Catching Up
Ever feel like your hanging on by your fingertips? We’ve been really busy here behind the scenes, setting up interviews, attending a conference or two and -even taking a vacation with the family. After a brief hiatus, the LD Podcast is back!
In todays show, we talk about Autsim Awareness Month; an update on the Ma Chen Autism School in China project, and recent happenings in the news about learning disabilities issues.
You’ll here us talk about a new sponsor for the show in this episode, although after I recorded the show, we found out the formal sponsorship will start in May; consider this a preview of coming attractions!
We’ve got some exciting things for you on the horizon-and It’s good to be back at the mike to talk with you again!
Click here to listen to our show- Catching Up!
Audio Holiday Card- Merry Christmas, Happy Haunnakah, Happy New Year!
This year, as last, I have put together an audio christmas card to thank you, the listeners to the LD Podcast, to the Guests, and to the many friends of the show that all keep me energized to keep this project going week after week.
Special thank you to:
Our guests:
Tom Brown, Dale Brown, from LD Online, Anne Ford, Dr. Perri Klass, Dr. Steve Graham, Sally smith, who passed away on December 1st; Ben Mitchell, Rick LaVoie, Dr. Bob Brooks, Alan Zametkin, Dr. Kathleen Nadeau, Nina Straightman
Friends and Podcasters:
Paige & Gretchen from Mommycast and the Mommycast and Friends Channel, that I am so proud to be a part of; Andrea Ross and Mark Blevis from the Just One More Book podcast; Denis Gray, from 101 Use for Baby Wipes; Erin & Kristen from Manic Mommies; Dr. Mike Patrick from Pediacast;
Podcampers and New Media Folk:
Chris Penn, CC Chapman, Chris Brogan, Megin and Stu over at the GNM Parents blog, Linda Mills, John Havens, Jen Yuan who made me do National Blog Posting Month this year; Howard Greenstein, Eric Skiff, Lynnette Young, Kathryn Jones, Kathy King, Vivian Vasquez, Tammy and Wendy from Podtalk Divas, Bob Goyetche and his wife Kat, who do almost too many podcasts to mention; Michelle Wolverton, Bill Rowland, Adam Plante, Rand, Drew Olanoff, Steve Lubetkin, Alan Chaess, Alex Hillman, Annie from GPTMC, Deni and Lisa Marshall, from Podcamp Philly.
Podsafe artists include:
Uncle Seth
Geoff Smith
Matthew Ebel
Joel Kopieschke
The Alice Project
Gary Sundbad
Craig Cardif
Adreinne Pierce
The Hipcola
The Hot Rods
The New Autonomous Folk Singers
The Candy Butchers with Mike Viola
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Brian Jacques Special
This is the post that accompanies the special segment recorded at the live presentation by Brian Jacques, author of the Redwall series of books, at Borders bookstore in Newark, DE.
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Show 58- Resiliency, Parent Reviews and Changing those Negative Scripts
The pictures above are of my kids, taken within 10 minutes of one another. They show how someone can start a day with a negative attitude and bad scriot, but with a little help, you can change the script into something more positive.
In this second part of my conversation with Dr. Robert Brooks, we talk about the negative scripts, or ruts, we can get ourselves into. But the surest way to make real change is to re-write your script and story. Make changes with how you react to your children, with how you approach problems, and you can dramatically change the outcome of those constant thorns- messy rooms, chore and homework problems, etc. you have to look at each issue as a problem you can solve with your child, often by enlistng their help and suggestions.
We also talk about asking your child for how they view you as a parent, and how this insight- the way you want them to see you, versus what they actually would say if asked to describe you- can work to bring your family together.
As the first anniversary of the podcast approaches, I’m looking for more listener comments on the voicemail line (206) 666-2343 and emails to read- let’s make this first anniversary show about you! Send your emails to ldpodcast@gmail.com.
