My daughter has just turned 6, and is entering her first formal yr of schooling here in SOUTH AFRICA, grade 1.
She is the youngest in her class, turning 7 at the end of grade 1 in Dec. (In SA, the law says children may only enter grade 1 in the yr they turn 7), but for my daughter, unforntunately, she turns 7 right at the end, leaving her to be the youngest in her group.

I adopted her as a baby, and due to the stress of the adoption process over the past 6 yrs, and lack of finality, she has her own emotional issues surrounding the her self identity, which has, in turn led to her being, in my opinion (both professionally as a teacher, as well as her mom), to be slightly behind in maturity.

Of late, say in the past 6-9 months I have noticed that she does not cope with being able to concentrate on one particular thing when other background things are lurking as a distraction. Being a teacher i luckily was a aware of the auditory figure ground perception problems that occur. I have taken her for therapy, which lasted only 6 weeks before the therapist told me, she was a bright, fast learning little girl, who had mastered all her milestones with above average accuracy, and that there was absolutely no need for her to be in therapy. I was relieved.

However, despite knowing how bright she is, I still foresee a huge problem that may affect her learning potential in the long run, as I still see her struggling to process stimuli accordingly.

She cannot listen to me in the car when the radio is on in the background. She becomes exceptionally frustrated, shouts at me to turn it off, and then unbuckles herself, to come forward to pull my face towards her, so she can focus on what i am saying, as the noise of cars passing us, also prevents her from being able to concentrate and process what i am saying. If my hubby and I are talking to her in conversation, and we happen to say something together at the same time, she completely loses it with us, telling us to speak one at a time, and then nominates who she wishes to listen to first. She struggles to do an activity if the tv, or radio is on lightly in the background, and she tends to get grumpy and frustrated and angry at her inability to perform.

My fear is that in the schooling environment, things are never going to be silent for her to perform at her best.

What i need are some practical tools and tips to assist me in getting her through this, and assisting her to cope with it….

any suggestions????

I get what you are implying now. Yes, I’d agree that trying to apply what I am learning into real life would be an excellent idea.

I’ll let you know if any of the programs work out.

If you’re learning how to touch type, touch type everthing. If you’re learning how to read in a particular way, for instance, by sounding out words you don’t know, try to use that technique a lot, even on words you do know.

Initially it will be awkward and will slow you down but eventually things will speed up. Maybe things won’t get as fast as you’d like, but they’ll get faster than they are now, just from practice.

From my experience and reading, auditory processing disorder/dyslexia affects both decoding (reading) and encoding (writing). Maybe not equally or the same amount in everyone, but it certainly affects my writing, my ability to remember spellings of words that are difficult for me. I don’t worry about it anymore and I use a computer and write quite fast and know how to use the tools on my computer to help me (I hope) so it doesn’t bother me much anymore. It used to though and I can relate.

Oh, and notetaking is very hard for almost everyone as you’re listening, understanding, and writing at the same time. I can hardly do it myself. My method, for better or worse, is to use a tape recorder or a digital voice recorder but also write down all the key words the lecturer is using so that when I’m later listening to the tape I’ll know the words to listen for. I can then rewind the tape to re-listen to what those key words actually mean.

A few things to consider:

No method or technique will give you instant results or even results in a few weeks. Most methods of learning take a while to show results and then, only if you practice them diligently. The diligent part it sounds like you have licked (and that’s the hard part, good for you) and it’s just a matter of extending the time and finding the right set of things to do so that you can make steady, long-term progress.

I remember learning how to touch type. I learned in the very early days of computers (1984) although I had a computer in 1979 and got very good at hunting and pecking.

I got a piece of software and used it every day: ran through its exercises, etc. and I did improve. But, it wasn’t until I made the shift and touch typed everything: email, letters, essays, articles, etc. that I made real progress.

The idea is that whatever “training” you do needs to be incorporated into the rest of your life so that you’re not just doing the training, then going back to old habits when you do reading and writing out of the training context.

So, if you use a phonemic approach to decode words that are new to you in training, you need to find a way to support that when you’re doing all sorts of writing.

Lastly, the key to learning how to write well is to write more. There is no magic technique or method here, just immersion in moving from brain to print as many times as possible. Given your diligence, I’d say you’ll do fine. Keep posting comments here, send more emails, keep a journal (or blog) and just keep writing. The more you do, the easier it will become and you’ll find small ways of working through problems.

Thanks for your post and keep us informed as to your progress.