Sunday 24 October 2010

Special needs

One of the great things about educating your child at home is that you have almost complete responsibility for the end product. If the child turns out well, you can take a lot of the credit. After all, you provided the education. The downside is that there is no blaming a school if your kid turns out to be ill educated or badly behaved. Nobody else to blame for the slovenly speech or swearing, no peer pressure as a handy alibi if the child starts taking drugs and so on. What your child becomes is largely down to you. So for example, the fact that my daughter swears like a trooper is because I swear myself and she has been used to hearing this all her life. That she is a bit of a know-it-all probably comes from spending much of her early life with somebody who thinks he is cleverer than anybody else. This is a pretty frightening feeling actually; that most of your child's bad points are directly attributable to your parenting deficiencies! Fortunately, there is a way out of this, a brilliant piece of legerdemain which at a stroke can relieve you of much of the responsibility for all those unattractive traits which you see in your child and are anxious to blame on someone or something else.

My own daughter is a bit clumsy, having a tendency to bang into things and knock them over. Potted plants, vases, cups of coffee; all regularly fall victim to her cack-handed ways. I have always assumed that this was simply because her gross motor skills were not given as much practice when she was little as were her skills at recognising shapes. In other words, if we had played more ball games, spent more time with physical activities rather than reading, then I guess her gross motor skills would have developed a little better. The type of education which I provided is responsible for this. Suppose however that it was a neurological deficit? if that were the case and she suffered from some obscure syndrome like dyspraxia, then I would be completely absolved of responsibility. The fact that she didn't get much practice in the gross motor department would have nothing to do with it. I think we might be onto something here! Another home educating parent actually suggested to me some years ago that my daughter did indeed suffer from dyspraxia. In return, I confirmed her own diagnosis of her son's Asperger's. One hand washes the other! My daughter is also pretty standoffish and impatient with other people. She gives the impression of being a bit stuck up. I had always attributed this to the fact that her father, with whom she spent much of her childhood, is an exceedingly arrogant, rude and abrupt man whose social skills are practically non-existent. I took it for granted that I had set her a bad example in how to conduct herself in society. What though if she was on the high functioning end of the autistic spectrum? That would both explain her behaviour while at the same time letting me off the hook for being partly responsible for it.

This is all very exciting. Kid really badly behaved and rushes around like a mad thing not doing as he is told? Hmmmm, sounds like a case of ADHD to me! Don't worry mum, it's not just that you haven't taught him how to behave properly. He has a special educational need; it's not your fault. Teenage son spends all day in bed? Could be CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). Child lousy at spelling because you have not given him enough drilling in phonics? Not to worry; maybe he is dyslexic. You see how wonderful this is? Just by uttering the magic letters SEN, poor parenting vanishes like a puff of smoke and is replaced by a medical condition!


In fact with a little bit of research it is possible to explain away all the undesirable behaviour of our children in purely medical terms. This can be a great comfort. Nobody wants to think that they have screwed up badly on the parenting front and as I said above, home educating parents have a heavier burden of responsibility in this department than most. A little judicious use of the autistic spectrum though, coupled with a dash of dyscalculia, dyspraxia and a few random groups of letters like CFS, ADHD and ME can make all the difference between being a slack and ineffectual parent and being a mother bravely soldiering on as the carer of a child with special educational needs. The payoffs are tremendous. Just be sure to stick to self-diagnosis though. Professionals will sometimes cooperate in a dodgy diagnosis of special needs when a child is a registered pupil at a school because there is extra funding to be had. They won't generally play this game with a child who is at home; there's no advantage to anybody. The researchers from Ofsted were amazed at the number of self diagnosed conditions which they encountered last year when they produced their report on local authorities and home education. These were in addition to the children who had been previously classified as having special needs at school. In total, almost half the home educated children they saw had some special need or disability. Almost all were neurological deficits of one sort and another. For some reason, nobody self diagnoses things like blindness or spina bifida. This is probably because it's a bit too easy to spot when the diagnosis is not well founded, whereas with dyslexia or dyscalculia, it's your word against anybody else's.

43 comments:

  1. Mmmm...interesting. My own experience does bear this out to a degree.

    I have seen kids labelled with dyslexia when I happened to KNOW their parents didn't teach them the basics of reading when they were little. In fact, the story (which I've seen several times now) goes like this:

    Parents read some nonsense about how ALL children will pick up reading by osmosis and if they try to teach their child they are quickly slapped down by other HE'ing parents for being co-ercive. 'Don't you know that they will learn by themselves when they are ready and motivated?'

