Out loud

Today is World Read Aloud Day.

One of my favorite times of day is the last hour or so before bed. For the past many years this has been the time that we read out loud. Hilary started the tradition by reading the entire Harry Potter series out loud to Liam. Actually, to both of us, because I would listen in too. It took just over 3 years to get through the whole series. Then I took over reading and we have made it through a variety of books. One of our favorite author’s is Kenneth Oppel  who hooked us in with his Sunwing series. Last night we finished one of his newest book’s, Boundless, a wonderful tale about a train full of adventure. Liam especially loved all the Canadian references (the Boundless starts out from Halifax and works its way across Canada) and it allowed us to have some great discussions on the building of the Canadian rail system, the involvement and treatment of the Chinese workers (one dead Chinese for every mile of track), racism against Métis people and the story of the last spike.

The books we read out loud are sometimes books that Liam could easily read to himself, and some may even be slightly below his reading level. We are starting on the 3rd series of books from the 39 Clues set, which Scholastic lists as being a grade 3-5 reading level. While this series is an “easy” read, they include a lot of history, geography and facts about world treasures. It opens up discussions about Russian Monarchs, the Sedlec Ossuary, Egyptian mummies, famous paintings and so much more. We often stop reading to turn to the internet to do more research on the topic in question.

I never thought that we would still be reading out loud once Liam was a tween, but it is something that we all enjoy and he is disappointed on nights that our schedule doesn’t allow us the time. I always equated reading out loud to kids with “bedtime stories”, something that you did when your child was young, and that they (and you) would eventually outgrow it. This article  lists 7 reasons why reading aloud to older kids is still very important. One of my favorite reasons is “life lessons”. So many times something has come up in a book that has allowed us to stop and have a great conversation about a topic we might not otherwise talk about.

The other out loud option that we love as a family is audio books. We listen to them in the car and at home. Liam has even been known to take his ipod and speakers into the bathroom while he has a bath so that he could keep listening to a story. We have the entire HP series on audio books and Liam (and I) will listen to them over and over, to the point that it feels like the reader Jim Dale, is member of our family.

We are getting ready for a weekly long trip for March break. We are going to be completely tech-free for 7 days, including no audio books. The dilemma is how many and which books to take with us? I’m envisioning us needing to dedicated an entire suitcase to our reading supply. This is not, however, a bad problem to be faced with, just a heavy one.

Do you read out loud to your kids? 
If you don’t anymore, what age were they when you stopped? 
If you do read out loud, what kind of books do you read?

Teaching English

There is a small convenience store at our local mall that we frequent quite regularly. It's run by a Korean family that up until recently we only shared a passing acquaintance with.  That all changed one day when the husband mentioned to Hilary that he was trying to improve his English, but found it hard because, while he can read English, some of the words are not easily found in an English-Korean dictionary, and he's never sure on how to pronounce things.

Hilary came home and hatched a plan to help him out.  We love listening to audio books, so she figured, what better way to help learn English then to listen to an unabridged audio book while following along with the hard copy.   We even had a little iPod shuffle that didn't sell at our last yard sale that we could download a copy of one of our books onto.

The only problem was that the best book choice that we had in both unabridged audio and hard copy was Twilight.  We also have all the Harry Potter's, but if someone was going to use this to learn English, we figured they didn't need made up words like Quidditch, Daigon Alley or Avada Kedavra.  So Twilight it was.

While not exactly the best subject to keep a 50 year old Korean man interested, he has persevered with it and almost seems to be enjoying it.   Every few days either Hilary or I will go in and sit behind the counter with him and help him out with any words or phrases that have stumped both him and his translator apps.   He bought his own copy of the book because he didn't want to mark up ours and he underlines anything he doesn't understand and makes notes in Korean in the margins once he has the definition or explanation of a word.

Having read Twilight several times myself, I would have characterized it as having fairly simple and easy language to understand.  I realize now that I thought that because I'm a native English speaker/reader.  To someone who is new to the language, there are a lot of colloquial sayings and downright slang that can easily trip you up.  I'm sure we are very comical looking when we are trying to pantomime the description of a word while crammed into the tight space behind the cash register.

