This post is written as a response to my friend whose child is 4 years old and has a delay in speech. With my own child having a delay at 1.5 years old and him now exceeding many standards at 6 soon to be 7 years old I wanted to share, looking back, what had helped and how, as I still obsess about his development every day. I will try to cover many different areas from diet to schoolwork and most importantly my thought process and learnings.
A part of my story is that when my boy was born I was a very busy mom managing a data warehousing team with many critical deliverables that could not slip. I got my mom to come live with me and help with my son from 3 month old to 1.5 years old. My mom was great at cooking and changing diapers but not an educator by any means. She did her best taking my kiddo outside and putting him to sleep, but she had no clue how to develop a little child… and while my boy started with simple words at 9 months by 13 months he was non-verbal.
Here is my boy today. He is 7 in April of 2021. He is tri-lingual, with English being a dominant language. He is reading at 3-4th grade level (his favorite book today is The Wild Robot by Peter Brown and I cannot believe he got to chapter 71 on his own), his math is at 3rd grade level, we are well into Middle Ages with our History studies, we take high-school Biology, and I snapped his picture in the middle of his Outschool.com class on Vietnam (hence the blue-light filtering glasses). Hi likes soccer and bowling, he sings in a choir and does kung-fu hoping for the next belt. He enjoys creative writing and riding his cool red Woom bike. He plans his day in his own little planner with two pages dedicated to the camping trip he is looking forward to this spring. I feel proud today but it was not an easy road and we are not free from challenges.
What helped? I will start with philosophical learnings and then give you specific tips.
First, I would mention my learning that child’s brain undergoes an amazing period of development from birth to three—producing more than a million neural connections each second. A child’s ability to learn is at its highest when he or she is 1 year old and it declines over time. At birth, the average baby’s brain is about a quarter of the size of the average adult brain. It doubles in size in the first year. It keeps growing to about 80% of adult size by age 3 and 90% – nearly full grown – by age 5. How did this learning impact me? First, of course, was a feeling of guilt and recognition that I missed a lot during the critical time from birth to one and I did not make the best of it in terms of my child’s learning. That feeling was a huge daily motivator, in making sure that going forward every minute of my child’s day was spent to the fullest potential I could afford, challenging him and developing both, his strengths and weaknesses. My motto became “everything I can do today is worth more then tomorrow”. Every day we tried out a lot of different activities and resources, settling down with a few that worked.
Second, I would mention learning about the way your child learns best and how to best motivate him or her to learn. People often ask, what is the best curriculum to teach a child? But what not everybody understands, is that the best advisor for that is your understanding of your child. Is he or she tactile dominant (your clues are – likes legos, likes to keep things in his hands, always hands on or getting hands in the things you do not want him to get into)? When you present the same thing on paper, verbally, or through a tactile material – which way would he get it the quickest? Is he auditory (your clues are he or she is always singing or better concentrates with music, loves songs and audiobooks)? How is his or her ego factor? Is he competitive? Answers to these questions via observation will help you determine the best materials or types of curriculum to use and the best tricks in getting the engagement and motivation to learn.
Third, I would mention realizing that you as a parent are your child’s most important teacher, which means gearing up for the long homeschooling journey regardless of whether a child goes to school or not. Not waiting for a school, or therapist, or a teacher, doing the best you can every day finding resources, and investing your time and effort. From all the things in my life, being my child’s main teacher was definitely the most rewarding experience and the bond we formed as a result is hard to describe.
Forth, stimulating social environment and engagement of the learner is very key. Being among other kids competing for attention, or better yet collaborating on a challenging project can challenge a kid many times more then sitting in front of a tutor and repeating what he or she said. If at any point you have a chance of learning in a social and engaging way, choose that. We found that smaller school settings where kids have more chances to be heard and catered to worked best for us. Our favorite find was a local Action Academy, a growing franchise of schools that use non-traditional self-guided learning with Socratic Discussions and a Hero Journey theme.
