Customizing Learning Strategies for Your Unique Child
April 4, 2023
Table of Contents
One of the things you will realize as you listen to our latest podcast is this: All children learn differently, but some children learn with greater difficulty, so customizing learning strategies is key to their success.
As parents, seeing our child struggle to learn is heartbreaking to watch. However, all we can really do is find the best strategies we can to ensure our kids have the very best chance at being successful in overcoming their own unique challenges.
In this interview with Dr. Emily Levy, you will gain insights into what a learning difference is and how to assess if your child has a learning challenge. Dr. Levy also shares the early signs of learning challenges and how to evaluate them to determine the kind of customized learning your child needs. In particular, when you join us for this episode you will learn about what a multisensory approach to learning is and how it can help a child with learning challenges.
Listen in now or read along in the transcript below!
[su_box title=”Things You Will Learn” box_color=”#84C141″ class=”nutshell_box”]
- What is a learning difference?
- How to determine if a child is having a learning challenge.
- What are early signs of potential learning challenges?
- Are learning differences or difficulties always comorbid with other neurodevelopmental disorders?
- How to evaluate a child to determine the sort of customized learning they need.
- What is a multisensory approach?
- What are the strategies that parents who think their child has learning difficulties can take to help their child?
- And so much more…[/su_box]
Show Notes for this Podcast
-
- Definition of a “Learning Difference” from Dr. Levy. (03:57)
- Early signs of potential learning challenges exhibited by a child. (04:19)
- On learning disability being comorbid with neurodevelopmental disorders. (06:45)
- Steps Dr. Emily Levy takes to determine how to customize a child’s learning approach. (07:34)
- What is a “multisensory approach”? (08:28)
- What is the Orton-Gillingham method? (09:07)
- Strategies parents can take if they feel their kid struggles with learning. (19:11)
- Dr. Emily Levy’s specialty. (21:20)
Resources and Links
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More about Dr. Emily Levy
Dr. Emily Levy is the founder and director of EBL Coaching, a specialized tutoring program that offers individualized one-on-one home, virtual, and on-site instruction using research-based, multi-sensory techniques. She graduated from Brown University and received her Masters Degree in Special Education from Nova University in Florida, where she. She also completed her Doctorate Degree in Education from Nova University.
Dr. Levy is the author of Strategies for Study Success–, a 17-part student workbook series that teaches students strategies for test taking, note taking, reading comprehension, writing, summarizing, and executive functioning; and the author of Flags and Stars Orton Gillingham student workbook series, which helps students develop their fundamental decoding and spelling skills.
Additionally, she is the author of Flags and Stars Multi-Sensory Math, a multi-sensory math program that helps students develop a stronger understanding of core math concepts, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions. These workbooks are currently used at schools nationwide.
00:00 Tara Hunkin:
This is the My Child Will Thrive podcast, and I'm your host, Tara Hunkin, certified functional nutritional therapy practitioner and mother. I am here to share with you the latest research expert advice, parent perspectives, resources, and tools to help you on your path to optimizing the health and development for your child with ADHD, autism, sensory processing disorder, learning disabilities, or other neurodevelopmental disorders.
My own experiences with my daughter combined with as much training as I can get my hands on, research I can dig into, and conferences I can attend, have helped me to develop systems and tools for parents like you who feel overwhelmed trying to help their children. So, sit back as I share another great topic to help you on your journey.
A quick disclaimer, please keep in mind that the information provided is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose or treat your child and is not a substitute for working with a qualified practitioner. This episode of the My Child Will Thrive podcast is brought to you by the Autism, ADHD, and Sensory Processing Disorder Summit. You can sign up for free to watch 10 days of expert interviews and masterclasses at mychildwillthrive.com/summit.
Now on with the show. Hello everyone and welcome back to the My Child Will Thrive podcast. I am really excited to have with me today a guest that is not what we've had on before. This isn't a guest that's going to talk to us about how we can customize our learning for our particular children. This is something that we need to do. Often we talk about here all the different underlying health issues that our children have and what we can do about those things.
But in the meantime, our kids have to continue to learn and we want them to learn in a comfortable environment, feel successful in their learning, and ensure that they're, we're doing everything to support them thriving in that educational setting. So today I have with me Dr. Emily Levy. She's the founder and director of EBL coaching, a specialized tutoring program that offers individualized, one-on-one home, virtual, and onsite instruction using research-based multisensory techniques.
Dr. Levy graduated from Brown University and received her Masters Degree in Special Education from Nova University in Florida. She also completed her Doctorate Degree in Education from Nova University. Dr. Levy is the author of Strategies for Study Success, a 17-part student workbook series that teaches student strategies for test taking, note taking, reading comprehension, writing, summarizing and executive functioning, and the author of Flags and Stars Orton-Gillingham student workbook series, which helps students develop their fundamental decoding and spelling skills.
Additionally, she's the author of Flags and Stars Multi-Sensory Math, a multisensory math program that helps students develop a stronger understanding of core math concepts, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions. These workbooks are currently used in schools nationwide.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, Dr. Levy.
03:35 Dr. Emily Levy:
Thank you for having me and for that very nice introduction
03:28 Tara Hunkin:
Well, it's always good to get a background of, of where everybody's coming from and obviously you have a deep background in working with kids in this framework of specialized or individualized learning and in particular in a multisensory approach, which we're gonna get to in a little bit.
But what I wanna do today is just start with, can you just define for us what a learning difference is and why it's important to identify them?
03:57 Dr. Emily Levy:
Sure. A learning difference really is defined by a child or an individual who learns differently, who is not neurotypical, who doesn't learn in that traditional way that many other kids do, and really needs a different approach in order to grasp new concepts.