    So then, the parent waits for a few years, then panics and intervenes with a half-hearted poorly structured , badly delivered programme of teaching. That, natually fails, or screws the poor child up even more. The next step is a trip to an EP who diagnoses dyslexia. Voila!

    A lot of dyslexia is school-induced. And within the HE community, SOME of it is parent-induced. The vast majority of it seems to be inherent/neurological or whatever but I am utterly convinced that SOME HE parents unwittingly contribute to or even cause the reading/spelling issues their kids develop.

    Okay, that will not have won me any friends. However, the other side of this is that lots of HE parents are very against 'labels' and their clearly neurologically impaired children are NOT diagnosed when possibly they should be. A 12 year old who waves a stick in front of his eyes whenever he's in a group of people, who has several irrational, obsessional fears, avoids eye contact and speaks in a lecturing monotone isn't just a 'late developer'.

    Mrs Anon

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  2. This is an interesting post, although to be fair I found it a bit harsh. This is probably because I have three special needs kids(aspergers, asd, dyslexia, dyspraxia). All diagnosed BEFORE I began home ed I hasten to add.

    Interestingly though, your post doesnt take into account the parents of kids with these diagnosises who work to 'fix' their kids. In this house a disability of any kind is NO excuse for bad bahaviour OR not learning things. Absolutely not! It IS a reason for added care on my part to ensure they have achieved what they should have, and it is true that I look at their difficulties and see what they can manage and how I can make it more manageable. But it isnt an excuse for anything.

    My oldest boy returned to school and with their help and a lot of support he is 6mth away from high grade GCSEs. My eldest girl attends college one day a week for a vocational course and is doing a GCSE at evening class as well as work at home.
    In both cases, diagnosis has been the key to others understanding their struggles and learning style, but I dont expect leniancy from the teachers really, only understanding and help. I see diagnosis as a signpost for others.

    At home my children are practically 'normal' so there is an element of truth in what you have written but please give credit to parents like myself who arent using it as a cope out.

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  3. You know C, I was certainly not suggeting that there are no home educated children with genuine special needs. I am in contact with a few. They are also irritated at people who latch on to something like autisim to explain their children's behaviour or dyslexia as a reason for illiteracy. Many of these kids have been diagnosed just by their parents and various syndrome go through fashions. Asperger's has become very popular in recent years, for example. I am definitely not saying that there is no such thing as Asperger's Syndrome or that no home educated children have this!

    I always tend to adopt the simplest explanation of something. If a child has not been taught to read, then his illiteracy has probably been caused by that rather than dyslexia. Similarly, if a child has never been taught to sit still and stop running round all the time, then that is probably the cause of his wild and undisciplined behaviour, rather than ADHD. I am aware of a number of parents whose children have special educational needs and are working very hard to help their children and in fact chose the harder road of home edcuation to do so, instead of leaving them to struggle in school. This post was not about those parents at all.

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  4. I actually agree with a lot of points in your post and in your comment. And I am reassured that you do have experience of autism etc as real disorders. I think it's what a parent then does with the diagnosises that is really telling.

    My youngest boy (5) could easily fall into the category of 'hyperactive' as it is presented. However as you say, what he really needs is to learn how to sit still and go at a slower pace occasionally.

    Thankyou for clarifying. :)

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  5. "So then, the parent waits for a few years, then panics and intervenes with a half-hearted poorly structured , badly delivered programme of teaching. That, natually fails, or screws the poor child up even more. The next step is a trip to an EP who diagnoses dyslexia. Voila!"

    Hi Mrs Anon, interesting ideas. My theory, when my children were younger, is that many problems (such as dyslexia) are caused by forcing a child to learn to read before they are ready. This was why I chose autonomous education but did not rule out structured programmes if my children asked for them (well you can't rule out something a child asks for if you AE). This appears to have worked in that our children have either learnt early through apparent osmosis (but really there was lots of 'teaching' in the TV programmes they watched, the games we played, the questions asked and answered and the reading we did together) or they have learnt when they asked to learn either with supported reading or structured phonics programmes. None are dyslexic, all read at an adult level and all spell better than I do. Do you think problems are ever caused by forcing someone to read before they are ready (either developmentally or emotionally)?

    Simon, I'm feeling really smug now because, as far as I can see, I've not caused any problems such as you describe in my children. None are clumsy and none have any learning difficulties. All get on well with other people and can mix with different types of people easily. Does this mean we have been brilliant parents? Does this mean that we've done a better job than you and your wife? Or does it just mean we've been lucky with our genes? I suspect it's the latter.

