**3. LD interventions in the family context**

Naturalist approaches consider the ideal to be to support the student through all his/her surrounding formal and informal educational agents. This is especially important if s/he presents problems in learning and requires specific personal measures and materials (Gortmaker, Daly, McCurdy, Persampieri, & Hergenrader, 2007; Polloway, Bursuck, & Epstein, 2001). Also, regarding treatment, it is important to start intervention as soon as possible in order to guarantee higher efficacy. Based on all this, we can posit the family context as the optimal space for work in this area.

Families have a great potential to help students, as well as being capable of increasing learning environments and opportunities. They can also offer children individualized attention and make immediate modifications when the child requires it. Despite all this, parents are often not aware of how to play these aspects to their advantage. They often lack the strategic knowledge needed to help their children with academic tasks, even though with adequate support, they can be very effective intervention agents (Persampieri, Gortmaker, Daly, Sheridan, & McCurdy, 2006), which makes work with families highly commendable. There are two branches of intervention in LD using the family. The first focuses on getting the families to help in consolidating specific knowledge and/or to continue teachers' work at home. The second branch focuses on improving family interactions and helping parents naturally stimulate the development of the child's area of difficulty at home. Both branches can be used at the same time and are often enriched through family training activities. In spite of this, there is not yet a systematic and organized approach to collaboration with families in the current support model for LD. This model is still not very specific or developed in most Spanish regions. Another factor is that specialists in LD do not have much time to work with the children, since they travel between different schools. There are, therefore, time and space constraints that hinder the development of collaboration with the family.

Interventions in Specific Learning Disabilities Through Families 93

children with LD-L. To this end, instructors went to the family homes and verbally explained to parents the intervention's objectives as well as the procedure for carrying it out. They then performed a modeling activity in which the researcher taught the family how to carry out each task. Next, parents practiced the tasks with the researcher. This meant they were offered the feedback necessary to make sure they got it completely right. The parents' job was to read different stories with their children and then perform various phonological awareness activities (rhyme, similar sounds, phonics etc.). After a period of ten weeks reading the stories provided by the researchers and working with the proposed activities there was a noticeable improvement in the children's phonological awareness. There was a relationship between the improvements observed and the age of the children, with the eldest being those who benefited most from experience. Parents were satisfied with the experience, noting that they enjoyed it and all of them carried out the treatment in full.

We can conclude that in the specific case of LDL, intervention in everyday contexts and including the children's attachment figures is very positive, as it allows carrying out specific actions in a very personalized way and in everyday communicative situations. It is not a

Let us now look at reading. Parental involvement in its teaching can have positive effects on children, especially due to the fact that it requires continuous follow up, which means that during the summer period there tends to be a decrease in the achievements reached during the year. One way of reducing the negative effects of the summer holidays on children with specific reading disabilities (LD-R) is to use parents and to help them to implement stimulating interventions at home (Gotmaker, Daly, McCurdy, Persampieri, & Hergenrader, 2007). Having parents as tutors increases, among other things, reading fluency, though they must have specific tools, strategies and techniques to encourage them to help their children

Persamperi et al (2006) carried out a study whose object was to increase reading fluency of LD-R pupils through parents' implementation of a specific program. It was carried out on children aged 8-9 over the summer holidays and based on narrative or essay texts. Parents received training 3-5 days a week, for 10 to 15 minutes. It was based on the following steps: a) the professional described the goals and the specific procedure b) s/he acted as a model, carrying out an example with the child, while the parents watched, c) the parent carried out the activity with the child and the expert offered feedback and tutoring until the parent could carry out the teaching procedure flawlessly. Parents were also handed a written protocol for the intervention. The tasks were to correct mistakes through sentence repetition and contingencies of rewards in order to improve. The child was required to read the passage while the parent wrote down the mistakes. The parents then modeled correct delivery and asked the child to read the word and full sentence again, which reinforced the steps the child carried out correctly. The study's results show that these types of tasks enabled children to improve their reading fluency over the important summer months and that these improvements were stable over time. Parents' ability and potential to intervene

Based on the same perspective, Gortmaker, et al. (2007) carried out a program to increase reading fluency of high and low frequency words in three students aged 9 with LD-R through parental collaboration. As in the previous case, there were three steps in parent

great effort for parents but is extremely beneficial to children.

with this skill.

from home was therefore verified.