Here are more specific tips:
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Nutrition. I transitioned to stainless steel waterless cookware, predominantly organic foods, raw un-pasteurized (try at your own risk) whole milk straight from the grass-fed cow farm, daily fresh juicing (here is the specific juicer I use and it is recommended by cancer-fighters using Gersen Therapy), pasture-raised eggs, sprouting grains to remove phytic acid before cooking them, salt-free cooking (we get enough from breads, etc that have salt), Strawberry Flavored Fish Oil , and Organic Food-Based Kids MultiVitamin Gummies (he gets one gummy after he takes a teaspoon of fish oil). If a child does not get enough quality protein in the system, not only can the learning at hand be impacted, but also the brain can get wired to avoid activities that are too taxing to the brain to save resources.
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Oxygen to the brain. What can you do to increase it? We ended up removing adenoids, buying household plants for my son’s bedroom, and a small trampoline for upside-down time at home for learning breaks.
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Therapy. If your child is younger then 3, they could qualify for First Steps – a government program that pays for speech, OT, and ABA therapy for children under 3. Children are assessed to see if they qualify for free. At any age you can qualify for speech, OT, and sometimes ABA therapy through your insurance with the neurological diagnosis such as autism. See your neurologist and do not shy away from the diagnosis as it can get you the help you might need at the time. Children with the diagnosis can also get services or accommodations from public schools which might include extra time on tests or extra points on the gifted assessment.
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Building up concentration, critical thinking, and visual processing. In the modern world we get so much info from internet and books, visual processing is key! It is not a strength for many children and is a key pre-requisite for reading, math, and any school work. You can use worksheets and games. I have a separate post on games for improving visual processing here.
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Building out comprehension. Reading comprehension is rooted in the ability to understand words and to understand the world around. Introduce your child to world history, geography, animal world, and foundations of science, religions, ethnicities, build connections between different subjects. Plan with your child, guess, and model decision making. Constantly explain your actions, decisions, and feelings to your child like you are “talking to yourself”. Follow your child’s interests at a time to “dig deeper”, learn more about it, and connect what he is learning to other things. If your kiddo is staring at the Hot Wheels car (many boys get so obsessed with them that I hid them many times to diversify my boy’s play), tell him about axels and engines, who invented them, what fuels are available, and you might end up discussing car brands and global warming. Great resources for reading comprehension are apps like Epic and RAZ Kids, and many schools public and private use those – they include comprehension questions. Ask your child about the beginning, middle, and end of the stories he or she reads or you read to him, who are the main characters, what is the moral of the story. We also use “read with mom and go tell the dad” strategy. Use graphic organizers to help them structure thinking and analyzing text (such as Venn Diagram for comparing and contrasting). Use multi-sensory learning by incorporating audiobooks, playdoh models, and rich picture books. Do not rush into chapter books since visualization is a part of comprehension and picture books are far superior for young children. We found great tutors and many interesting classes on Outschool.com, a portal similar to youtube where teachers from all over the world teach something they are passionate about.
- Learning basic academics. We started worksheet-based tutoring at Kumon when my son was 3 and Eyelevel when he was 4. If you can establish a consistent routine with your kiddo through those programs while they are young, they can get quite a bit out of it for reading and math. It is much harder after they learn to say no. We found Kumon to be better for initial reading, and Eyelevel better for math with critical thinking included into math curriculum. A routine is key even if you pick up an inexpensive workbook, and commit to completing 1-5 pages daily. It is important to have tactile resources while learning, similar to the ones in the post here for math. Website Teacherspayteachers.com is a great inexpensive resource where we got many lapbooks, organizers, and ideas to enrich the topic we are on. If you sort your search list there by price you get a lot of free resources bubbling up to the top. Our purchases there lately included a fan-like craft and a make-your-own book on Greek Gods, Power point on Hinduism, Venn diagram page on animal versus plant cell, and a make-your own foldable booklet on human body systems.