages because nearly all autistic children missed the opportunity to learn it early in their development (or lost that ability). Teaching a child to talk without learning to read facial expressions and body language leads to awkward interactions. They end up ensnaring people in long monologues about their favorite topics without knowing whether they are enchanting their communication partner or boring them to tears. An autism remediation post listed you-tube clips breaking down nonverbals: introduction, body (emblems, illustrators, affect displays, regulators, adaptors), face, eyes, touch (positive touch, controlling touch, playful touch, ritualistic touch, task-related touch, touch avoidance), space (territoriality), artifacts (space decoration, appearances, clothing, color, adornment, scent), and silence.

Pamela has both autism and a severe language disorder. We never had her formally diagnosed but two SLPs who know Pamela very well (my husband Steve's sister and our RDI consultant) agree that Pamela has some form of aphasia. Five years ago, Pamela's challenges with language fit the description of syntactic aphasia perfectly (I put other definitions at the end of the post),

Difficulties in using words in the correct order and/or forms for effective communication. Certain classes of words such as prepositions, conjunctions and articles may be omitted. Example, "Car man hit" for "the man hit the car." (Teaching Language Deficient Children)

RDI is not necessarily doing special activities beyond your normal day. I have been hanging laundry since last fall because our clothes smell fresher perfumed by the great outdoors and it is easier on the pocketbook. One key to framing an activity with an objective mind is how you assign roles. All week long, Pamela has been the talker and I have been the doer, as she directs my attention to line up with hers. I find these activities work for teens and are not at all babyish, even though the objective reflects the development of a two-year-old child:

• Laundry (hanging, pull off the rack, folding, putting away)
• Car navigator (telling me directions)
• Shopping (making a list, getting items, putting away)
• Cooking (getting out recipe, following recipe, cleaning up)

In the clip, I try to give Pamela many opportunities to speak specifically about where to hang the laundry in several locations (the rack, bricks, railing, and rocking chairs). We focus on prepositions and nouns in this activity. I throw in lots of variations, which does not frustrate Pamela. What we did here worked on many kinds of words and phrases dynamically and contigently without static repetitions or rote memory.


Other Forms of Aphasia
Nominal aphasia - The inability to know the appropriate names of things or to find categorical terms. For example: 1) "We went to that place (library) to check out books." 2) "Please do the door" for "open" or "close the door."

Semantic aphasia - Difficulty with word meanings. Example pen for pencil.

Pragmatic aphasia - Syntax and semantic ability may be present, but they may be used inappropriately. Example: "Your birthday is Mary 1, 1921" repeated frequently and inappropriately in time and place. Neologism are substituted for meaningful words. Example: "That man is clipping the krepies."

Expressive aphasia/Expressive language disorder - The individual is limited in the ability to express ideas through spoken words or written symbols.

Receptive aphasia/Receptive language disorder - The individual has difficulty comprehending language through spoken or written symbols.

Expressive-receptive aphasia - Difficulties with both types of language skills, comprehending and expressing ideas.

Global aphasia - All language forms are seriously affected to the degree that it is impossible to use one of the preceding categories. There may be an automatic expression or two which may not be meaningful. Example: "The puthee the puthigh" as a response to any comment or question.