There are empirical experiences at the international level that have led to the development of specific intervention methods through homework with families of children with LD. These can be used as a guide to teachers' professional practice with these kinds of children. The following section focuses on this area.

#### **3.1 Empirical experiences of interventions on LD in the home**

The inclusive perspective on intervention on LD considers family-professional collaboration to be a crucial element. Contextual activities for children with whichever LD in the real contexts in which they take place are one of the alternative treatments that are recommended.

For example, if we take language learning disabilities we must consider that the problems in this area are often related to phonological awareness and can be seen in the use of language in everyday situations. There are learning interventions designed to stimulate early spoken language for classroom use. However, general group interventions might not have the desired effects on children with LDL, for whom interventions based on real communication context are more efficient. It is because of this that the family is an optimal locus for treatment, as, in some regards, it allows for intervention in spontaneous events and communication situations arising from daily routines, as some practical work has shown.

In 2003 Quintana carried out a study which aimed to understand each child's educational needs by studying the contexts for its development and seek to address them through family-school collaboration. Two families with children with LDL collaborated. The work carried out was based on the experience of skills and experiences of both the families and the school. At the initial meeting between the teachers and the parents the study group presented the intervention program. An evaluation process was then carried out with the aim of getting to know the family members' view of the child's difficulties, her/his level of effort and interests, the treatments or measures already carried out and his/her level of functionality. Objectives and changes were then agreed upon. In summary, the program took the family's opinions on what the areas of difficulty were as a starting point, including family functioning, and used this to define goals. After this, they started the specific treatment for each child. It included strategies and/or activities such as modeling to correct pronunciation mistakes, creating game situations to increase opportunities for communication, how to use didactic materials, the use of words, tempo, voice, tone, etc. The results of this work were very positive, both for the children themselves and for their families. The children enhanced their social relationships and their interest in communication. Families improved their daily routines by increasing communication situations or joint activities. Due to the intervention families were the protagonists of these changes, which increased their self-esteem and allowed the changes to become more permanent. The parents' interest in the child's disability increased and so did their consciousness of it. Parents' anxiety was also reduced by sharing their worries with experts, who also offered them information on LDL. The relationship with the school was also enhanced.

Justice, Kaderavek, Bowles and Grimm (2005), also conducted a study to determine the effectiveness of a phonological awareness intervention program implemented by parents at home that was aimed at improving language development in twenty-five 5 year old

There are empirical experiences at the international level that have led to the development of specific intervention methods through homework with families of children with LD. These can be used as a guide to teachers' professional practice with these kinds of children.

The inclusive perspective on intervention on LD considers family-professional collaboration to be a crucial element. Contextual activities for children with whichever LD in the real contexts in which they take place are one of the alternative treatments that are

For example, if we take language learning disabilities we must consider that the problems in this area are often related to phonological awareness and can be seen in the use of language in everyday situations. There are learning interventions designed to stimulate early spoken language for classroom use. However, general group interventions might not have the desired effects on children with LDL, for whom interventions based on real communication context are more efficient. It is because of this that the family is an optimal locus for treatment, as, in some regards, it allows for intervention in spontaneous events and communication situations arising from daily routines, as some practical work has shown.

In 2003 Quintana carried out a study which aimed to understand each child's educational needs by studying the contexts for its development and seek to address them through family-school collaboration. Two families with children with LDL collaborated. The work carried out was based on the experience of skills and experiences of both the families and the school. At the initial meeting between the teachers and the parents the study group presented the intervention program. An evaluation process was then carried out with the aim of getting to know the family members' view of the child's difficulties, her/his level of effort and interests, the treatments or measures already carried out and his/her level of functionality. Objectives and changes were then agreed upon. In summary, the program took the family's opinions on what the areas of difficulty were as a starting point, including family functioning, and used this to define goals. After this, they started the specific treatment for each child. It included strategies and/or activities such as modeling to correct pronunciation mistakes, creating game situations to increase opportunities for communication, how to use didactic materials, the use of words, tempo, voice, tone, etc. The results of this work were very positive, both for the children themselves and for their families. The children enhanced their social relationships and their interest in communication. Families improved their daily routines by increasing communication situations or joint activities. Due to the intervention families were the protagonists of these changes, which increased their self-esteem and allowed the changes to become more permanent. The parents' interest in the child's disability increased and so did their consciousness of it. Parents' anxiety was also reduced by sharing their worries with experts, who also offered them information on LDL. The relationship with the school was also

Justice, Kaderavek, Bowles and Grimm (2005), also conducted a study to determine the effectiveness of a phonological awareness intervention program implemented by parents at home that was aimed at improving language development in twenty-five 5 year old

The following section focuses on this area.

recommended.

enhanced.