Some recent things that we've struggled to explain:

• If someone can drive UP to Forks or DOWN to California, why can you only show UP for work but not show DOWN?
• What is the difference between "every day I....." and "every single day I......"?
• Ditching school has nothing to do with actual ditches. And why is ditching healthy?
• Explaining "hand-eye coordination" nearly had us knocking over displays of gum.
• Trying to  explain "kicked up a tantrum" without using the word fuss, because how do you explain what a FUSS is?
• What exactly is an understatement?
• Trying to explain to someone who has no cultural reference to Spiderman, what a radioactive spider has to do with anything.

This teaching relationship also works both ways.  Both the husband and wife will quiz me on the Korean terms and numbers that I need to learn for Tae Kwon Do.

Win-Win!

Books

I love books.  I learned to read at an early age so that I could escape the alone-ness of growing up as an only child in the country with no one else to play with.  Hilary is also a voracious reader and as such our house is filled with books.

Liam struggled early on with reading and we feared that he would never find the same joy that we do in losing yourself to a great story.  There is nothing better then curling up on the couch on a raining day with a good book where you find yourself swept off to far away lands.

Our fear has proven unfounded.  Liam has developed a love for books and stories.  It could be listening to me read out loud to him before bed, carrying his Ipod and speakers from room to room so that he can follow his current audio book, or the best one, him choosing to read a book over any other activity.  He now reads above grade level and enjoys books of all styles and ranges.  From Divergent to Stephen King's IT to his currently love of Warriors.

I'm so glad that we are raising a reader.

Blog Hop #4

Heather over at Open Adoption Bloggers  is hosting another Blog Hop in order to help connect people to new (and old) bloggers.

 The question everyone has been asked to answer is:

"What was the last book you read??"

I love to read!  My problem is that I have very little time to sit down and read a book.  When I find a book that I really enjoy, I will lose myself in it till I finish it, personal hygiene and employment be damned.  The Harry Potter series, Twilight and the Hunger Games trilogy were all like that for me.  I read the Hunger Games from cover to cover on boxing day and was in line when the stores opened the next morning to buy the next 2 books.

Alas, I can't devote that much time to reading very often.  I have found a solution though!  Audio books!  Load it up on my I-pod, put it in my arm band and I can listen to my book any time, any where. And now that I've figured out how to borrow them for free from the library, I'm all set!

So now to answer the question...What was the last book you read?  The last paper book I read was The Open Hearted Way to Open Adoption written by my friend Lori.  The last audio book I've listened to was The Affair by Lee Child.    My mom introduced me to this series last summer and I really enjoy them.

So, what was the last book you read?

Parent-Teacher Conference

The early days of Liam's diagnosis of ADHD and co-morbid learning disabilities don't seem that far away, but looking back at that post it was 2 years ago.  During that time Liam has completed grades 2 and 3 and has become an "Old Old", as his school refers to grade 4 students.  While the struggle continues and we navigate our way through medication, lack of appetite and subsequent lack of weight gain, homework, and the never ending swearing, there are whole bunches of gains and things to celebrate.

Like all of these things we heard tonight from his teachers:

• Strong reader
• Amazing social skills
• Polite and a joy to have in class
• Works well independently and with others
• Stays on task more
• Seems to be maturing
• Advanced spelling group
• Doing well in math
• Enjoys research

Of course not everything is perfect and rosy.  He still has lots of areas to work on, but what a wonderful feeling to hear how well he is doing.

I'm so very proud of my boy!

A peculiar assortment of books. . .

I read a lot, when I have time.  Below is a list of books that were listed as the top 100 books people can't live without, based on a Worldbookday.com poll.  It was first published in 2007 - I wonder if the Twilight series would make the cut if they did the poll today?

I have made bold the books that I have read in entirety and italicized those merely attempted.  You can see my final count at the end of the list.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total that I've read: 25
Total that I've attempted: 12

How many have you read?

What book would add to the list?  Do you have a favorite on the list?  Mine is "The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery" because of course it's not a hat!!