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  6. "I suspect it' the latter."

    Though obviously not completely, or why choose HE or AE for that matter?

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  7. 'many problems (such as dyslexia) are caused by forcing a child to learn to read before they are ready.'

    More information needed for this claim. It is equally likely that leaving it to the age of five or six makes it harder to grasp and thus causes reading difficulties. Often, the earlier one learns something, the more likely it is to become second nature.

    'Or does it just mean we've been lucky with our genes?'

    I seriously doubt that it was my genes, or my wifes, which enabled our daughter to read at eighteen months. Far more likely to be connected with the teaching which she recieved.

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  8. "More information needed for this claim. It is equally likely that leaving it to the age of five or six makes it harder to grasp and thus causes reading difficulties."

    http://www.besthomeschooling.org/articles/david_elkind.html

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/bethan-marshall-children-are-not-helped-by-reading-too-early-763182.html

    "I seriously doubt that it was my genes, or my wifes, which enabled our daughter to read at eighteen months. Far more likely to be connected with the teaching which she recieved."

    Well in that case I hope you are sorry and have apologised for disabling your daughter socially by causing her to be clumsy. And I can go back to feeling smug!

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  9. "Well in that case I hope you are sorry and have apologised for disabling your daughter socially by causing her to be clumsy."

    should have been:

    Well in that case I hope you are sorry and have apologised for disabling your daughter socially *and physically by* causing her to be clumsy.

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  10. 'Well in that case I hope you are sorry and have apologised for disabling your daughter socially *and physically by* causing her to be clumsy.'

    Well of course it's swings and roundabouts, isn't it? She may have been a little deficient in some areas, but also far advanced in others. No upbringing or education can ever be quite perfect and we all screw up our children's lives in various ways. There is just a little more opportunity for home educators to do this because we spend so much time with our kids. There is a standing joke in the house that we shall have to give her a Therapy Voucher for her thirtieth birthday so that she can confide in a psychiatrist how much we wrecked her life!

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  11. 'http://www.besthomeschooling.org/articles/david_elkind.html

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/bethan-marshall-children-are-not-helped-by-reading-too-early-763182.html'

    Bethan Marshall is really complaining about the early use of synthetic phonics and that this could put children off reading in later life. I think she is right and would not use this myself with a small child. It makes reading too much like hard work. The other bit, by the guy from Tufts, is interesting, but a minority view in modern research.

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  12. Hi Simon,

    I see your point and have come across a number of children with parent diagnosed special needs.

    I would however like to comment on your statement regarding HE kids getting an assessment,

    'Professionals will sometimes cooperate in a dodgy diagnosis of special needs when a child is a registered pupil at a school because there is extra funding to be had. They won't generally play this game with a child who is at home; there's no advantage to anybody.'

    A few months after taking our son out of school we went to our GP and asked for a referral because we thought he may have Asperger's, our GP was very obliging and we are going through the assessment process now with CAMHS who have been very helpful and supportive. The fact that he is HE does not seem to be a concern to them. Perhaps we are just lucky.

    I would never say that he has Asperger's unless he has a diagnosis. I have said a few times that he is being assessed to explain some of his slightly eccentric behaviours and help others have a better understanding of him.

    As C said, whatever his diagnosis may or may not be it is no excuse for poor behaviour but should he return to school a diagnosis will hopefully give his teachers a guide as to how approach certain things with him.

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  13. "Well of course it's swings and roundabouts, isn't it? She may have been a little deficient in some areas, but also far advanced in others."

    So you don't think children can catch up later and even exceed early starters in academics? Like children who start learning to read later in other countries?

    Some things do appear to have critical periods during which they must be learnt, others do not. Certainly physical development appears to depend on critical periods as you suggest in your article. Do you have any evidence that the same is true of academic development?

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  14. Sigh...fraid I couldn't get past the first paragraph before feeling the need to offer a qualification, if not in some instances a complete correction!

    You wrote "One of the great things about educating your child at home is that you have almost complete responsibility for the end product."

    Seems that nothing that autonomous educators have told you has really sunk in, has it Simon! So much for setting a good example to your daughter, by way of being receptive to new information!!!

    Plenty of HEors are autonomous HEors. They would no more take responsibility for "how another person turns out" than they would claim to have visited outer space. They know that the child is responsible for himself and makes the decisions about the person he chooses to be. The parent can offer their best theories, but it is entirely up to the child whether or not he adopts them.

