Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities Announces the 2014 Fred J. Epstein Youth Achievement Award Winners, Celebrating the Outstanding Accomplishments of Students with LD

from: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/06/prweb11965039.htm

 

Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities Announces the 2014 Fred J. Epstein Youth Achievement Award Winners, Celebrating the Outstanding Accomplishments of Students with LD

Five teenagers were recognized with the 2014 Youth Achievement Awards at Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities' fundraiser, The Sky's The Limit at the Greenwich Hyatt Regency on April 25, 2014.

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2014 Youth Achievement Award Winners

I really think it was the support of my family that made me become the person I am.

Westport, CT (PRWEB) June 25, 2014

The 2014 Youth Achievement Awards were presented at the Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities annual benefit on Friday, April 25, 2014 at the Hyatt Regency in Greenwich, Conn.
This year marks the 11th anniversary of the awards, named after Fred J. Epstein, the pioneering pediatric neurosurgeon who credited his significant learning disabilities as a major factor in his success, and became an inspiration to children with learning disabilities (LD).
The winner of this year’s award, Alexandra Sheridan, 17, of Marcellus, NY, serves as a Youth Ambassador for the United Nations as a representative of Dr. Jane Goodall’s non-profit organization, Roots & Shoots. She has also achieved success as an experiential counselor and an award-winning artist, despite her struggles with dyslexia, ADHD, and dysgraphia.
“I never thought in a million years I’d be here with my disabilities,” she told the audience.
Sheridan said that until she was in fifth grade, she “had no handle on reading.” But after transferring to a smaller school, and attending after-school learning programs, she’s not only back on track, but taking AP classes in high school.
“I could never be where I am today if it wasn’t for my mother,” said Sheridan. “She is the only person who believed in me throughout my entire life.”
Sheridan said that her mother encouraged her to pursue her passion when she showed an interest in subjects like anthropology that weren’t taught as part of the regular school curriculum.
“I really think it was the support of my family that made me become the person I am,” she said. “Because without family, I don’t think anybody with disabilities could really make it.”
Smart Kids with LD received more than 200 applications for the annual competition, which is open to children aged 19 or younger with learning disabilities or ADHD who demonstrate talent and determination, resulting in a notable accomplishment in any field, including art, music, math, athletics, science or community service.
Other Youth Achievement Award winners agreed that the secret to success is to pursue your passion.
At the age of 13, Blake Resnick of Las Vegas, Nev., winner of the Junior Achievement Award, was inducted into the National Honor Society and was chosen to deliver the commencement speech. His proudest moment was winning the Southern Nevada Future City Competition for which he imagined, designed and built a city of the future.
“When I was younger, I didn’t have the faintest clue what any symbols on a page would mean, and I didn’t really have any idea how to read or write,” he said. “Through extensive remediation, I’ve improved to the point where I can pursue these advanced projects quite well.”
“Focus on your strengths and pursue them with all you have,” agreed Brian Meersma of Princeton Junction, N.J., winner of the 2014 Special Recognition Award. “At the same time, accept your disability and work on improving it and doing what you need.”
Through his involvement with the nonprofit organization, Bookshare and driven by his passion for technology, Brian created a blog reviewing new technologies that assist people with disabilities. Brian was deeply involved with the campaign resulting in signing three dyslexic bills into law in New Jersey.
Two prominent elected officials, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), spoke at the gala about the importance of supporting children with learning disabilities. Malloy also credited his mother for helping him to overcome his severe learning disabilities and physical impairments by concentrating on his strengths.
“We should work with our children and do everything we can to make sure they get every level of academic success that they can achieve, but our most important job is to make sure our children love themselves, are capable of loving others, and are happy,” said Malloy, an honorary board member of Smart Kids with LD.
In fact, Smart Kids with LD founder and executive director Jane Ross told the audience that research has demonstrated that the most important parental factor in children's success is parents' expectations. “As parents, you need to gain the confidence that your child will be able to learn, that he will get on top of these issues, that he can succeed,” she said. “Smart Kids helps parents gain that confidence, through parents communicating this message: I have been on this journey before you, and it can be done.”
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About Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities, Inc.: Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities, Inc. is a Westport, CT-based nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering the parents of children with learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit disorders (ADHD) via its educational programs, award-winning website and blog, and free e-newsletter at http://www.SmartKidswithLD.org. The organization also educates the public about these children’s gifts and talents. Henry Winkler, Golden Globe award-winning actor, director and author, serves as the organization’s Honorary Chairman.

from:  http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/the-hearing-impaired-have-options/Content?oid=2425927

The Hearing-Impaired Have Options 

By City Weekly Readers

The challenge hearing loss brings to our community is loss of connection. People with hearing loss “fake it” as best they can. They are no longer able to enjoy a movie, a production at a performing-arts facility, dinner out with friends or many of the activities that have brought them joy over the years. They simply “disconnect.” In Utah, we have an amazing advocacy group, LoopUtah.org and people like Dr. Anne Lobdell, AuD, who advocate for loops in venues. Loop Technology works in conjunction with a hearing aid or cochlear implants to eliminate background noise, and allows the sound system in venues to be delivered wirelessly to a user’s ear. This technology has been life changing for those who experience it. Today, there are few venues in Utah with the loop technology. However, 100 percent of cochlear implants and more than 70 percent of hearing aids have the ability to connect to this technology. If someone is not sure if they have this technology in their hearing aid, they need to check with their audiologist to activate it. Hearing-aid users are usually disappointed with the experience they have from hearing aids. But it’s typically not the fault of the hearing aid. Hearing aids are great in quiet environments or one-on-one conversations, but they fall short when used in performance venues as they amplify all sounds, not just the sound we want to hear. Many individuals with hearing loss have no idea that “technology” is a requirement under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), meaning that venues have to have “assistive listening technology” available at no charge. For users to experience the loop, they need to know where the loops are installed. Dr. Lobdell has her office looped and the Sanderson Community Center of the Deaf & Hard of Hearing has rooms looped. The community in Utah needs to be aware of the technology available. They need to request it when visiting a venue, they need to ask their audiologists about it and they need to experience it for themselves. Visit LoopUtah.org for more information. CORY SCHAEFFER
Salt Lake City

Children with negative food challenge results failed to add tested food into diet

 

More than 25% of children who had a negative result to an oral food challenge test did not introduce the challenged food into their diet, according to research presented at the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology annual congress in Copenhagen.