One year

It’s been just over a year since Liam was officially diagnosed with ADHD and one year exactly since we started him on medication. While the first trial of medication from our family doctor didn’t turn out to be the right one for Liam, we have had great success with Adderall that the pediatrician prescribed. Seeing Liam in control and enjoying life has been wonderful. He has been so focused this year that he has gone from reading at a kindergarten level last September to reading just below a grade three level. I honestly don’t think he would have made this type of progress if we had chosen to not medicate for the ADHD.

Lately however, we have all been finding evenings to be much harder, as the Adderall is out of his system by about 5:00. While that only leaves 3 hours till bedtime, it can be very difficult to get through things like diner, homework, play dates, bath time etc when all it seems that we do is nag, yell, cry and nag some more all while Liam is bouncing of the walls, flitting from thing to thing and is completely out of control. It’s no fun for Hilary and I, and we can’t imagine that Liam enjoys it much either.

So we discussed it with the Pediatrician and she was on board with trying a second short acting dose, given late in the afternoon. The main concern is that it will affect his sleep, but we are hoping that it will be mostly out of his system by bedtime and that the melatonin that he takes anyway will continue to work its magic. Today’s the first day, so we’ll see how tonight goes!

Of course one of the other side effects of most ADHD medications is lack of appetite. We still struggle to get Liam to eat and are working to make every calorie count. We’ve gone back to giving him homo-milk and will do whatever we can to get him to eat more. Something is hopefully working as he did gain a pound since his last check up 3 months ago. This is the first weight gain he has had since being on the medication, so we are very excited. He’s also maturing and more willing to try new foods. He generally still doesn’t like them, but he’s at least willing to try them. And as fresh fruit season hits us, he will resume his regular intake of multiple peaches/apricots/pears etc per day.

Overall it’s been a pretty good year for Liam. The changes in him are phenomenal and he is growing into an even more awesome kid every day.

Yeah!

Having struggled for so long with reading and learning disabilities, it's a wonderful thing to see Liam buy a book and sit and read it on his own (and ask for a pen to fill in the questionnaire parts)!

We have some new words

No... not more of those words! We have had enough of those thank you.

Our new words include things like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, evaluations, phonological learning disorder, poor fine motor control, occupational therapy, difficulty, delayed, psychologist, unable to, below age level, high intelligence, struggles, medication, Adderrall, proprioceptive input just to name a few.

Over the course of the last school year we had several meetings with Liam's teachers as we all knew that he was struggling to learn to read, pay attention and sit still. So in April we had a Psycho-Educational evaluation done by a psychologist. We were not surprised by most of the results. Liam's results spanned both sides of the scale. One one side he tested in the 96th percentile for intelligence, testing at nearly a 16 year old level for some areas. On the other side he tested in the 20th percentile and shows signs of a learning disorder. He was also diagnosed with ADHD. Around the same time he was also evaluated by an occupational therapist at school and shows signs of fine motor control issues that are causing him problems with handwriting.

Over the next couple of months we explored various options, including medication for the ADHD. We were able to test out Ritalin during the last 2 weeks of school and saw some improvement with Liam’s focus and attention. But we also saw some anxiety as we tried to get the dosage correct for him. By July we had gotten in to see a pediatrician, and we are now testing out a different, long lasting ADHD medication - Adderrall. It’s only been a week so far, but we have seen huge improvements in Liam during the day. He’s calmer, he’s focused but he’s still the fun loving amazing kid that we love. None of his personality is being lost or obscured by the medication. The down side is that since most ADHD meds are amphetamine based they do interfere with his sleep. So he is falling asleep later and later right now, even later then me the other night! But some minor side effects are worth it. Even Liam notices a difference with the Adderrall and is happy with how it is helping him.

Now that we have the medication under control (at least for now, we may still tweak it) we are focusing on the learning disorder side of things. The phonological awareness disorder means that Liam has trouble with the sound structure of words. He doesn’t understand that the same letter can have 2 different sounds depending on how it is used in a word. So words like CAT and KATE cause him great confusion. How can a C and K sound the same, and why does the A sound different in each word? He has a great memory, so we are working on a rote learning and phonics approach for word recognition. We know that it will be a long hard road, but we also know that we can conquer it together.