    There - will this information finally sink in on this occasion, Simon?

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  15. I think that environment is hugely important (it's a relief to see that the 'genetics will explain everything' school of thought is finally facing some serious challenges recently) and, of course, human relationships are probably the most significant element of a child's environment. But, as anonymous above states, children are not lumps of clay to be moulded by adults. I think that most parents do feel a huge responsibility to do their best for their children and do recognise how important their influence is but that is not the same as having "responsibility for the end product." Quite apart from the strange notion of viewing anyone as an end product (when is the 'product' finished?) I think it is very unwise to assume the level of control that you imply, Simon. Humans in general are pretty impressive in their desire for self-determination.

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  16. Two things I wish to comment on:

    1. Parents being responsible for the end product.

    As parents we have a huge responsibility to be good role models for our children.We are all ultimately responsible for our own behavior and we learn an awful lot from our parents without being conscious of it.

    As adults we can choose up to a point but only when we are self aware.

    The second point I'd like to make is that Dyslexia is caused genetically. What ever you do to your child it will not cause it!

    There are ways of dealing with it - look at my web site and find out!

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  17. "Professionals will sometimes cooperate in a dodgy diagnosis of special needs when a child is a registered pupil at a school because there is extra funding to be had. They won't generally play this game with a child who is at home; there's no advantage to anybody. The researchers from Ofsted were amazed at the number of self diagnosed conditions which they encountered last year when they produced their report on local authorities and home education. These were in addition to the children who had been previously classified as having special needs at school. In total, almost half the home educated children they saw had some special need or disability. Almost all were neurological deficits of one sort and another. For some reason, nobody self diagnoses things like blindness or spina bifida. This is probably because it's a bit too easy to spot when the diagnosis is not well founded, whereas with dyslexia or dyscalculia, it's your word against anybody else's. "

    1. What criteria are you using to distinguish a 'dodgy' diagnosis from a valid one?

    2. How many home educating parents have easy access to specialists in developmental disorders?

    3. Why would the parent 'need' a diagnosis for their child? It's LAs who are asking for a diagnosis as a cut-off point for funding. In my experience, getting a diagnosis for a child in school is actually quite difficult because of the funding issue.

    4. I wasn't aware that Ofsted employed researchers who had appropriate qualifications for determining whether or not children had or didn't have medical conditions. Did people with those qualifications contribute to their report?

    5. It's hardly surprising that a significant proportion of EHE children have SENs - the SEN system in schools has been described by a select committee as 'not fit for purpose'.

    6. Nobody needs to self-diagnose conditions like blindness or spina bifida because a) they are self-evident and b) the NHS would come in for some stick if it pretended they didn't exist. When it comes to something like ME, the symptoms can conveniently be explained away as 'psychological' and a patients can be left to suffer a range of debilitating physiological and neurological symptoms without support. Much cheaper that way.

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  18. I agree with both Mrs Anon and Simon, although I also have some reservations. I agree that many HE parents have bought into the idea that children will teach themselves when they are ready, and indeed many do, however there are also those that don't. There maybe many reasons for this, neurological differences (neuroscience has come a long way in the last 10 years) being just one. There is evidence for instance that the brain has sensitive periods whereby it learns specific things using specific areas, and when that sensitive period is over the brain shuts down that area to new growth and moves on else where. If that sensitive period is missed, then it doesn't mean that the child will never learn, but that they may well find it more difficult to learn and will never learn to the same level as a child that learned earlier when the brain was ready.

    If people have bought into the idea that all children will learn when they are ready, so they just leave things and don't do anything about an older child who hasn't learned to read or write yet, then they may well be doing their children a disservice.

    There is also evidence from neuroscience that forcing a child to learn to read before their brain is ready can cause problems:

    "Dyspraxia follows the interruption or blocking of information transfer between the language and motor brain areas (between frontal and rear brain networks); specifically network 2 in the case of Ideational (sensorimotor) dyspraxia, network 4 in Ideo-Motor (fine motor control/procedural)
    dyspraxia and networks 4 & 5 in verbal (linguistic) dyspraxia.

    Often due to wrong input in the shape of enforced early literacy (i.e., before age 10), or lack of sensorimotor development due to inadequate physical contact and/or spatial experience (e.g., playing outdoors in a natural environment). However, it's now known that some epigenetic
    factors that change developmental patterns can be inherited (so if the parents' genome was 'set up' this way during their development,
    the 'problem' transcription pattern can be passed on even though there is no wrong input or impoverished environment.) In these cases
    there is also the difficulty of the child modeling the parent (and copying dysfunctional behavior)."

