Paraphrasing the hydrocephalus association's teacher guide: introduction and links to each post.

 If this is the post first that you're seeing from this series of posts, I've been going through the hydrocephalus association teacher's guide, and paraphrasing each section. I've been doing it backwards because the information from it that isn't easily found online is at the end of the guide and in the middle of it. So it made sense to me to start at the end of it, and work my way to the beginning. Also my first post was written 5 months before the rest of it, because I quickly lost the motivation to do it. If you look through my posts from the last couple years of blogging before I took a long break, you'll see that this was a consistent problem. 

Since I skipped the introduction, I've decided to do that last, and skip all the information I've already covered. The main thing that was covered in the introduction, but wasn't in the rest of the sections was that children usually have traumatic childhood experiences revolving around surgeries, rehabilitation, and other experiences in hospitals. The only other thing that I find worth mention is that the hydrocephalus association mentioned that shunts are extremely durable, so very much not likely to break due to falls and bumps. They also recommend not stopping them from participating in physical education, sports, and activities. I'm mentioning this because I've seen parents in hydrocephalus groups on Facebook worry about their shunts breaking, and I want to try to put people's minds to ease. But at the same time I personally encourage parents to ask their child's neurosurgeon advice about this. The one exception to shunts breaking that I know of where they hadn't had the same shunt for decades was from someone who I don't speak to anymore because she made me uneasy enough that I couldn't trust her to be my Facebook friend after a while,

I personally never had any traumatic medical experiences in school, or during school. For me my experiences involved being diagnosed late, and having therapies that had to with extra physical challenges because of that. When it comes to sports I was advised not to play contact sports.Most other sports but I was normally pretty bad, and it wasn't worth making the effort to me to keep practicing, or even try.  

 Here are the links to each section in this series of posts:

 

Physical problems associated with hydrocephalus

Learning disabilities (nonverbal learning disability) 

Learning disabilities (math, memory, attention)

Learning disabilities (motor skills, organizational skills) 

Social problems (isolation, depression, anger)

Social problems (social cues, nvd) 

 

 

 

 

Paraphrasing the Hydrocephalus Association's Teacher's Guide: Physical problems associated with hydrocephalus

 I've been paraphrasing the Hydrocephalus Association's teachers guide so I've gotten to the point where it's the first couple of sections, and information that's a lot more easily found online. So I'm going to keep things shorter, and not try to include as many details. 

 

The first part of the section covers that children with hydrocephalus usually have other medical conditions like Dandy Walker syndrome, spina bifida and cerebral palsy. Other ones that aren't listed that I know of is epilepsy and Chiari malformation. It also covers needing physical therapy and occupational therapy. The part that might not be as well-known is the hydrocephalus association recommending comprehensive development testing, and a neuro-psychological evaluation early on. 

 

I'm not sure how well known it is but CSF can cause vision damage that ranges from very mild vision problems to very severe vision damage, including being legally blind. Of course there's other causes of vision problems, and the HA isn't trying to say this is the only cause. It can also cause eye misalignment problems that can be fixed with surgery. From hearing about personal experiences, eye misalignment issues at very common with at least cerebral palsy as well. 

 

The next sub subject covers precocious puberty which can easily be found online, but I feel like it needs to be covered still. It might be caused by the brain anatomy associated with hydrocephalus affecting the pituitary gland. This is more likely with children that had brain trauma including brain tumors and meningitis.It can also cause behavior that isn't normal at a earlier age. The sections that I decided to skip is shunt revisions, headaches, seizures, and hand/eye coordination. I've covered hand/eye coordination in my blog before, and I plan on writing detailed posts about headaches soon, and I've had someone guest blog for me about barometric pressure headaches before as well. 

 

Next week I'll be covering the introduction to the teacher's guide, and general information. Then posting the links to each of my posts covering the sections. I still plan on writing regularly, but it will be less frequently because I need to do research, and breaks are necessary.