We are also exploring using sensory inputs to help Liam pay attention. We discovered by accident that rhythmically squeezing the pads of his fingers gives him enough input that he can sit still and not need to fidget. This accident got us through a 45 minute funeral mass. It also works to squeeze his arms from his wrists to his shoulder and back down again. Deep pressure therapy is used for a variety of disorders and we are finding ways to incorporate it for Liam. We are also looking at other aids like a Move ‘N Sit cushion that will help position him for handwriting activities while also giving him some sensory input.

We have 4 weeks of summer left and the Liam will be starting grade 2. Grade 2 is an important year where kids need to learn to read so that in grade 3 they can read to learn. We are looking into after-school reading programs, and Liam will get extra time with the school’s resource teacher. We don’t know yet who his teacher will be this year, but his Grade 1 teacher has offered to come (she won’t be at the school this year) to meet with his new teacher and us before the year starts so that we can hit grade 2 running.

And the last thing that we are dealing with is an opthamologist appointment in 2 weeks. Liam got a 2nd prescription for his glass a mere 6 months into his previous prescription and his right eye continues to turn in. So we will be going to the local children’s hospital to see a specialist and find out if any next steps have to be taken. ***SHUDDER*** Given my eye issues, I’ll be opting to stay with friends if it ends up that he needs surgery. I’m not as strong as my good friend Heather.

We are forging ahead, finding support and getting the tools in place that we need.  This post has been a long time in coming.  The first was that family needed to be told what was going on.  Could you imagine finding out that your son/grandson/nephew was going through all of this because you read it on a blog at the same time as the rest of the internet?  Yeah, we didn't think that was a good idea either.  The second was that it was hard for me to write.  Even though we've been dealing with all of this for a few months now, it's still new and I'm still a bit raw.  It's hard to think of your baby struggling.  But I've pulled up my big girl panties and I've got my "get 'er done" hat on, so here we go!

English

Some of you may be surprised (at least I would hope so!) to hear that I don't always consider English to be my first language.

It is my first spoken language, and the only spoken language we used at home. My father is from a French speaking family. He didn't learn to speak English until he was five when the English public school kicked him out of Kindergarten so that he could play with kids in the neighbourhood and learn English that way. My mom comes from an English speaking family, but did take some French in high school.

My parents decided that my being bilingual would greatly benefit me in life, so I went to a French school. Not French Immersion, but an actual French school. Not a word of English was spoken from my first day until my first English class in grade five. I was so far behind in English Grammar that I ended up taking ESL (English as a Second Language) during summer school one year.

Right now Liam is struggling with learning to read. We've tried a bunch of different strategies (including homework in the bathtub) and are currently starting down the path of a new teaching strategy that we got from the psychologist, who just so happens to specialize in teaching people to read.

So while the psychologist was going over the reading program with Hilary and I, a huge light bulb must have started flashing over my head! For the first time EVER I understood how to read English. Sounds a bit odd doesn't it? Especially since I seem to be able to read all the blogs and forums and Facebook pages that take up so much of my time. I've been reading in English since I was 6 and taught myself to read Nancy Drew books. I've just never understood how reading works. For the most part I sight read- I see the word, I recognize the word therefore I "read" the word. Present me with a new, never seen before word and chances are that I'm going to "read" it using French pronunciation rules.

The only English "rule" I've ever known is "I before E except after C but not in some other words like....." Okay, I guess I don't even know that one very well.

Dr. Psych guy gave us 3 rules of reading to teach Liam. And to my non-English thinking brain they are genius!

1. When a vowel is by itself it has it's short sound.
2. When 2 vowels walk together, the first introduces itself and the second just listens.
3. When 2 vowels talk over a fence (consonant), the first introduces itself and the second just listens

BRILLIANT! I spent all day looking at words and realizing that these 3 little rules really work. I understand why CAN and CANE are pronounced the way they are. I never understood before, I just knew.

Of course I'm struggling with remembering how a short A sounds versus a long A. But if I can figure that out I'll be well on my way to teaching Liam to read. Until then, we are passing the program off to his teachers!