    I bought into the 'leave themand they will learn on their own' idea, and although my son has no trouble reading,(I did lay the foundations so he wasn't completely left to his own) he can't do handwriting. I did try to lay the foundations, encourage scribbling, letters in sand and so on, but on the advice of HEers I assumed that without too much more intervention he would just learn when he was ready. The result is that I have a teen who cannot put pen to paper and can only just about write his own name. If he had been in school the neurological problem would have been picked up a lot earlier and dealt with at an appropriate time.


    According to neuroscientists, my son should be able to overcome his difficulty, but teaching a teenager to use a pencil is a lot different to working with them at the appropriate age. I feel cheated by HEers who although were well meaning, were basing what they were telling me on anecdotal rather than evidence based science. And like Mrs Anon and Simon himself, I will not be making friends with this post. Mind you, I didn't HE to make friends and influence people, I am HEing to meet the needs of my son who from an early age showed signs of SEN.

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  19. ' The fact that he is HE does not seem to be a concern to them.'

    Yes, I realise Claire that it is possible to get a correct diagnosis in this way for a child educated at home. It is likely to be a lot more reliable than one for a child at school. A diagnosis of SEN at school carries a lot of advantages for the school. there is extra funding, more staff and of course a boost in the league tables. That's why some schools have about 25 or 30% of their pupils who are theoretically SEN. There is no motive to inflate the numbers in this way for home educated children and so any diagnosis you recive is more likely to be accurate.

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  20. 'You wrote "One of the great things about educating your child at home is that you have almost complete responsibility for the end product."

    Seems that nothing that autonomous educators have told you has really sunk in,'

    It is true that I tend not to pay overmuch heed to what many autonomous educators say. I prefer to work according to the legal situation. Since a parent has the responsibility for causing the child to receive a suitable and efficient education, it follows as night follows day that the results of that education, how the child turns out, are the responsibility of the parent. These results are likely to depend largely upon the type of education which the parent caused the child to receive. It is therefore quite plain that how the child turns out will depend upon the education which the parent choose. In other words, as I said,' One of the great things about educating your child at home is that you have almost complete responsibility for the end product.' I should perhaps have left out the word 'almost', which I included as a nod to autonomous educators. In fact we have complete responsibility because we do not delegate the task to anybody else.

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  21. '1. What criteria are you using to distinguish a 'dodgy' diagnosis from a valid one?'

    In some classes, 30% of the children have a diagnosis of some kind or another. I call it dodgy if in a randomly selected group of children, oalmost a third have apparently got a disaibility or special need of some sort.

    '2. How many home educating parents have easy access to specialists in developmental disorders?'

    Parents can gain this if they wish. many services are now open referral; speech therapy for example. other services can be accessed through the GP or Health Centre.


    '4. I wasn't aware that Ofsted employed researchers who had appropriate qualifications for determining whether or not children had or didn't have medical conditions. Did people with those qualifications contribute to their report?'

    No. Ofsted found that 25% of the home educated children whom they encountered had special needs which had been recognised by the schools which they had attended. Many more had special needs which the parents had diagnosed themselves; often autistic spectrum.

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  22. I sympathise with anonymous above. It is situations such as hers that have made me very wary about 'selling' any sort of approach to anyone else. I can only talk about what works for my family. That's what I try to do now.

    On the other hand, is it fair to "feel cheated" by people who were simply sharing their opinions? What we choose to do with others opinions is really up to us. I am part of a small community of HErs in which there is a strong belief in not vaccinating children. I have heard the arguments and beliefs and I choose to ignore them and have vaccinated my children. If I had been prepared to be convinced by my friends and my child had then been hospitalised with whooping cough, for example, would I have been justified in "feeling cheated"? I don't think so. The waters may be a little muddy when it comes to trusting in the opinions of those who claim 'expert' knowledge but when it comes to what we do in response to other parents' opinions, I think we have to own those decisions ourselves.

    I am sorry if that sounds harsh and I really don't mean to be unsympathetic, anonymous. I don't envy you the problem and hope you find a way to resolve it.

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  23. 'Do you think problems are ever caused by forcing someone to read before they are ready (either developmentally or emotionally)?'

    Yes, I do. This is typically a problem which occurs to children who go to school.

    However, the topic of this post, and my comment, were about problems which can occur during HE. Something which it is rarely discussed among HE'ing parents.