I will be at Podcasters Across Borders in June, I’m speaking at BlogPhiladelphia in July, and I am a lead organizer of PodCamp Philly Sept. 7, 8, and 9th. If you are attending any of these events (BlogPhiladelphia and PodCamp Philly are free unconferences- sign up today!) please come find me- I’d love to meet you! If by any chance, you are interested or know someone who might be interested in helping to sponsor PodCamp Philly, let me know!
The draft chapter of my book project, all about the brain,is available in PDF format on the site. If you have read it, let me know your comments, and if it’s helpful, I’ll post more chapters for you!
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Show #45 Quirky Kids: Conversation with Dr. Perri Klass, Part 1
For anyone struggling with a child who just seems different from the rest, this is the show for you.
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For those interested in Dr. Klass’s knitting, and writing about knitting, click here.
Conversation with Alfie Kohn
Kohn has been described in Time magazine as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.” His criticisms of competition and rewards have helped to shape the thinking of educators — as well as parents and managers — across the country and abroad. Kohn has been featured on hundreds of TV and radio programs, including the “Today” show and two appearances on “Oprah”; he has been profiled in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, while his work has been described and debated in many other leading publications.
In my conversation with Alfie, we discuss positive reinforcement, and standardized testing. What do you think? Should we opt our kids out of the standardized testing? How do we change a system while being ingrained in it? How do we balance “going with the flow” and putting our foot down and deciding to say no? I’m not sure I know what the right answer is, but I do know that Alfie starts the conversations we all need to having at home, and with schools across the Country.
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Show # 43 Moms Talk about Meds Part II
In today’s show, Joan LaStrange and I continue our discussion about scheduling kids in the summer, medication breaks, and medication side effects, as well as parental gems on sleeping and eating issues.
I also feature listener email, our Contest for copies of Dr. Mel Levine’s great book, A Mind at a Time, and some information about PodCamp. In order to win a copy, send an email, leave a blog comment, or preferably, send a voicemail (206) 666-2343 to the show. I want to hear your comments and suggestions, and I’d love to have listeners do an intro such as “Hi, I’m XYZ, and you’re listening to the LD Podcast!” and play it at the start of each show.
Thanks to Roland and K for their emails and comments this week!
I will be attending PodCamp Toronto on February 24 and 25th, and PodCamp NYC on April 6th and 7th. Both PodCamps are free to attend, but do require you to register in advance. If you are in the area and come to PodCamp, please find me! I’d love to meet you!
Featured Links:
The Twice Exceptional Newsletter
Central Auditory Processing Disorder Information:
About our kids website:www.aboutourkids.org/aboutour
Psychology Today
www.psychologytoday.com
ERIC digest
http://ericec.org/digests/e634
And here are a couple more sites to check out:
http://www.iser.com/caparticle
This one is a parent resource, with lots of other links:
http://pages.cthome.net
And LD Online has a great article too- www.ldonline.com and search for CAPD
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Dr. Thomas E. Brown- Author of Attention Deficit Disorder-
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Dr. Thomas E. Brown is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, and recently published a terrific book, Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults. Dr. Brown’s book breaks ADD down into its different aspects, making it easier to understand why a hyperactive kid and a coach potato can both have ADHD. His book also explains which parts of our ADHD brain’s management team may not be fully engaged in their job. Unlike many other books on ADHD, Dr. Brown describes the underlying neurological basis for ADHD in a way that’s easy to grasp, along with great descriptions of the different aspects of ADD, including the types of problems it causes people in day to day functioning. It’s one of the best books that gets into the heart of the “Why” about ADHD, and I think it’s a must read for parents of an ADHD child. I really enjoyed talking with Dr. Brown, and despite feeling pretty confident in my knowledge about ADHD, I learned quite a few things from our conversation. I’m pretty confident you will, too. I have included links to Dr. Brown’s website and to his book on Amazon.com, for your convenience. I love listener feedback! Please call us at (206) 666-2343; send us an email at ldpodcast@gmail.com, or leave a comment on our WordPress blog. I also make regular contributions to the Grasshopper New Media Parents Blog- one of the best parenting blogs around. Come check it out! |
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Buyer Beware- How to Find the Best Information, and Avoid Being Taken to the Cleaners
Caveat Emptor is the famous legal phrase that translates into “Buyer Beware.” And in the land of learning disabilities, we need to be smart and saavy consumers, and be able to spot the deals that are simply too good to be true.
