special education Tag

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The Art of Being: Teach & Inspire by Living Authentically

Living authentically - grandmother and granddaughter on a nature walk

Three years ago, someone asked me, “If you could teach anything, what would it be?”

Honestly, the question caught me off guard. I didn’t have an answer. It’s such a big question that it’s been stuck in my head ever since.

You see, I’ve been a teacher for 38 years. My whole career has been teaching special education and focusing on emotional intelligence. I’ve always loved helping people find their strengths and use them to navigate life with happiness, health and success.

But in all those years, I never stopped to ask myself, “What would I teach if I could choose anything?” I didn’t think I needed to. I was just Ronit, the teacher, doing what I do best.

That question changed things for me and took me through a process of discovery. It made me think about life, about what I’ve learned, and what I really want to give to the world. Maybe by sharing the process of my discovery about the art of being, I can help you think about your own answers too.

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Parenting Autistic Children: Catch 22

The previous post in this series told the story of my first encounter with autism at a special school where I did work experience for 6 months. Today, I would like to introduce the problems families face when they notice something wrong in their child’s development. As you will see, the way the system works puts them in a Catch 22 situation.

Bringing a child into the world is a very exciting event in every family’s history. Noticing that something is wrong with a child is not easy to experience. As I’ve said before, mothers of autistic children were blamed in the past for the situation by the claim they did not connect with their child during the first weeks after birth.

Most of those moms sighed in relief when the results of an experiment confirmed that autistic babies were different from “normal” babies.

In the first stage of the research, every mom was given recordings of her baby crying and asked to guess the reason for the crying. Most moms of “normal” babies guessed correctly, while moms of autistic babies didn’t. So, those who advocated for the “let’s blame the mothers” said, “OK, then. That’s our proof”.

But the experiment continued.

This post is part 4 of 4 in the series Autism

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Autistic School: First Encounter with Autism

My first encounter with autism was when I was a Special Education student. From the very first year of studies, my classmates and I worked with children on the autistic spectrum and accompanied some children with severe autism at school. At the start of my second year, I had to choose a place for work experience.

I remember the day our head of department came to shows us the list of options. The autistic school was not on the list, so I asked about it – not because I wanted to work there, but because I was afraid of it.

You see, my philosophy was to choose all the things I was afraid of. I figured that it was the best time to challenge myself and get over my fears. This is why I chose to specialize in Math and this is why I asked about the autistic school.

The head of the department explained to all of us that they didn’t offer work experience at the autistic school because we were not ready for it. She said people did this type of work after they graduated.

This post is part 3 of 4 in the series Autism

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Who’s Afraid of Exams?

Many children hate exams. If you ask them what they hate more than homework, they will tell you it is exams. They hate them because it is natural to be anxious in a situation that puts our abilities to the test.

Someone is looking at what you do, checking what you do and then judges you for it. Children don’t like to be judged. Well, in fact, no one likes to be judged.

Many parents say to me, “This is life and kids need to learn to live with it!” and I wonder if this really must be part of life and whether we must live in such a judgmental environment. Maybe we can transfer the focus from what others think about us to self-awareness and what we think about ourselves.

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Education System on Trial and Found Guilty

Until I studied Education, I had not questioned the education system. I do not think I’d had the tools to question it. But by the time I graduated (in Special Education), I had realized something was wrong. It was easy to see this while working with kids who were different (both gifted and those with learning difficulties).

Why?

Because special education kids did not fit into the “education box” and the school system did not cater for them. It got worse when I realized, thanks to my amazingly wonderful teachers, that the system just did not care for any of the kids, because every child is special and different in some way. The system cared for itself.

It was devastating!

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Children with Auditory Processing Disorders or Not?

A brain made from words marking the different brain functions

I went to study special education to help children and adults with learning difficulties. When I started my journey, over 30 years ago, I thought there were many people with learning difficulties. I still think there are, but in the past, I was convinced they were “organic” – physical, possibly genetic – and therefore hard to change.

Now, after seeing so many children and people of all ages, I think that social attitude creates or aggravates the problems in many cases. Many people have small difficulties that are blown out of proportion and labeled as disorders.

Auditory processing disorders are very popular and easily labeled, even among very young children. Every year that passes, I hear about younger and younger kids with auditory processing disorders. Recently, I even talked to a mother whose son was one year old and she insisted he had an auditory processing disorder. I am qualified enough to know that I cannot assess a child for APD at one year of age.

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Reading Challenges: Children with Weak Visual Perception

There are many possible causes for kids’ reading challenges. Sometimes, the kids need to deal with such overwhelming emotions they cannot learn anything, including reading. Other time, the teacher is not teaching how to read properly (yes, you will be surprised how many kids cannot read because their teachers did not teach them how to read properly).

