What's An Educational Therapist?: What I Learned at the Convention

I spent October 25-28, 2007  in San Francisco at the Association of Educational Therapists conference

Check here for more info: http://www.aetonline.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid =1

    Educational Therapy offers a wide range of intensive, individualized interventions designed to remediate learning challenges for children and adults.

    Educational Therapy demystifies learning problems and stimulates clients' awareness of their strengths so they can use those strengths to overcome or compensate for areas of weakness

    Educational Therapy creates and implements a treatment plan that utilizes information from a variety of sources including the client's social, emotional, psychoeducational and neuropsychological context.

It was really worth the investment, especially as I am beginning to look for Barton clients.

I heard/participated in the following:

• Glen R. Elliot, PhD and MD: Charting a Course through Symptoms and Syndromes
• Sheryl K. Pruitt, MEd: Teaching the Tiger: ADHD, Tourette Syndrome, OCD, and Executive Function
• Nancy Cushen White: What A Difference a Morpheme Can Make (word structure at the morphological level, and how it impacts reading)
• Edward Hallowell, MD : Unwrapping the Gifts of the Mind

All were excellent, although I wished that Dr. Hallowell's presentation had been 1/2 day and I'd had the opportunity to take in one or two other presentations.

If any of you have kiddos with executive function issues, I'd urge you to get a copy of Pruitt's book, Teaching the Tiger

Product Details
Plastic Comb: 268 pages
Publisher: Hope Press; Spi edition (August 1995)
ISBN-10: 1878267345
ISBN-13: 978-1878267344

She's coming out with a second, revised edition next spring, but why wait?

Glenn R. Elliot has published a book, Medicating Young Minds: How To Know if Psychiatric Drugs Will Help Or Hurt Your Child.

I personally haven't had to make the medication decision, but I found Dr. Elliot's approach down-to-earth and quite helpful.

Nancy Cushen White's presentation was related to Louisa Cook Moat's book Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers

If you have a child with multiple educational and behavioral issues, an educational therapist may be very helpful to your child's progress. Here's a link to the page that describes an Educational Therapist more fully:

http://www.aetonline.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid =3280

This post appears at I Speak of Dreams and More Joy In Your Family