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Showing posts with label vision therapy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vision therapy. Show all posts

From the Publishers of 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter

TODAY, MAY 3RD, IS:
  • National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day, part of an entire week devoted to the topic. Take a minute to consider the mental health of that gifted or 2e kid you know. More information.
  • In the U.S., National Teacher Day. If you have a teacher who's been good for that twice-exceptional child, be sure to let that teacher know. More information. 
IT'S ALSO HEALTHY VISION MONTH. Find out how vision issues can affect a bright kid's school performance, and how vision therapy can help: Hidden Roadblocks: What Parents Need To Know About Vision and Learning.
SCHOOL FOR DYSLEXIC BOYS. The Gow School in New York state enrolls about 140 dyslexic boys in grades 7-12 boys from 22 countries. Seventy-six percent of the school's alumni graduate from college, according to an article about the school; 100 percent are accepted to college. If dyslexia and similar language-based issues plague your gifted son, read the article.
DRUG TRIAL FOR FRAGILE-X, AUTISM. An antibiotic called minocycline is helping some children with fragile-X syndrome better deal with school and its demands. According to the mother of one boy in a small trial of the drug, the boy has changed in ways she hadn't thought possible. Find out more.
SCREENING FOR AUTISM. Researchers have developed a questionnaire for screening babies at 12-month checkups. In a study, the checklist identified about 13 percent of babies as having possible issues. One problem: a high false-positive rate. However, because early intervention is important, such a checklist may be useful. Find out more.
SENG WEBINAR. SENG has scheduled an upcoming webinar with the title "Change Your Story, Change Your Life." To be presented by author Stephanie Tolan, the goal of the webinar is to help families of gifted children "empower themselves and their children, regardless of the educational climate they face." Find out more.
TEENS: DANGER AND SAFETY. Teens perceive threat and safety differently than adults. You know that, but the National Insitute of Mental Health reports on a new study explaining why. (Hint: Teens use the amygdala and hippocampus more than adults in responding to fear.) Read more.
SCIENCE NEWS FOR KIDS, the website, has been relaunched. According to Society for Science and the Public, Sciencenewsforkids.org is the award-winning site published by the Society since 2003 to bring the important content of Science News to students aged 9-14, as well as their parents and teachers. Check out the site.
SHARPBRAINS has published a blog with pointers to dozens of articles that might be of interest to you (and some that might not, because the topics span all ages). However, some articles that might tempt are on plasticity, stress and young brains, the growth of a baby's brain from birth to 5, and more. It looks like we might have pointed to some of the articles in past blog postings, but hey, it's worth a look. 
AND FINALLY, THIS. Seems there's a new fad in the body-piercing set --pointy ears, engineered by cutting of the top of the ear, removing some cartilage, and resewing into a point. We know it's true 'coz we read it in the AARP magazine under the snarky title, "Ah, Youth! Sometimes We Don't Miss It." 

