Customer Reviews

Learning Re-Enabled: A Practical Guide to Helping Children with Learning Disabilities

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2 star:		(1)
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This book gets it right: teachers are not magic fairies, they cannot make something happen just because the parent wants it, and parents cannot just want "it" to be better; and no one person, teacher, parent, therapist can affect change alone. All must work together! Parent/teacher exchanges would be more productive if empathically each could view the situation from the others perspective. This book accomplishes this and more. Schools cannot do the job of family and home; but they can do "the job" if they know how to communicate. Publlic school teachers and administrators are running at "capacity". They are caring people, over-stretched. This book helps them work smarter not harder. This book helps parents focus on the important issues, while it gives form and language to hard to express feelings and situations. Private school teachers and administators can also benefit from this book. Understanding that enrollment in an "A" ranked school does not preclude learning issues is important. How to confront the issues empathically and intelligently is the mission of this book and it accomplishes that and more. It is not a "cookbook". It is a small well-stocked store offering many conbinations of options from which one may choose.

I bought the book and have just finished reading it. I found it easy to read and filled with compassion. The author anticipated my questions --- and asked questions I had not thought of. It's full of useful information. I liked the book's format and the artwork is delightful.

I suspect this is the kind of book one can go back to and re-read and learn something new.

I would recommend this book to any parent whose child may need OT. Of special interest to me was the fact that this author is speaking from personal and professional experience.

Laura Goldsmith, parent
March 13, 2002

As a former resouce teacher, I wish this book had been around when I had to give adivice to parents. It would have taken a lot of the mystery and the un-needed pain out of the words, "learning disabled". This type of book is long over-due! It doesn't tell you how to do "it" right, it guides you so that you can make informed decisions comfortably. It's like having a "best friend" to talk with on a subject that is probably more painful for the parent than the child.

As a former resource teacher, a parent of 3 children with learning issues, and an occupational therapist, my book is about giving views from all three perspectives. It is not intended to be a treatment guide. It is intended to help everyone get on the same page. Formal IEP goals usually read"...child will read 6 out of 10 sight words with 60% within 6 months" These goals are missing the essence of the child and promotes confusion and adversarial postions. Talking to "dreams, fears, frustrations and joys" is more in keeping with what schools, parents, and the child themselves really want. They want to be "happy"; and happiness is about feeling compentent and that is what the book is about!

This book responds to the the quesions I didn''t even know I had!!!As a parent and an educational professioanal, it has helped me both with my child and how to react to respond the the "loaded" questions parents often ask.
It also proved an invaluable asset as I worked and trained graduate students how to work with these very complicated children and their families.

Based on the review in the National education Association Journal, Nov.2002, this book is everything it promises! It is about time teachers and parents got on the same side of the fence, and this book helps!

This book is long on introduction and orientation to school systems and short on treatment ideas. Disappointingly, some content is marginally offensive to school system professionals (i.e., "Final Note" pg. 78). The author's attempt to facilitate parent preparedness and orientation seemed to extend into fostering belligerence toward system personnel. To say that the "overworked" characteristic of a child's school team is negligible...is careless. More accurately said, parents should know that their child can not be the consistent #1 concern of any system professional. It is impossible. Most systems are full, generally understaffed, and are excruciatingly slow to expand the ranks of professionals. Expanding staff doesn't occur unless student numbers are unmanagibly high. Therefore, it is a pattern that never fully meets the need in a timely way. So, to say that this should not be a concern of the parent, or that it isn't "your problem" as a parent, is misleading. Most school systems are comprised of well intended, caring, knowledgable and dedicated professional individuals who are usually working at maximal ability, which makes for a fragile situation...and fostering such belligerence in parents will not improve such an atmosphere. A presentation which, at times, plants seeds of animosity.

Spent some time going over it and was very impressed. What I like the best is the "simplicity", in the sense of what I always saids to myself when preparing a lecture for our medicalstudents, i.e. "K.I.S.S", or Keep is simple stupid--and that must have been your motto when writing the book, and doing the illustrations and outlines. Yep-it is most effective, and written to a level that not only the layman (usually the mother or caretaker) can understand, but therapists and other professionals as well.CONTRATULATIONS!!