04:13 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. So how, how can parents identify if their child is having a learning challenge?
04:19 Dr. Emily Levy:
Well, many learning challenges start at a very young age. If a child struggles with speech at a young age, if they struggle to learn the letters of the alphabet, the sounds that correspond to the letters of the alphabet, they struggle, struggle with drawing, with writing, with holding a a, a pencil properly.
These are some early signs that they may have potential challenges. And then academically, once school begins, many kids who have learning challenges will really have significant difficulty learning how to read, learning how to solve basic math problems, learning how to solve word problems. So really many of these challenges will start to come about a pretty early on in their academic career.
05:05 Tara Hunkin:
So is, so is the typical, typical student that goes through this, I mean, I think a lot of parents, when their kids start school, do you, do you find that the parents that come to you also are seeing behavioral challenges that come up because of the frustrations around learning?
05:22 Dr. Emily Levy:
Absolutely. Sometimes not with every child, but definitely some kids become so frustrated that they shut down, they don't wanna look at a book, they don't wanna do any of their homework. They start to act out and have behavioral challenges really as a way of dealing with their issues that are not being properly addressed. Not every child exhibits that, but many definitely do.
05:43 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, I know for, for me, with my daughter when this was so long ago, she's in college now, so, but it was, it was really that end of day meltdown was always a sign because with girls in particular, sometimes I actually don't have the be
00:00 Tara Hunkin:
This is the My Child Will Thrive podcast, and I'm your host, Tara Hunkin, certified functional nutritional therapy practitioner and mother. I am here to share with you the latest research expert advice, parent perspectives, resources, and tools to help you on your path to optimizing the health and development for your child with ADHD, autism, sensory processing disorder, learning disabilities, or other neurodevelopmental disorders.
My own experiences with my daughter combined with as much training as I can get my hands on, research I can dig into, and conferences I can attend, have helped me to develop systems and tools for parents like you who feel overwhelmed trying to help their children. So, sit back as I share another great topic to help you on your journey.
A quick disclaimer, please keep in mind that the information provided is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose or treat your child and is not a substitute for working with a qualified practitioner. This episode of the My Child Will Thrive podcast is brought to you by the Autism, ADHD, and Sensory Processing Disorder Summit. You can sign up for free to watch 10 days of expert interviews and masterclasses at mychildwillthrive.com/summit.
Now on with the show. Hello everyone and welcome back to the My Child Will Thrive podcast. I am really excited to have with me today a guest that is not what we've had on before. This isn't a guest that's going to talk to us about how we can customize our learning for our particular children. This is something that we need to do. Often we talk about here all the different underlying health issues that our children have and what we can do about those things.
But in the meantime, our kids have to continue to learn and we want them to learn in a comfortable environment, feel successful in their learning, and ensure that they're, we're doing everything to support them thriving in that educational setting. So today I have with me Dr. Emily Levy. She's the founder and director of EBL coaching, a specialized tutoring program that offers individualized, one-on-one home, virtual, and onsite instruction using research-based multisensory techniques.
Dr. Levy graduated from Brown University and received her Masters Degree in Special Education from Nova University in Florida. She also completed her Doctorate Degree in Education from Nova University. Dr. Levy is the author of Strategies for Study Success, a 17-part student workbook series that teaches student strategies for test taking, note taking, reading comprehension, writing, summarizing and executive functioning, and the author of Flags and Stars Orton-Gillingham student workbook series, which helps students develop their fundamental decoding and spelling skills.
Additionally, she's the author of Flags and Stars Multi-Sensory Math, a multisensory math program that helps students develop a stronger understanding of core math concepts, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions. These workbooks are currently used in schools nationwide.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, Dr. Levy.
03:35 Dr. Emily Levy:
Thank you for having me and for that very nice introduction
03:28 Tara Hunkin:
Well, it's always good to get a background of, of where everybody's coming from and obviously you have a deep background in working with kids in this framework of specialized or individualized learning and in particular in a multisensory approach, which we're gonna get to in a little bit.
But what I wanna do today is just start with, can you just define for us what a learning difference is and why it's important to identify them?
03:57 Dr. Emily Levy:
Sure. A learning difference really is defined by a child or an individual who learns differently, who is not neurotypical, who doesn't learn in that traditional way that many other kids do, and really needs a different approach in order to grasp new concepts.
04:13 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. So how, how can parents identify if their child is having a learning challenge?
04:19 Dr. Emily Levy:
Well, many learning challenges start at a very young age. If a child struggles with speech at a young age, if they struggle to learn the letters of the alphabet, the sounds that correspond to the letters of the alphabet, they struggle, struggle with drawing, with writing, with holding a a, a pencil properly.
These are some early signs that they may have potential challenges. And then academically, once school begins, many kids who have learning challenges will really have significant difficulty learning how to read, learning how to solve basic math problems, learning how to solve word problems. So really many of these challenges will start to come about a pretty early on in their academic career.
05:05 Tara Hunkin:
So is, so is the typical, typical student that goes through this, I mean, I think a lot of parents, when their kids start school, do you, do you find that the parents that come to you also are seeing behavioral challenges that come up because of the frustrations around learning?
05:22 Dr. Emily Levy:
Absolutely. Sometimes not with every child, but definitely some kids become so frustrated that they shut down, they don't wanna look at a book, they don't wanna do any of their homework. They start to act out and have behavioral challenges really as a way of dealing with their issues that are not being properly addressed. Not every child exhibits that, but many definitely do.
05:43 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, I know for, for me, with my daughter when this was so long ago, she's in college now, so, but it was, it was really that end of day meltdown was always a sign because with girls in particular, sometimes I actually don't have the be