**3.1 Empirical experiences of interventions on LD in the home** 

children with LD-L. To this end, instructors went to the family homes and verbally explained to parents the intervention's objectives as well as the procedure for carrying it out. They then performed a modeling activity in which the researcher taught the family how to carry out each task. Next, parents practiced the tasks with the researcher. This meant they were offered the feedback necessary to make sure they got it completely right. The parents' job was to read different stories with their children and then perform various phonological awareness activities (rhyme, similar sounds, phonics etc.). After a period of ten weeks reading the stories provided by the researchers and working with the proposed activities there was a noticeable improvement in the children's phonological awareness. There was a relationship between the improvements observed and the age of the children, with the eldest being those who benefited most from experience. Parents were satisfied with the experience, noting that they enjoyed it and all of them carried out the treatment in full.

We can conclude that in the specific case of LDL, intervention in everyday contexts and including the children's attachment figures is very positive, as it allows carrying out specific actions in a very personalized way and in everyday communicative situations. It is not a great effort for parents but is extremely beneficial to children.

Let us now look at reading. Parental involvement in its teaching can have positive effects on children, especially due to the fact that it requires continuous follow up, which means that during the summer period there tends to be a decrease in the achievements reached during the year. One way of reducing the negative effects of the summer holidays on children with specific reading disabilities (LD-R) is to use parents and to help them to implement stimulating interventions at home (Gotmaker, Daly, McCurdy, Persampieri, & Hergenrader, 2007). Having parents as tutors increases, among other things, reading fluency, though they must have specific tools, strategies and techniques to encourage them to help their children with this skill.

Persamperi et al (2006) carried out a study whose object was to increase reading fluency of LD-R pupils through parents' implementation of a specific program. It was carried out on children aged 8-9 over the summer holidays and based on narrative or essay texts. Parents received training 3-5 days a week, for 10 to 15 minutes. It was based on the following steps: a) the professional described the goals and the specific procedure b) s/he acted as a model, carrying out an example with the child, while the parents watched, c) the parent carried out the activity with the child and the expert offered feedback and tutoring until the parent could carry out the teaching procedure flawlessly. Parents were also handed a written protocol for the intervention. The tasks were to correct mistakes through sentence repetition and contingencies of rewards in order to improve. The child was required to read the passage while the parent wrote down the mistakes. The parents then modeled correct delivery and asked the child to read the word and full sentence again, which reinforced the steps the child carried out correctly. The study's results show that these types of tasks enabled children to improve their reading fluency over the important summer months and that these improvements were stable over time. Parents' ability and potential to intervene from home was therefore verified.

Based on the same perspective, Gortmaker, et al. (2007) carried out a program to increase reading fluency of high and low frequency words in three students aged 9 with LD-R through parental collaboration. As in the previous case, there were three steps in parent

Interventions in Specific Learning Disabilities Through Families 95

slower pace than their classmates. However, at the end of the school year there were no significant differences. Families were also satisfied with their work and showed a high degree of interest in continuing with the activities they had learnt as well as with becoming

Lastly, there is a study on the role of the family on writing LD (Jones & Christensen, 1999). It tested how effective a program aimed at improving the writing skills of children with mechanical difficulties was. The program could be carried out by family or faculty. Over 8 weeks and for ten minutes a day the relatives who volunteered worked with their children on activities regarding letter's shapes, correcting motor mistakes and fluid writing. Children improved both their motor writing and the quality of their stories. It was also shown that they did so regardless of whether it was the teachers or the family that carried out the tasks. Once more, there is evidence of parents' potential to stimulate the academic development of

Most of the work which addresses family collaboration to prevent or solve LD focuses on language, reading and reading-writing and on young children at risk of LD. However, when the children with LD are older they usually present, apart from the diagnosed difficulties, difficulties with doing their homework. In some cases they get professional help from their schools. They, nevertheless, lack that professional support with their homework at home,

