Processing Speed & Working Memory Training for Kids

What are the teachers telling you? What do they advise you to do? That is where I would start.

My daughter started out as a slow reader and her elementary school offered tutoring after school for any student who needed additional help. All of this was provided by the school and the teachers did the tutoring.

She is a Sr in college and has had a 4.0 GPA all the way through.

I substitute taught 15 years and I know from experience that the many teachers tutor on the side for extra money. As a teacher, we preferred that the students were tutored by staff or teachers who were recently retired or on maternity leave from the district. This way, the students learn the way the district is teaching vs how an outside business just gives assignments and you don't know for sure if those locations actually have legit teachers.

The guidance counselors usually have a list of teachers who tutor and you just find someone that clicks with your child.

When my oldest was starting off in school he had a terrible time from the get-go with everything - he just wasn't clicking with reading, writing, spelling, or math. His Kindergarten teacher raised some concerns, and his first grade teacher piled on work and when he couldn't finish it, he had to give up his choice time and bring it home for homework. I had him evaluated for LDs at the end of first grade and while some of his skills were in the low average range, none were low enough to qualify him for an LD diagnosis but it did pick up ADHD inattentive type.

Anyway...a chance conversation with another mom yielded the name of an excellent tutor who used Lindamood-Bell principals as the foundation for his work. Once a week for a year, through second grade, my son worked with him and this guy re-taught him the rules of language and mathematics, mostly through pictures. He assessed my son and figured out that he was primarily a visual learner and used a lot of symbol work and pictures to get past some of his biggest sticking points. For example, he couldn't tell the difference between b and d, and p and q. Eric (the tutor) taught him that b and p are "lip poppers" (you close and pop open your lips to make the sounds) so his b and p picture cards were drawn with the vertical line of each letter drawn with a pair of lips (sideways) around the line. For memorizing which pairs of numbers add up to 10, he had cards where the two numbers were incorporated as objects in a picture (like 3 was a seagull and 7 was kite and they fly in the air together).

It was really helpful to have him create a visual for me of how my son's brain processed. I'm very logical, so he said that a well-ordered brain is sort of like a computer or a room full of filing cabinets. Things are filed away, neatly grouped and ordered, with helpful cross-references that make it easy to not only recall related material, but to know where it is and retrieve it. My son's brain is more like that hall closet that you stuff everything into. You need to find a tennis ball but when you open the door, half the stuff falls out, nothing has a place, and in searching for what you're looking for, a whole bunch of other interesting things catch you eye. So for someone like my son, where visual images are part of his automatic retrieval process but language/labels are not, we had to get his language skills out of the cluttered hall closet and into the part of his brain (visual) that didn't even have to think to retrieve information.

Of all of the interventions I've done with my son, this year of tutoring was the biggest game changer. He was able to catch up with his peers and perform reading and math at grade level by the end of second grade. It still wasn't easy for him, but those huge gaps in foundational skills were no longer there. You know how if you're building a house, no matter how hard you try you can't build if there are big gaps in the foundation? Same for him - once the foundation was secure and solid, he was able to build up off it, even if it was slow going. He did eventually qualify for and IEP in 4th grade and received special education support all through school. By 10th grade he no longer tested as learning disabled but they kept him on his IEP because of the executive functioning issues that come with ADHD. He graduated last June with an OK GPA (C+) average, decent SAT scores and a full-time job offer in land surveying. He has been working FT since graduation and will start to take classes towards his degree in surveying this January. After finishing two years of credits, he'll transfer to a big school in another state to finish his degree as a full-time student.

My son still remembers those picture skills that he learned 10+ years ago, and we used those skills when needed as he was tackling material such as hard spelling words - we would sit down and come up with a visual or kinetic cue to help him remember. If I could have afforded to have him see this tutor for more years, I would have but we really only had the budget for it for a year. I think that year was an investment that was worth every penny and then some. If you have a Lindemood-Bell center near you, I would definitely check them out and give it a try.

I've not done any of that. I hired personal tutors for my boys. It helped them because it was one-on-one and at THEIR pace and HOW they learn. Not in another group/class setting.

I was fortunate - their teachers from school tutored them. They are now in honors classes and doing quite well.

i dunno. i mean, i guess i'd try this stuff too if my boys had these challenges, but kids aren't computer programs and trying to upgrade them as if they were strikes me as a little odd.
i'd only go here if good old-fashioned methods failed. and by that i mean working reading and math into real life, not swotting.
khairete
S.

I live in Chicago where there are umpteen reading programs. We opted to hire teachers with Masters' degrees in Special Education to work with him one on one. LB is very big in our area, but it is incredibly expensive, and from what I understand from other parents, is also incredibly tedious. If you have access to Care.com (I assume that they have reach everywhere) you can search for tutors by speciality, e.g., reading or math. What we found is that 80% of those who responded to our ads, were just college or graduate students who wanted to make some extra cash. I did find one teacher who had a an advanced degree in special education. I also posted an ad on Craigslist. Make sure the person sends you a resume so you can see their current place of employment and their education. Take care.

what does your son's teachers say? Has he been evaluated by a professional?

how old is your son?
what grade is he in?

I've always worked with the teachers with any problems, finding out how my boys learn best and working with them to see everyone can succeed and learn in the class room.

You mentioned that your sons are 16 and 15. So you are looking for high school / pre-college programs?

If you expect that your sons are on track to graduate in two-three years, I would suggest focusing your attention on SAT/ACT prep programs like Kaplan.

Or are you asking about a younger child?