How can I help my daughter with her listening and concentration ?

[mummyloveslucy]

Hi, my daughter has recently been diagnosed with verbal dyspraxia. She is nearly 4 and has been having speech therapy for a year.
The nursery and SALT are saying that she finds it very hard to listen and concentrate. The nursery have asked if she can have another hearing test. We've been to a party today and I've noticed that she seems to swich off, when there is a lot going on. The teachers don't understand why she dosn't listen to them because she is so good and well behaved.
Is this part of the dyspraxia? She also has quite poor physical co-ordination. She is going to see the consultant about this and her general development soon.
What do you recommend for now to help her with her listening and concentration? The SALT has said that untill this improves, it will be very hard to help her speech.
Also if you have any older children with verbal dyspraxia, how are they getting on in school etc. I'd like to hear some success stories, as it's becoming quite hard work.

She loves stories and music, and remembers words from songs quite well. I think she listens well one to one, but not if there are any other distractions like music in the background etc.

I teach an 11 year old who is profoundly deaf (with a cochlear implant so hears quite well now)and has quite severe verbal dyspraxia.

Of course the deafness added to the dyspraxia makes the situation a bit different to your DD but she is doing astoundingly well.

She has difficulty in speaking still (again part of the deafness but not as good as most dcs with an implant)but her internal language is really very good.

She is a clever child who is achieving at pretty much the same level as her peers in most national curriculum subjects but does have problems with time management in tests as her thought processes are quite slow so she needs more time to think about the answers.

Begin to instil in your dd the principles of ''good listening''.

These are things like, looking at the speaker, sitting/standing still, thinking about what they are saying, taking turns, not talking when someone else is talking, no fidgeting.

Praise her for each of these things when she does them well and prompt her specifically when necessary e.g. ''oh, don't forget to look at x/me when I'm talking''.

Make sure at nursery that they remember to get her attention and get her looking at them before they speak to her.

Investigate whether you can be referred for an occupational therapy assessment for advice on fine motor control. They may find that your dd would benefit from fiddling with something to help her focus and attend.

Your slt should be able to give more info on 'good listening'. I'm sure there are others at nursery who would benefit from talking about this too.

Hi, not sure if this would work for your dd, but I often do 'silly catch out' games to help dd (2.9) with her listening so I'll say, 'now we need to clean your teeth with a monkey...' and she'll say (or I'll say) 'NO, that's not right '... 'with a banana', 'NO' etc etc. I keep the same tone (rather than saying 'now, we need to clean your teeth with a... monkey?' (though I have played with that too). it's all lighthearted and fun.

Perhaps 'Simon Says' games too? ~(Simon says 'jump up and down'. Sit down. NO simon didn't say it !!). Also what about physical games like catch but doing it while talking. Or Operation? Or wire buzzy things?

I have taught children with dyspraxia and would be expecting to call her name first. And then, give an instruction. I don't think this is unreasonable, actually I'd probably do this for most 15yo 4yo .

I think the concentration thing is due to the thought processes being slower- perhaps your dd loses interest.

For the co-ordination problems it sounds like brain gym or gym trail would be useful but not sure if they do this in nurseries. If you google these you can find out more.

Thanks. She does tend to butt in a lot and seems to find it hard to sit still.
She's also not potty trained that well yet, and can't climb or ride a trike.
The SALT said she'd send some info to me, that was 2 weeks ago.

one basic exercise SALT did at group sessions was to play different instruments (shaker/triangle etc) under a blanket, then get the kids to indicate which one it was that made the noise. you can also get a game from orchard toys based around correctly identifying recordings of basic household type noises on.

Thanks Umlellala, I'll try that.

Smartie- she does baby gym at nursery, she enjoys it but tells me she's not keen on ballet.

That sounds great TotalChaos, She loves music and has loads of instruments so that would be good.

also - don't think you will have seen on the special needs board - there's an off-site e-mail discussion group for parents of kids with speech problems - some of who have kids with dyspraxia -

thread and contact details here:-

www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=special_needs&threadid=665275-Speech-and-language-Email-group#13538352

Thank you, that's fantastic!

A zinc supplement. Maybe 10mg a day. At bedtime because it can make them feel nauseous. Read up on it if you want to do it. A doctor will say it won't make any difference but try it anyway. You can have a zinc deficiency test done by a naturopath but it's probably cheaper just to buy some zinc and try it out.

I think that your daughter is still very young. I would be pleasently surprised if you managed to get an OT referal at such a young age. When my son saw an occupational theraphist she told us that lack of pen control was not that unusual before the age of seven!

My son is not dyspraxic, but he does have problems with his ligaments and is very mildly deaf due to glue ear. He did have hearing aids for about 18 months, but his hearing has improved so he longer has hearing aids. However his hearing levels are still a bit erratic.

The national deaf children's society have a brilliant leaflet on glue ear with suggestions on how to improve listening. For example as well as getting the child to look at you, its worth picking a room with soft furnishings which is not too echoey and thinking about where light is coming from. Its very hard to lip read a face in shadow.

What has helped his listening is attending a saturday music class run by our local council. It might be worth looking on the web to see if your council offers anything similar.

baby gym might not the same as gym trail. Brain gym is a very specific co-ordination programme. Perhaps the nursery could look into it if they don't already know about it.

Shame about the ballet. DD2 is a clumsy oaf and always had dyslexic/ dyspraxic type tendencies Undiagnosed) when she was little but I am sure she is much better than she would have been if it weren't for the ballet she has done since the age of three.

I think she would be good at ballet if she did enjoy it as she is has lovely posture and she's very ladylike shall we say.
I think it's the strictness of it she dosn't like. She's also quite creative and probubly wants to dance her own dance.

Ots I used to work with would only accept pre-school referrals because they were so short staffed.

Think it depends on where you live as to what the prioritisation criteria are.