However, some children have reading challenges due to their weak visual ability. This means that their brain is wired so that they are not very good at absorbing and processing visual input. It is important to understand that this is a brain function and has nothing to do with eyesight.

Many parents think that when their kids cannot read, we just need to read with them more, but that is not the case. It is like giving someone who cannot hold a pen different kinds of pens to solve the problem. Yes, reading more brings some benefit, but a weak visual ability requires stimulating the visual perception at a more basic level. Once this is done, reading becomes easier and more natural and no longer frustrates the child.

Strong visual perception is essential for good decoding and memory of symbols. Reading requires mostly visual perception to analyze and memorize, and some auditory support for non-basic words.

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There Are No Hopeless Teens

As a teen, I faced many challenges with how the system viewed my abilities. Since then, I got a degree in Special Education and promised myself that no teen that crossed my path would ever be hopeless. Over the last 30 years, I have had the honor of working with many teens who were given up by the system and have done my best to act on my promise.

A young boy (let’s call him Aaron) came to see me 3 years ago. He was a tall and handsome young teen in a big body. He was in 10th grade and his mom was very worried about him. She raised him by herself, together with his youngest brother after a very challenging breakup.

Aaron attended one of the most prestigious private high schools, located over an hour and half’s drive from his home and his academic scores were low. He was failing in most of the subjects. He also got in trouble with every teacher possible and had no friends.

Every day was a challenge. In the morning, Aaron refused to go to school. In the afternoon, he refused to do his homework. The school told his mom that Aaron was hopeless. But he was just was a smart kid that was lost in the system.

This post is part 15 of 19 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

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I am not Black, You are not White and We are not Labels

I have been doing diversity education for the last ten years. The more people I saw, the more I realized how important this work was. For some unknown reason, people like labels. They think that labels help them define the world. I believe they shrink the world, limit thinking and restrict our range of experiences.

When I was 21, I was greatly inspired by one of my psychology teachers at university. She came to class and asked us, “Who are you?” At first, we thought she was weird. Well, she was weird (at least this is how we labeled her), but the more we discussed this topic, the more we realized that this weird question was all about the labels we put on others to help us define ourselves.

In one of the classes, she asked me, “Ronit, who would you be if your parents gave you a different name?” I looked at her, unsure if I had understood the question. I was puzzled for a while, and then said, “Me!”

In our psychology classes, we discussed identity and how the labels we give to everything around us limit the range of the experiences we have. At one stage, she told us to move around the room based on our labels. She asked all females to move to one side, all males to the other. Then, she moved us around based on other labels we are given in everyday life, like height, age, race, religion, the area of the country where we grew up, etc. It didn’t take us long to realize that labels divide us into groups, and when this is done, it is very easy to control us.

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Don’t Give Your Kids Psychiatric Drugs!

1 in 13 U.S. children take psychiatric drugs

No matter how hard parenting is, giving your child psychiatric drugs must be considered very seriously, because it is very often a bad idea. Here is why.

Working with parents and kids for 30 years, I can tell you that it is not easy to be a parent. It is not easy because unlike computers or other gadgets, kids do not come with an instruction manual and they do not behave in a way that is easy to predict.

Inexperienced parents react to things that do not work as they expect. Experienced parents, having raised other kids through the same situation, can see the patterns and not panic when something unexpected happens.

I realized this when I had an early childhood center. After working in a group of 30 toddlers, I became an experienced parent in a flash. Why? Because when you deal with 30 kids, you can see that when your child does not behave the way you expect, he/ she is still normal. When you see your toddler touching his/ her sex organs, you may think something is wrong with him/her, but when you see 30 toddlers doing it, and you see them stop when you do not pay attention to it, you feel a bit more relaxed about your own toddler and comfort yourself that he/she is normal.

Inexperienced parents have a problem with the concept of normality. Since they have nothing to compare to, they do not know what is normal and what is not and too often jump to the conclusion that something is wrong with their child and needs to be fixed. This fear and doubt mindset about children’s development, behavior and achievement can cause many problems, mainly because it determines the parents’ course of action.

Read Don’t Give Your Kids Psychiatric Drugs! »

The Art of Being: Teach & Inspire by Living Authentically

Parenting Autistic Children: Catch 22

Autistic School: First Encounter with Autism

Who’s Afraid of Exams?

Education System on Trial and Found Guilty

Children with Auditory Processing Disorders or Not?

Reading Challenges: Children with Weak Visual Perception

There Are No Hopeless Teens

Don’t Give Your Kids Psychiatric Drugs!

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