    Mrs Anon

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  24. "Mind you, I didn't HE to make friends and influence people, I am HEing to meet the needs of my son who from an early age showed signs of SEN."

    Yet you seem certain that his writing problems are a direct result of you not encouraging him to write when younger as opposed to a result of these SENs?

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  25. "These results are likely to depend largely upon the type of education which the parent caused the child to receive."

    So do you think that a group of children who receive exactly the same education will achieve more or less the same results? It's all nurture with no nature?

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  26. Mrs Anon said,
    "Yes, I do. This is typically a problem which occurs to children who go to school.

    However, the topic of this post, and my comment, were about problems which can occur during HE. Something which it is rarely discussed among HE'ing parents."

    But this idea, that problems can be caused by teaching something too early, was one of the reasons we chose to HE and to HE autonomously.

    I do agree with you that parents should never rule out a structured approach to teaching and expect all children to just 'pick everything up'. Some things need to be learnt in a more structured way but this doesn't need to be coercive and it doesn't rule out AE. If a parent rules out structured teaching, they cannot be autonomous educators because there is every chance that a child will ask for some kind of structured teaching at some point. All of mine have, some with reading and some in other areas.

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  27. 'So do you think that a group of children who receive exactly the same education will achieve more or less the same results? It's all nurture with no nature?'

    No, I think that it is a combination of both. I suspect that if at birth my daughter had been transferred to an orphanage in Eastern Europe, then she would not have learned to read at eighteen months old. Early experience has a good deal to do with how a child turns out.

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  28. '1. What criteria are you using to distinguish a 'dodgy' diagnosis from a valid one?'

    In some classes, 30% of the children have a diagnosis of some kind or another. I call it dodgy if in a randomly selected group of children, oalmost a third have apparently got a disaibility or special need of some sort.

    A school class is not randomly selected. A single class is also a very tiny sample. The composition of a single class usually reflects the socio-economic groups in the local area. Statistically, you'd wouldn't be surprised to find 15% of the children in any school class to be performing at below 1 SD from the mean on any measure, so a 30% 'diagnosis' in some areas would not be untoward.

    '2. How many home educating parents have easy access to specialists in developmental disorders?'

    Parents can gain this if they wish. many services are now open referral; speech therapy for example. other services can be accessed through the GP or Health Centre.

    That's how it's supposed to work; whether it does or not is another matter.


    '4. I wasn't aware that Ofsted employed researchers who had appropriate qualifications for determining whether or not children had or didn't have medical conditions. Did people with those qualifications contribute to their report?'

    No. Ofsted found that 25% of the home educated children whom they encountered had special needs which had been recognised by the schools which they had attended. Many more had special needs which the parents had diagnosed themselves; often autistic spectrum.

    I don't see how Ofsted's surprise helps us. Their researchers didn't have specialist medical qualifications so they couldn't say whether or not the parents were right or not. Given the difficulty parents whose children do have a neurological condition have in getting a diagnosis, high levels of parental 'diagnosis' would be expected.

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  29. 'But this idea, that problems can be caused by teaching something too early, was one of the reasons we chose to HE and to HE autonomously.'

    Great. I'm, glad that worked out for you.

    Mrs Anon

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  30. Anonymous said...
    '"Mind you, I didn't HE to make friends and influence people, I am HEing to meet the needs of my son who from an early age showed signs of SEN."

    'Yet you seem certain that his writing problems are a direct result of you not encouraging him to write when younger as opposed to a result of these SENs?'


    His writing problems are a result of not addressing his SEN when he was younger due to the mistaken believe that all children when left to learn autonomously will do so when they are ready.

    Allie, I don't think you sound harsh and unsympathetic, quite the opposite. As Mrs Anon says, the problems in HE are rarely talked about and being open and honest about our mistakes hopefully will stop others from repeating them.

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  31. "His writing problems are a result of not addressing his SEN when he was younger due to the mistaken believe that all children when left to learn autonomously will do so when they are ready."

    But how do you know this? Is it a known type of SEN where children who have been to school don't have problems with writing because their problems are picked up and worked on early? Does nobody with his type of SEN have writing problems by the time they are his age? Not trying to trip you up, just trying to understand how you can know that starting when he was younger would have made a big difference.

    I do agree though that some things need to be taught systematically with some children. We are autonomous and have taught various things (maths, reading, science, etc) systematically when asked. Some children appear to need systematic teaching where another child, in the same household with the same level of casual input, pick up the same information without systematic teaching. As Allie says above, one size does not fit all, even within the same family with the same 'nurture' and similar genetics.