This podcast is a departure from our recent string of interviews and information. I was looking around the web to bring you any of the latest news about ADHD, and I found a press release from someone who proposes to cure ADHD is three to 5 sessions, asserting that this is a “fake” disease.
This hit a nerve with me. Parents of kids with LD have a hard enough time trying to find out the root cause for their child’s struggle, without having to deal with a bunch of self-proclaimed experts telling them the problem is all in their head. It’s a challenge to sort out credible information from that designed solely to sell you a magic or miracle cure, at god knows how much money. But the truth is, as parents of kids who struggle, we would gladly pay whatever was necessary to cure our kids. But our kids don’t attend Hogwarts, and Dumbledore is not stepping out of the shadows to cure all our problems with a wave of the wand. The problems are real, and require real solutions.
So in this show, I list the things to look for when trying to figure out whether information you read online or see on TV is credible. The list of things to look for has been complied by the Government Information Office (those nice people in Pueblo, Co.) and Schwab Learning. You need to be careful and check the education of the individuals spouting information, their training, their basis, their profession, the source for their expertise, and the like. For example, one popular book is called “Without Ritalin” promising an easy way, without meds to conquer ADD. But the book is written by an optometrist. Not even an opthalmologist, who has been to medical school, but an optometrist, who practices behavioral optometry, a proposed treatment for learning disabilities that has never been shown in any clinical study to have any lasting result.
Should you believe this man, who is telling us maybe what we want to hear, or someone like Dr. Mel Levine, instead. In contrast, Dr. Levine went to Brown University as an undergrad, was a Rhodes Scholar, attended Harvard Medical school, was chief of his division at Children’s Hospital in Boston, an affiliate of Harvard , and currently pactices out of UNC Chapel Hill. He has written the definitive textbook on Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics. To me, based on credentials alone, there is no contest. I’ll take a smart guy trained at the best schools in the country, if not the world, who has been practicing developmental pediatrics for years over an optometrist, on the subject of ADHD, thank you very much.
(and if I could use non-podsafe music, the song I would have played is “We Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who. Instead, I play Ritalin by the Codaphonics, available on the Podsafe Music Network.)
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Show # 25: Dr. James Conroy Interview, Part 2
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In part 2, Dr. Conroy, from the Center for Outcome Analysis and I continue our conversation about whether children with learning disabilities are being served adequately in a regular cloassroom, or whether segregation is appropriate at times. We talk about children who are both gifted and learning disabled, and why changes in education need to start in the training of our teachers. We both agree that changing the face of education means finally, teching children how to learn. By giving them the skills and tools for effective learning and critical thinking, we’ll have kids who are life long learners, not just people who are good at spitting back rote information.
As always, please email us with your comments at ldpodcast@gmail.com ,leave a comment on this or our wordpress blog, or call us at (206) 666-2343! We want to hear from you!
ALSO This Week:
LD Podcast Joins Grasshopper New Media
The wonderful people at Grasshopper New Media have asked me to join their growing network of podcasts. Grasshopper is a new New Media company, and are in the process of creating great channels of content I know you will love. By having “one stop shopping”, you’ll be able to find shows related to the same topic or genre. For example, The Grasshopper New Media Parenting Channel will consist of podcasts, videocasts, blogs, and other content relating to subjects of interest to families, whether it’s the LD Podcast, Career Mom Radio, or any of the other great Grasshopper affiliates. This is the same great content, it will just be available and affiliated with other great content providers, other shows you might find right up your alley. Subscriptions through iTunes should stay the same, and with any changes in feeds, subscriptions, or the like, you’ll hear it and see it here long before any changes are made.