LD GOES TO COLLEGE. US News provides eight steps for students with LDs who want to attend college: Start preparing early; experiment with technology; be creative; put the student in charge; and four more. Find the article. (The article says that 3 percent of teens are diagnosed with LDs, a figure that sounds low to us.)
DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION WEBINAR. Compass Learning is offering a complimentary, one-hour, on-demand webinar on differentiated instruction. You may find more information and register here.
WAR: OPHTHALMOLOGY VERSUS DEVELOPMENTAL OPTOMETRY. We've run articles in 2e Newsletter about developmental optometry and the use of vision therapy for reading problems. In the second of two articles in the St. Louis Beacon, titled "Ophthalmologists express skepticism about vision therapy," you can get a look at what appears to be a dispute between two professional organizations concerning the use of vision therapy. Find it. Read the first article, the one presenting the point of view of developmental optometrists, here.
BOOK DEAL. Until December 10, Prufrock Press offers 20 percent off the cover price of Beverly Trail's new book Twice-Exceptional Gifted Children. Find out more.
AUTISM MARKER? Yale School of Medicine researchers may have found a fMRI pattern that could characterize a predisposition to ASD. The study included kids 4 to 17, and discovered three distinct "neural signatures. Read more.
SOCIETY FOR NEUROSCIENCE MEETING HIGHLIGHTS. Glen Close and Representative Patrick Kennedy both addressed the annual meeting on the topics (respectively) of the stigma of mental illness and brain research. You may view their presentations here.
PARADE MAGAZINE ON TEEN BRAINS. Last Sunday, Parade ran an article characterizing the teen brain and why it's like it is -- and what we can do about it. Find it.
CULTURAL NEUROSCIENCE is the topic of a podcast and brief article at the Scientific American site. Neural responses to similar situations differ across cultures. For example: "Scientists found that when American subjects viewed a silhouette in a dominant posture (standing up, arms crossed) their brain’s reward circuitry sparked. Not so for Japanese subjects. For the Japanese, their reward circuitry fired when they saw a submissive silhouette (head down, arms at sides)." Find out more.     
FOLLOWUP ON CYBERTHERAPY. A Scientific American writer comments on a New York Times article we blogged about recently concerning therapy by machine.The writer brings up the "Dodo effect," which (if you're heavily into therapies) you can read about here.
STUDY IN SPAIN, FLY FOR FREE. But the offer is restricted, of course. It applies to high school students enrolling in a particular Spanish-language immersion program and flying from Los Angeles to Madrid on Iberia Airlines. The deal is supposedly to mark the resumption of non-stop service by Iberia between the two cities. None-the-less, if your bright young person happens to need to learn Spanish next summer, check it out. 
APP FOR HEALTH CARE. An emergency-room physician has developed an app for iPhones that helps parents track various aspects of a child's care, helping to coordinate providers, keep food diaries, provide medication alerts, schedule appointments, record therapists' recommendations, chart sleep habits, and more. Originally developed to help the physician's wife care for their autistic child, the free app may help manage a variety of chronic conditions. Find out more.
LITERATE AND DYSPRAXIC. A young woman in the UK who has strengths in written and verbal communication writes about her dyspraxia, a condition characterized by difficulties in motor coordination which can also manifest itself with other challenges. Read more.

DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH, held last week in the Washington, DC, area, turned out to be an excellent conference. We exhibited and also attended sessions, some of which will be covered in the upcoming issue of 2e Newsletter. We were gratified by the number of subscriber-attendees who stopped by our table to compliment us on the newsletter, and we enjoyed meeting subscribers and contributors. Organizer Rich Weinfeld says he'll do it again -- but maybe not for two years.

LD AND COLLEGE. An article in the Cincinnati Enquirer describes a bright young man with LDs who managed, with support, to rack up a 3.5 average in high school and, as a college junior, achieved a 4.0 grade-point average. In college, he found that he could get accommodations, but said "You have to go out and get them; they're not going to ask you. You have to be on top of things." Read more.

OVERHAULING NCLB. On Saturday, the administration announced proposed changes to the No Child Left Behind law; The New York Times, among other media outlets, provided coverage.

BEHAVIORAL OPTOMETRY. The New York Times ran a lengthy article on vision therapy for a variety of conditions that affect a child's ability to perform in school, such as reading problems, learning problems, spelling problems, attention problems, hyperactivity, and coordination problems. The article includes success stories, but also provides a counterbalancing point of view of vision therapy as "a practice that many doctors say lacks a solid grounding in good science." If you are considering vision therapy for that gifted child you raise, check out the article.

TOURING AUSTRALIA. Psychologist and author Deborah Ruf spent a month or so speaking and touring in Australia, according to her newsletter. She was interviewed there on the topic of highly gifted children, and interested fans of Ruf may hear the radio interview online.

THE TIMELESSNESS OF "PEANUTS." In one of the strips from Charles Schultz' extensive body of work, Linus feels doomed because he didn't make the honor roll one period. Find out what Linus thinks will happen as a result in this strip from 1963, republished today. (If you're an educator, the result may be all too familiar.)