 

 

Source:  https://www.hydroassoc.org/docs/A_Teachers_Guide_to_Hydrocephalus.pdf

The guest blog about barometric pressure headaches: http://timothy-landry.blogspot.com/search/label/Weather

Paraphrasing the Hydrocephalus Association's Teacher Guide: Learning Disabilities (Part 3)

 The last two sub-sections are motor skills, and organizational skills. I'm going to keep both pretty limited, and then do more research,and post about the same subjects later on. I've posted about motor skills talking about my own personal skills during my first year of blogging which can be found by clicking on motor skills label at the end of the post. I've just recently started to figure out how to write about organizational skills in depth through mentoring, and I plan to work on that soon.

 

The three kinds of motor skills that tend to be effected with children with hydrocephalus is psycho-motor coordination, fine motor skills, and visual motor skills. According to the Teacher's Guide psycho-motor skills shows in clumsiness, and not being aware of how much space their body occupies.The guide was most specific with fine motor skills effecting writing but it also includes cutting with scissors, tracing, artwork, and participating in games. Children with hydrocephalus may have problems with printing and writing cursive. Their handwriting may be in poor quality and unevenly spaced. They may also write slowly compared to their peers. The hydrocephalus association encourages using computers for all writing assignments, but from experience that might not be financially available, and may cause their handwriting to be worse later on. With the visual motor skills section I'll have to do more research on it, and include it in another post because of my inability to understand what the Teacher's Guide means by everything. What I do understand is that it includes not being able to tell distance and direction. The distance part I've always assumed was poor depth perception because of my eyes. The direction part is another thing I want to research more about, and post later on. Another part of the poor visual motor skills is having trouble keeping in the lines when coloring, and finding their place on a page. Another thing they have problem with is spatial orientation which includes having problems telling the difference between left and right, over and under, and backward and forward. 

Children with hydrocephalus may have problems following with one step. The next paragraph mentions that may have trouble understanding the information as a whole, and finding the meaning of it. So the two things are most likely related. It may affect the neatness and quality of their work. It also means trying to understand every detail instead of the information of a whole which quickly turns into a information overload. According to the Teacher's Guide this may result in them using familiar habits or routines to cope which resembles misbehavior, inattentiveness, or laziness when it's really the opposite. 

I was diagnosed late, and a big part of what was affected was my motor skills being worse than what is considered to be normal. The only other person with hydrocephalus that I know that I could really compare this to has cerebral palsy, so it's really hard to tell how much of a difference it is. But with the part about telling the difference between left and right is something that is still a problem, at least when attempting to give directions. But when I was younger I couldn't tell the difference between my left and right shoes. 

Source: https://www.hydroassoc.org/docs/A_Teachers_Guide_to_Hydrocephalus.pdf

Also this a post I wrote the first time I was working on my job describing how I discovered my lack of sense of direction: https://timothy-landry.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-i-found-out-i-have-no-sense-of.html

Paraphrasing the Hydrocephalus Association Teacher's Guide: Learning Disabilities (Part 2)

 I'm going to be splitting the section until 3 different parts because there are sub-sections that I want to make sure that I understand more before I paraphrase it. I've mentioned in previous posts that whenever I mention "Children" in these posts it doesn't necessarily doesn't mean adults too. I've been trying hard to focus on the teacher's guide, other than digging up other sources, or especially not assuming. 

 

The three sub-sections I'm going to focus on memory, math, and attention. Children with hydrocephalus can throw off their teachers or parents with the ability to memorize facts via root learning. But at the same time not being able to explain the material or answer questions about it. With math the teacher's guide is specific with it not being a problem with all children with hydrocephalus. They are usually able to understand the general concepts, but are stumped by things like sequencing and rote tasks, and things that involve their fine motor skills. I'll be talking about fine motor skills in my next post. They used the difference between learning the concepts of multiplication, and being able to recite the multiplication table. With some students math learned in higher grades like algebra may be impossible. So it's important to see if something can be done about in with the child's IEP if it's a problem. Some children with hydrocephalus possibly regardless of having nonverbal learning disability considering the way the teacher's guide have trouble staying focused in class. This may either having trouble focusing/staying on track in class and/or getting lost in instructions or with complex language. This can be seen as bad behavior. The teacher's guide used the words lazy, dreamy, unmotivated, and inattentive.