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  32. But how do you know this? Is it a known type of SEN where children who have been to school don't have problems with writing because their problems are picked up and worked on early? Does nobody with his type of SEN have writing problems by the time they are his age? Not trying to trip you up, just trying to understand how you can know that starting when he was younger would have made a big difference.


    First of all, my background is in neuroscience and I have been trying to research this for two years. There is very little information about this as the vast majority of people learn to write. So far I have found two adults who can only write in block letters. One was diagnosed as perceptually handicapped as they called it in the 1960s. He was schooled and was never able to do anything other than block capital letters and they are very hard to read. The other is someone who never went to school. He can only write in block letters. Either this is because he didn't go to school and missed a sensitive period in which to learn to form letters, or because he has the same area of the brain damaged as the first person.

    The difference between these people and my son is that my son can't even form the letters. It isn't that he has bad handwriting, he has no handwriting. This part of it is because he had never been made to practice. In order to obtain some sort of paper communication you have to transfer certain hand movements into procedural memory. Something that is relatively easy to do when a child, regardless as to any disabilities.

    He can write his name, luckily it is only a few letters long, which implies that he would be able to write if he had enough practice. Hence we are back to what I said earlier, he has SEN which makes learning to write more difficult than it is for other children. Because this wasn't addressed when he was young he now has an even higher hurdle to get over, one that might not be reached if there is indeed a sensitive period for learning to communicate on paper.

    Because the vast majority of children are taught to write in school, there are very few adults who cannot write therefore there is very little research into this. Therefore I have concluded that it is possible for child with SEN to learn to write, and the absence of writing ability is down to lack of practice at the right age.

    Of course if there are any other neuroscientists out there who have studied this I would love to hear from them! At the moment I am reading though a 30,000 work PhD thesis on the acquisition of handing writing which involves the cerebellum. But I have also read that Broca's area and Exnor's area are also involved. Neurological SEN are complicated! I hope that answers your questions.

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  33. I thought sensitive periods were evolutionary? I can see how evolutionary sensitive periods may have developed for language and movement including fine motor movement, but isn't reading and writing a bit new from an evolutionary point of view to have allowed the development of specific sensitive periods? I can imagine that if your son did nothing that required fine motor movement as a child, he might have particular problems developing them when older and this would, almost incidentally, cause problems with writing.

    I do think that some home educators seem to minimise what they provide and do with their children, partly because it seems so 'normal' that it doesn't require comment in their view. So they will thread beads, play word games, read books to their children, take them to museums and science parks, provide drawing and craft materials and help them use them, have magnetic letters on the fridge, sand pits in the garden, play-doe and modelling clay, play board games and cards, point out signs, teach swimming or riding a bike, play dressing up games, take them to parks or tumble tots, etc., etc., but not bother to mention these activities because, well, that's just normal family life and everyone does it. But it's these activities that teach fine motor control and other reading and writing pre-requisites.

    Historically adults must have learnt to write as adults. Do we know anything about their success or failure? Or is this specifically a problem for your son because of his SEN? Having said all that, I suspect that there are more people out there that cannot read or write than we realise. We helped someone with their passport application because they couldn't read or write but we wouldn't have known if he hadn't needed a passport.

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  34. My son practiced writing on a more or less daily basis at school from the age of 4y 6m to 8y 11m, plus fine motor skills exercises, plus exercises to improve muscle tone, and still couldn't make more than a few marks on the page that you could just about recognise as letters.

    I have a friend, a qualified and experienced teacher, who taught all her four children at home, through a structured curriculum, through to GCSE level. Her eldest son (3rd child) couldn't write at all until he was 12. Now he's a software engineer.

    Not sure it's safe to assume that the writing problem is due to a late start.

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  35. How do adults fare when they have to learn to write a different alphabet to that which they learned to write as children? I imagine it must be a pretty slow and painful experience to learn to form new letter shapes or characters. It's not something I've ever attempted so I don't know. Would this be similar to your son's situation, anonymous? But, presumably, complicated by his SEN?

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  36. Would this be any different to adults learning to draw? I know several who have done this and become competent artists, moving from child-like images of faces to very good life drawings, for instance.

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  37. I thought sensitive periods were evolutionary? I can see how evolutionary sensitive periods may have developed for language and movement including fine motor movement, but isn't reading and writing a bit new from an evolutionary point of view to have allowed the development of specific sensitive periods?



    writing is a form of expressive language, as well as other areas of the brain being involved, as you say, fine motor amongst them. There is no single area of the brain responsible for writing, just as there are no single areas of the brain for language. My son also has expressive language difficulties, which will contribute to his agraphia, so any sensitive period for brain development that involves language may also affect written language.