Some of the variables related to the problems with homework that students with LD present seem to be related to the lack of communication and coherence between the goals of the school and the family (Polloway, Bursuck, & Epstein, 2001). That means that in these cases direct contact between faculty and the family is essential to ensuring meeting and maintaining academic goals. In order for intervention programs to be really effective it is necessary for professionals to develop strategies to obtain parents' active collaboration, in addition to meeting with the child. It is also advisable that the family's involvement begin as early as possible. The perspective should be one of prevention, helping to avoid an increase in the disability. Parental satisfaction with the school means they will continue their favorable disposition towards collaboration. However, it is common for teachers to wait until the situation is out of control to ask for parents' collaboration. Likewise, there are but few parents who contact schools of their own accord to show interest in collaborating. This is sometimes due to time constraints, or to their being dissatisfaction with the school after finding that their child has problems that the school has not provided tools for overcoming. Teachers must therefore offer families as many options for collaboration as possible. This means that apart from defining schedules, times and spaces for homework, families can work on other specific aspects with their children with LD and keep frequent and fluid

It has been demonstrated that teaching parents how to work with their children on psychological variables that can influence their homework production pupils improve not just the quantity of homework produced, but also its quality, and even leading to higher exam marks. This means that if we provide families with the materials, procedures and concepts to participate in a systematic and structured way in the child's homework by

which means that help from relatives is basic (Bryan, Burstein, & Bryan, 2001).

more involved in their child's education.

**3.2 Family help with homework for children with LD** 

children with LD.

contact with the faculty.

training: 1) Oral explanation of the program, including its different aspects and solving any initial questions 2) Expert acted as a model acting out the tasks with the child with the parent present 3) The parent carried out the procedure with the child while the expert corrected and gave feedback until it was carried out perfectly. This was accompanied by a written protocol for parents to keep. The intervention was based on parents and children reading stories together 10-15 minutes a day, 3-5 days a week for a month. While the child read, the parent corrected any mistakes. S/he would repeat the mispronounced syllables, words or sentences and thereby making their reading automatic. Results once again showed an increase in reading fluency and both children and parents were satisfied with the results of the treatment.

Based on this evidence we can confirm that parents can be an effective alternative to address some of the problems typical of children with LD-R, but in many other cases their collaboration is sought to prevent the occurrence of these problems. Thus, a study by Van Otterloo, Van der Leij and Veldkamp (2006) tried to establish parents' potential to develop prereading skills related to phonological awareness of 32 children at risk of genetic dyslexia enrolled in second year of kindergarten. The first step was an initial meeting with parents to present the protocol and the exercises, which were demonstrated and discussed. Parents were given a week to study the protocol, after which researchers phoned them to solve any doubts that may have arisen. Parents then started working with their children. This consisted of pronouncing sounds and the working with grapheme-phoneme relationship through rhymes and games for 10 minutes a day over 14 weeks. Once the treatment was finished it was established that a high number of families had completed all the sessions. The quality of implementation was likewise high, though the results obtained were more influenced by the quantitative than the qualitative aspect. Carrying out all the sessions was more important than doing them perfectly. We can therefore conclude that even if parents are not experts it is sometimes sufficient for them to show interest in the program and carry it out with acceptable quality in order to achieve highly satisfactory effects. However, we must try, whenever possible, to reach the highest quality, as there are other intervening factors, such as parents' level of education. In this study it was found that the children whose parents had reached higher education gained better prereading skills. However, this can be due to the general stimulation the home offered and the family's linguistic capital. Therefore, it is necessary in family interventions for experts to carry out an ongoing monitoring of families. Parents are not experts and have very different and peculiar characteristics that may mediate the results. Programs must thus be tailored to parents' needs by providing more support to those families who, due to their characteristics, need it the most.

