Adventures in Tele-practice
Blog by Leone' Kode on vocabulary A personal reflection on being an NILD Educational Therapist during the Covid-19 Pandemic February 2021 Jacquie is a NILD Educational Therapist with 20-years experience, both within the school environment and in private practice. She...
Collaboration between parents, educators and specialist service providers
Often the terminology or difference of opinion between the various role players in a child’s educational arenas can be confusing and cause unnecessary conflict.
Helping kids with learning disabilities to reach their full potential
26 March 2019 2:47 PM PODCAST with CAPE TALK Guest: Santie Smit | One of the directors of National Institute for Learning Development SA (NILD SA). Click here to listen online
The link between emotional well-being and effective learning
Isn’t it strange that whenever we are in a bad mood or frustrated, it feels as though everything is going wrong? Well, there just might be a good explanation for this phenomenon. Studies have shown that emotion has a substantial influence on the cognitive processes,...
Parenting the Challenging Child in the “Noughties”
Parenting the Challenging Child in the “Noughties” by Bridget Wren “Temperament is indicated by behaviour that clusters into three categories: easy, slow to warm up, and difficult. No category makes a child good or bad. They merely describe s child’s response...
Understanding and coping with slow processing speed
This article was written by Santie Smit (Director of NILD SA) with information from Steven M. Burnik, Ph,D. In recent times the effect of slow processing speed on learning has become more evident. Even though SPS is not a formal learning difficulty, it...
Early Maths Development – How Can You Help Your Child?
I wonder how many parents reading this are looking back on their own journey with mathematics at school. I think I can safely surmise that a large percentage of you are remembering times of anxiety, frustration and bewilderment.
They knew me as the dyslexic kid.
When I was only 7 years old my parents found out that I had dyslexia, immediately they sent me for numerous tests to see the extent to the diagnosis. They were told that I had a 15 mark discrepancy between my verbal and non-verbal IQ. I never understood what was wrong...
What is it like to have Dysgraphia?
When your child has a Learning Difficulty it is often very difficult for a parent or sibling to understand how a task that is easy for most people is so difficult for the LD child. Dysgraphia, or difficulty with writing, is often a visual-motor difficulty. In...
What is a Learning Disability?
When we learn our brain has to do three things. Firstly it has to receive information through our various senses (perception). It then has to process, or make sense of, the information (cognition/thinking) and then it has to respond to the information (written or...