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  38. How do adults fare when they have to learn to write a different alphabet to that which they learned to write as children? I imagine it must be a pretty slow and painful experience to learn to form new letter shapes or characters. It's not something I've ever attempted so I don't know.



    The PhD I am looking at at the moment examines how children learn curvilinear movements, and how they become efficient movements after repeated trials, which involves perception, vision, attention, learning and movement, all different parts of the brain working together. Once those connections are made, transferring those movements to different letters, of drawing as an adult will be ok, because the brain can already handle the movement.

    If someone doesn't have all those connections between the different parts of the brain, and some of those parts are pruned off in synaptic pruning, it could mean that in future if those curvilinear movements were not in place, different parts of the brain might have to be used, which could make it harder to learn to draw or write.

    As you may have gathered my son doesn't draw either, and never has. We have plenty of colouring books all empty of scribbles!

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  39. Obviously only you can know, but it sounds to me as though you are being too hard on yourself. You obviously provided materials and support, giving your son the opportunity to learn and you've heard from others that even extensive practice over many years doesn't always 'work' as expected. There must be many ways for the appropriate fine motor movements to develop aside from actually drawing and writing. Many adults must have learnt to write for the first time as adults historically and also recently as reading and writing have only been universally expected skills over the last 100-150 years in the West and still isn't universal throughout the world today. The very fact that you have had such trouble finding anyone who is unable to learn to write suggests that the cause is brain damage rather than a lack of the right 'training' at the right age.

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  40. I think it is fascinating. The famous cases of 'feral' children like Kaspar Hauser and Amala and Kamala might yield something useful? Presumably they had not had the opportunity to learn to write (or draw) as children and I wonder if they ever did? It's a long time since I read about those cases.

    I have known two adults who wrote only in capital letters and both struggled to read as well. Anonymous' son is in a very different position if he can read ok because it must be something about translating the shapes onto the page through hand movements. That isn't the same as having poor literacy skills in general, is it? So I imagine that the historical and contemporary experiences of people acquiring both reading and writing skills as adults are not really relevant.

    Keyboards are useful but it must be frustrating to have the knowledge of words but not be able to put them on paper by hand.

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  41. "That isn't the same as having poor literacy skills in general, is it? So I imagine that the historical and contemporary experiences of people acquiring both reading and writing skills as adults are not really relevant."

    I agree it doesn't sound as though literacy is the issue. But adults learning writing skills without having practised those movements repeatedly either by drawing or writing as a child would be relevant if we are working on the assumption that anonymous' failure to make their child practice these activities when younger contributed to his current inability to learn to write. It just seems that so many activities a child might take part in are likely to teach them the fine control they could later use for writing in much the same way as adults who learn to write as adults have in the past. This is why I think there is something else going on that would not have been helped by anonymous enforcing writing practice from a young age (and is being too hard on herself by thinking this is the case). It's possible that the only effect of extensive practice would have been to demoralise her child further.

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  42. Anon with the son with agraphia,

    It's a horrible feeling to suspect that you have missed a sensitive period or window of opportunity, for something, isn't it? Something similar happened to me with my daughter. Even though I did not know any better, I still feel guilty that she must live with the consequences and not me.

    But sooner or later, we must put that guilt aside because it will destroy us, if we let it. None of us is a perfect parent.

    I hope that you manage to find someone with the right expertise to be able to help your son. Have you spoken to an Occupational Therapist, BTW? They have experience with helping people re-learn things after strokes, so it's possible they may have some suggestions for you.

    Mrs Anon

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  43. I think as a parent of a child with SEN, it is a constant feeling of failure for the parents when they don't make the progress in a specific area - that either you have pushed this too hard and they are too resistant, or you haven't pushed enough, or you wasted time on therapy programmes that weren't effective, or you didn't research enough to find the right one.

    I'm guessing that the person whose son does not write, has offered and encouraged that child to crayon, draw, paint, make marks on sand , steamy mirrors, develop their hand skills through threading, construction toys, helping in household jobs. We don't know whether specific training have been of value to this person, or if they would have just developed a sense of frustration and failure.

    Maybe typing will aid their written expression. Many of us have learned to do that as adults, with no previous keyboard skills. These days it is possible to manage with much less use of hand writing.

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