Feiler (2003) elaborated on the aspect of connecting naturally stimulating environments in the home with an improvement in children's performance after the implementation of specific treatments. Feiler (2003) analyzed the viability of a model of intervention based on home visits to children at risk of literacy LD in order to prevent them by giving parents guidelines. Over the first year of schooling, experts visited families on a weekly basis teaching parents basic reading and writing activities, such as reading books, helping the child write his/her name, and offering them materials or instructions. The results of this seemingly simple intervention were evidenced at the end of the school year. At the beginning of the year children in the experimental group learnt these skills at a significantly

training: 1) Oral explanation of the program, including its different aspects and solving any initial questions 2) Expert acted as a model acting out the tasks with the child with the parent present 3) The parent carried out the procedure with the child while the expert corrected and gave feedback until it was carried out perfectly. This was accompanied by a written protocol for parents to keep. The intervention was based on parents and children reading stories together 10-15 minutes a day, 3-5 days a week for a month. While the child read, the parent corrected any mistakes. S/he would repeat the mispronounced syllables, words or sentences and thereby making their reading automatic. Results once again showed an increase in reading fluency and both children and parents were satisfied with the results

Based on this evidence we can confirm that parents can be an effective alternative to address some of the problems typical of children with LD-R, but in many other cases their collaboration is sought to prevent the occurrence of these problems. Thus, a study by Van Otterloo, Van der Leij and Veldkamp (2006) tried to establish parents' potential to develop prereading skills related to phonological awareness of 32 children at risk of genetic dyslexia enrolled in second year of kindergarten. The first step was an initial meeting with parents to present the protocol and the exercises, which were demonstrated and discussed. Parents were given a week to study the protocol, after which researchers phoned them to solve any doubts that may have arisen. Parents then started working with their children. This consisted of pronouncing sounds and the working with grapheme-phoneme relationship through rhymes and games for 10 minutes a day over 14 weeks. Once the treatment was finished it was established that a high number of families had completed all the sessions. The quality of implementation was likewise high, though the results obtained were more influenced by the quantitative than the qualitative aspect. Carrying out all the sessions was more important than doing them perfectly. We can therefore conclude that even if parents are not experts it is sometimes sufficient for them to show interest in the program and carry it out with acceptable quality in order to achieve highly satisfactory effects. However, we must try, whenever possible, to reach the highest quality, as there are other intervening factors, such as parents' level of education. In this study it was found that the children whose parents had reached higher education gained better prereading skills. However, this can be due to the general stimulation the home offered and the family's linguistic capital. Therefore, it is necessary in family interventions for experts to carry out an ongoing monitoring of families. Parents are not experts and have very different and peculiar characteristics that may mediate the results. Programs must thus be tailored to parents' needs by providing more support to those families who, due to their characteristics, need it

Feiler (2003) elaborated on the aspect of connecting naturally stimulating environments in the home with an improvement in children's performance after the implementation of specific treatments. Feiler (2003) analyzed the viability of a model of intervention based on home visits to children at risk of literacy LD in order to prevent them by giving parents guidelines. Over the first year of schooling, experts visited families on a weekly basis teaching parents basic reading and writing activities, such as reading books, helping the child write his/her name, and offering them materials or instructions. The results of this seemingly simple intervention were evidenced at the end of the school year. At the beginning of the year children in the experimental group learnt these skills at a significantly

of the treatment.

the most.

slower pace than their classmates. However, at the end of the school year there were no significant differences. Families were also satisfied with their work and showed a high degree of interest in continuing with the activities they had learnt as well as with becoming more involved in their child's education.

Lastly, there is a study on the role of the family on writing LD (Jones & Christensen, 1999). It tested how effective a program aimed at improving the writing skills of children with mechanical difficulties was. The program could be carried out by family or faculty. Over 8 weeks and for ten minutes a day the relatives who volunteered worked with their children on activities regarding letter's shapes, correcting motor mistakes and fluid writing. Children improved both their motor writing and the quality of their stories. It was also shown that they did so regardless of whether it was the teachers or the family that carried out the tasks. Once more, there is evidence of parents' potential to stimulate the academic development of children with LD.

#### **3.2 Family help with homework for children with LD**

Most of the work which addresses family collaboration to prevent or solve LD focuses on language, reading and reading-writing and on young children at risk of LD. However, when the children with LD are older they usually present, apart from the diagnosed difficulties, difficulties with doing their homework. In some cases they get professional help from their schools. They, nevertheless, lack that professional support with their homework at home, which means that help from relatives is basic (Bryan, Burstein, & Bryan, 2001).