 

For me the memory problems was only ever a major issue in church. So instead of going off topic I'm going to post a link to a post talking about it on the bottom of this one. With both math, and attention my experiences partially has to do with me no longer wanting to put an effort in School through most of Junior High, and High School. But I've realized that it has way less to do with it after reading through the teacher's guide. When it comes the multiplication table, it was a bigger issue trying to memorize. Compared to how long it took my siblings, it took a lot longer than either of them, but I can recite a lot more of it than they can now. With Algebra I was flunking it badly weeks in. I couldn't understand the concepts, but I also refused one on one tutoring, I also constantly forgot to do my homework which wasn't something that was fixed until I had a teacher that forced me to do all of my homework during her class. When it came to attention I thought it had to do completely with not wanting to put in the effort. I got "kicked" out of Algebra after flunking the first semester. I got an "A" in Pre-Algebra the next semester. Then they had me skip between complex math classes, and eventually ended up getting stuck in Special Ed math until I finished school.  I would lose track of note taking so at some point I decided to put in the effort. I've spoken with at least two people who attempt to write everything down out of fear of forgetting it, and end up crashing mid-day because of it. When it comes to instructions the experience that sticks out the most is in web design class my last semester of high school. Since it was a complex situation I couldn't understand the first step, and didn't have time to get help before I got way behind in the steps. It was curriculum needed for the second semester, and I had finished my credits so it wasn't necessary to go back and get help at all at that point. 

 

 

 https://www.hydroassoc.org/docs/A_Teachers_Guide_to_Hydrocephalus.pdf

 

 http://timothy-landry.blogspot.com/search/label/Faith

Paraphrasing the Hydrocephalus Teacher's Guide: Learning Disabilites (Part 1)

 

I've been paraphrasing the Hydrocephalus Teacher's guide section by section. I was lacking motivation to do it after the first post, but I'm fairly confident that I'm ready to start posting every other week, or every week depending on my days off, or if I need a break. The next section I'm going to focus on is learning disabilities, and I'm going to be splitting it between multiple posts. I'll be focusing on mostly nonverbal learning disability. There a 4 different specific learning disabilities that's the most common. The first is Nonverbal learning Disability. The others are difficulties in understanding both complex and abstract concepts, and retrieving stored information. The last one is spatial/perceptual disorders, 

 

When children with hydrocephalus have learning disabilities it usually doesn't become apparent until the 3rd or 4th grade when the learning material becomes more complex and abstract. Children with hydrocephalus are likely to have learning disabilities involving processing information as well, and this also becomes more common around the 3rd or 4th grade as well. 

 

People with Nonverbal learning disability have problems processing nonverbal information. They struggle with learning new concepts, which definitely isn't limited to school work. It causes them to need to have the new concepts multiple times, and it takes them longer to pick up the pace if needed. Same with picking up social cues. Children with nonverbal learning disabilities tend to do well in early Elementary school with a few exceptions including fine motor skills. It becomes far more apparent later,  possibly as late as the beginning of Middle School when they are left to handle tasks on their own. The Teacher's Guide lists a lot of common things that happen at least during these years that may appear to be laziness, but isn't necessarily, These include not being prepared for class, missing assignments/homework, having trouble understanding texts, Social Studies specifically. Other common things are misunderstanding directions and their teachers and peers.  Again these behaviors may seem like bad behavior, but it's actually the result of child struggling. When it comes to verbal abilities usually have a easy time learning words and pronunciations, but have trouble understanding the meanings via text. 

 

Two other things that were mentioned was children with nonverbal learning disability often being in denial or their learning disabilities, or even their Parents. Also it mentioned that they are commonly anxious in public, and angry at home. 

 

Coming from my own experience I started falling behind in the 4th grade. I might have in the 3rd grade, but I had a great teacher who helped me a lot more than the last 2 teachers I had in Elementary School. I was failing almost all of my classes in the 6th grade mostly because of the sudden work load. I worked what I definitely felt was a lot harder that some of the kids in my friend circle, and ended up only getting C's. My biggest issue was not remember what I would read in my textbooks. Then retaining that information until I took my test, and needing to do the same thing again for the next text. So in a sense I gave up, and put very little effort into until my junior year. Somehow I managed to only be one semester behind, and half a credit from graduating on time.