Family: Advocating for Your Child with LD

Advocating for Your Child with LD

Written by Sandy Gauvin

Advocate: you've probably heard repparttar

term before. But what does it mean to you?

Advocating happens when you speak on behalf of someone else. You say for them what they can't say for themselves.

When you have a child who has been diagnosed with a learning disability, this is exactly what you must do for them. You must speak on their behalf. You know your child repparttar 110963 best of anybody, and you are repparttar 110964 best person to speak for them.

It sounds like a tall order, and it is. It is not always an easy thing to do. I know. I've been there. Even with a college degree and a special education classroom of my own, I often felt "less than" repparttar 110965 other members of repparttar 110966 PET (Pupil Evaluation Team), repparttar 110967 group of teachers and administrators that we met with to determine Michele’s program. Sometimes, I felt as if I was being punished for not doing enough for my daughter, since she didn't learn repparttar 110968 same way as repparttar 110969 other children. Granted, it wasn't repparttar 110970 professionals who made me feel that way, it was my own perspective. But, right or wrong, that’s repparttar 110971 way I felt.

As a teacher of students with LD, I sat through many PET meetings in which parents sat quietly looking down at their hands, feeling painfully inadequate. They didn't feel qualified enough to realize they had anything to add to repparttar 110972 proceedings. After all, they were sitting with people who had college degrees and years of experience and training in teaching. Many felt that, for some reason, they were to blame because their child had a learning disability. Others felt that because they had little or no college education, they weren't as smart as repparttar 110973 teachers.

That's not true. Parents can add more to repparttar 110974 PET meeting than anyone else.

You know your child better than anyone else. You know what works best with them. You are their parent and you know how they think. Those things qualify you to be able to speak on equal footing with anyone else in repparttar 110975 PET. If repparttar 110976 PET recommends that your child begin his homework right when he gets home from school, but you know that he needs a break to relax, then speak up. If he is really tired by repparttar 110977 end of repparttar 110978 school day, then repparttar 110979 teachers need to know that. If they recommend that your child do homework in total silence, but you know that listening to music helps your child to shut out repparttar 110980 rest of repparttar 110981 world so they can concentrate better, then tell repparttar 110982 team. All of that information helps them to work with your child in school as well. Don't be shy about letting them know what works.

Keeping Love Alive

Written by Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

The following article is offered for free use in your ezine, print publication or on your web site, so long as repparttar

author resource box at repparttar 110962

end is included, with hyperlinks. Notification of publication would be appreciated.

For other articles which you are free to use, see http://www.innerbonding.com

Title: Keeping Love Alive Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2004 by Margaret Paul URL: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 713 Category: Relationships

Keeping Love Alive By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

When I was 24 years old I fell madly in love. I was madly in love for three weeks, and then spent repparttar 110963 next 30 years struggling to regain and maintain that wonderful feeling. In repparttar 110964 course of my long marriage and in repparttar 110965 35 years I’ve been counseling individuals and couples, I’ve learned what it takes to keep love alive and what diminishes repparttar 110966 feelings and experience of love.

The concept of what it takes to keep love alive is really quite simple, but not so easy to do. The simple answer is this: love flows between two people whose hearts are open to learning and to sharing love. The hard part is keeping repparttar 110967 heart open.

Before I go more deeply into what does keep love alive, I want to focus on what doesn’t work to keep love alive. The bottom line of what diminishes or even eventually kills loving feelings is controlling behavior.

There are two major forms of controlling behavior that always result in dampening loving feelings:

• Overt control such as anger, blame, criticism and judgment, defensiveness, lecturing, teaching, righteousness, physical violence, and so on.

• Covert control such as withdrawal, withholding truth, compliance, giving oneself up, resistance, denial, and so on.

None of us like to be controlled. Most people, in repparttar 110968 face of controlling behavior, react with their own controlling behavior. Controlling behavior diminishes love because repparttar 110969 focus is on changing repparttar 110970 other person rather than on changing yourself. When repparttar 110971 intention of your behavior is to change your partner’s feelings or behavior, your behavior will often be experienced by your partner as manipulative and/or rejecting. Trying to change how someone feels about you or treats you with overt forms of control feels manipulative and rejecting to your partner, while covert forms of control such a compliance or “niceness,” feels manipulative and inauthentic to repparttar 110972 other person.

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