Some of the variables related to the problems with homework that students with LD present seem to be related to the lack of communication and coherence between the goals of the school and the family (Polloway, Bursuck, & Epstein, 2001). That means that in these cases direct contact between faculty and the family is essential to ensuring meeting and maintaining academic goals. In order for intervention programs to be really effective it is necessary for professionals to develop strategies to obtain parents' active collaboration, in addition to meeting with the child. It is also advisable that the family's involvement begin as early as possible. The perspective should be one of prevention, helping to avoid an increase in the disability. Parental satisfaction with the school means they will continue their favorable disposition towards collaboration. However, it is common for teachers to wait until the situation is out of control to ask for parents' collaboration. Likewise, there are but few parents who contact schools of their own accord to show interest in collaborating. This is sometimes due to time constraints, or to their being dissatisfaction with the school after finding that their child has problems that the school has not provided tools for overcoming. Teachers must therefore offer families as many options for collaboration as possible. This means that apart from defining schedules, times and spaces for homework, families can work on other specific aspects with their children with LD and keep frequent and fluid contact with the faculty.

It has been demonstrated that teaching parents how to work with their children on psychological variables that can influence their homework production pupils improve not just the quantity of homework produced, but also its quality, and even leading to higher exam marks. This means that if we provide families with the materials, procedures and concepts to participate in a systematic and structured way in the child's homework by

Interventions in Specific Learning Disabilities Through Families 97

When parents don't recognize their children's LD it might be due to them not knowing what these disorders are and therefore not addressing them. Karende, Mehta and Kulkarni (2007) confirmed this during their diagnostic procedures of LD for children. They then ran a specific session to train parents on LD. They asked parents a set of questions on what a learning disorder is, its causes, course, treatments, etc. These issues were debated for about 45 minutes and they were made aware of the correct answers. This allowed them to verify that their children had a real problem that required intervention. After this session parents became aware of LD and the need to treat them specifically, which required their

In the 80s Stoll (1985) detected that families' lack of understanding of the diagnosis of LD was a factor contributing to the low relationship between parental expectations and children's potential, and therefore a low probability of acceptance of treatment. Therefore, he decided to carry out a seminar for families aimed at raising their awareness, which was expected to lead them to not resist the diagnosis and offer their children the help they really required. The starting hypothesis was that knowledge of the problem and its treatment would help decrease parental anxiety and increase their receptiveness. The seminar consisted of a week of 90 minute sessions both parents needed to attend, which addressed the following topics: definition of LD, family life, school life and future prospects. The sessions initially presented a general framework and progressively worked their way to each particular case. The facilitator asked questions parents had to answer. The answers were then fed back into the group and opened a debate. As the seminar progressed individual cases were addressed with the goal of decreasing stress through a cognitive understanding of reality which aimed to identify problems to then solve them. The results of the seminar met all the goals, increasing parents' awareness of the problem, helping them express it and understand it. It also helped them adapt their expectations regarding their

Rolfsen and Martínez (2008) also carried out family training. They developed a psychoeducational program which aimed to guide parents of children with LD on how to use the resources available in their environment to prevent more serious difficulties. The participants were 8 parents of primary school children with LD. The program was 6 sessions long, which covered topics such as organization of family routines, support with children's homework, relationship between the family and the school, enriching everyday experiences, communication and family relationships and educational practices. The sessions, which were 90 minutes long and took place at the school, aimed to inform parents of assertive behaviors that favored children's adaptative behaviors and their school progress. The program addressed parents' needs. They showed a lot of interest in the content and raised their expectations regarding their ability to help their children together with the school.

Apart from these kinds of interventions there are other procedures which aim to help parents of children with LD, such as support groups, which can help families deal with the

In Spain it is still unusual to find support groups for parents of children with LD, despite them being popular in the US and in other European countries, such as the UK. In the UK

collaboration. The results therefore proved to be very satisfactory.

children and increase parental collaboration.

child's difficulties.

**4.1 Family support groups** 

providing them organizational, self regulation or applied structures there will be clear benefits to the children's performance. We must, nevertheless, take into account that parents of children with LD report they have more problems than usual doing their homework and require more dedication. We must take the family's characteristics into account – number of children, profession and even the effects of involvement – which all affect its collaboration. This means taking its structural and functional traits into account in order to adapt the collaboration required to its real capacity, especially regarding children with LD, who may live in a highly stressful environment and whose parents may also suffer LD. In the next section we explore procedures, guidelines and resources that can guide direct work with families of pupils with LD.
