Monday, April 9, 2012

Non-Verbal Learning Disability

During my internship experience their was one boy in the classroom who had down syndrome and was also non-verbal.  It was interesting for me to see how the aide communicated with this boy, and how the boy was able to communicate back.  This made me think about children who are non-verbal, and how families go through these challenges when raising their child.  Throughout my research I will be looking into effective methods for the healthy development of children who are non-verbal with consideration to the family unit.

In order to really understand what it is to be non-verbal I looked into this site: http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/nld.htm      

The site mentions what it is to have a non-verbal learning disability (NLD), signs for a NLD, tips for parents, and helping children with NLD develop social skills. It is quite informative.  Something I learned through this site is children with NLD their biggest problem is their social skills.  Also,  NLD is like Asperger Syndrome.  I wonder if children who are non-verbal are usually linked with having another disability?  

3 comments:

  1. This is so neat that you got the chance to see something like this while student teaching. I could imagine as a teacher this could be very overwhleming. Im sure the aide helped a lot, but still the teacher needs to build a relationship and bond with the child as well. Did they use any types of technology to help the child communicate? And how were the classmates with this child? I have seen someone use an Ipad for communication with a child that had communication issues. I thought this was very neat! Its awesome to see how much technology is helping the world today.
    -Amanda Hamilton

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  2. Kayla,

    You are on the right track here. Good integration of the UMich resource--it's imperative that you at least gain a basic understanding of a disorder prior to attempting to learn how to cope with it. As you continue, consider sharing some of the details of NLD with us and addressing specific areas and how you might deal with them as a teacher, parent, or peer. I'm looking forward to learning more about this.

    Gabe

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  3. Kayla,

    This will be an interesting blog to read and I look forward to reading what you have found out! I think it is interesting that you have experienced this in person and got to learn with this child more on his challenge.

    April

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