 

Researchers in the allergology department of Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands, studied 228 outpatients who had a negative oral food challenge test (OFC) between 2008 and 2012. Patients completed questionnaires about their experience during the OFC, dietary advice, successful or failed introductions and possible reactions to introductions.
The OFC is used to diagnose allergies, determine if a child has outgrown the allergy, and decide whether the food should be introduced into the diet, the researchers said.
One hundred fifty-seven children (mean age, 8.8 years; 62% boys) completed the study. Fifty-six percent of the patients introduced the challenged food at home, 16% partially introduced the food via traces or processing, and 28% did not introduce the food. A lower introduction grade was associated with hazelnuts and peanuts compared with cow’s milk and hen’s egg. Twenty percent of patients experienced reactions during home introductions.
“The most significant risk factor for failure of introduction was when patients experienced allergic reactions during introduction,” the researchers concluded. “Furthermore, advice on the introduction given by a dietitian or a physician enhanced the introduction grade.”


From : http://www.healio.com/allergy-immunology/drug-food-insect/news/online/%7B44a51364-81a2-44ca-a774-e92a8164b4ba%7D/children-with-negative-food-challenge-results-failed-to-add-tested-food-into-diet

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have ver few virtues. 

  ---by Abraham Lincoln

 

 

 

New App Helps ADHD Moms Manage Stress

By Rick Nauert PhDSenior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on June 5, 2014

A new mobile application designed to detect stress and deliver research-based strategies to mitigate tension and anxiety has been shown to be effective for mothers of attention-deficit, hyperactivity disorder children.
The system, called ParentGuardian, combines an app and a sensor, as well as powerful computing, to help people manage stress.
The product, created by computer scientists from Microsoft and the University of California, San Diego, has been tested on a small group of parents of children with ADHD.
Researchers believe the system will help mothers decrease stress during emotionally charged interactions with their children.

How the App Works

The system consists of a sensor worn on the wrist with a smart phone and tablet, as well as a server that analyses the data from the sensor.
The interventions are based on Parenting Behavioral Therapy, which has been shown to be effective in addressing the needs of children with ADHD and their parents.
The therapy teaches parents the skills they need to work on and has been shown to have long-term effects for both parent and child. It has been shown to improve self-control and self-awareness in children and reduce parental stress.
Parents are usually taught when or how to use these strategies with their children. But sticking with the therapy is difficult, especially during times of the day that are particularly stressful.
ParentGuardian was designed to identify these stressful moments and remind parents of these strategies, which they sometimes forget in the heat of the moment.
“Instead of focusing an individual in need we are looking at how to build and design technology for the family as a whole and what’s beneficial for them,” said Laura Pina, a Ph.D. student in computer science.
“We wanted to help parents to be the parents they want to be.”
Pina worked with 10 parents over three months to design the system.
Parents used the prototype at home for 14 days and wore the stress monitors every day between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. — a time of peak stress when they were juggling homework, making dinner, and assisting their children’s other activities.
Overall, parents reported that the app was very helpful, giving it an average rating of 5.1 on a scale of one to seven.
The system includes four different items, The first is the stress sensor, the second is the phone, which reminds parents of effective strategies and also transmits data from the sensor to a backend server, where the sensor data is analyzed to detect when the parent is stressed. Finally, a tablet serves as a second medium to remind parents of useful interventions.
The wrist sensor measures electrical activity on the user’s skin.
When users experience positive or negative feelings, they secrete very small quantities of sweat, which changes the amount of electricity their skin conducts.
The sweat is not visible to the naked eye, but is enough to change the amount of electricity conducted by the skin, which is used for stress detection. Users also self-reported when they were feeling stress throughout the day as a form ground truth.
Researchers then compared the data from the sensors with the users’ self-reports about stress to train a machine learning algorithm to detect the stress events in real-time.
All users in the study had children with ADHD and eight out of the 10 parents were mothers.
During the first seven days, users trained the app by wearing the wrist sensor and self-reporting on their smart phone when they were feeling stressed.

Using the App to Manage Stress

During the second week of testing, users again wore the sensors. But this time, they also received prompts with strategies to manage their stress based on the data their sensors were transmitting.
The prompts appeared on users’ smart phones — Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8, and on Microsoft Surface tablets placed in the areas where they usually spent time with their children — the kitchen, family room, or living room.
Parents received these “heat of the moment” prompts no more than once every half hour. Examples of prompts include:

• Fill your lungs with air: Take three full, deep breaths;
• Silently count down from 5. Imagine each number changing colors;
• You are your child’s role model. What do you want to teach?

Parents also received a different category of prompts every 90 minutes to two hours during the day. These prompts were more reflective in nature and designed to get parents to think about their parenting styles.
Some examples include:

• Give your child descriptive praise when they do something that you would like to see more often, e.g.: “Thank you for doing what I asked straight away;”
• For every one bad thing you say, find three good points to highlight;
• Be consistent, be predictable, be prepared;
• Model what you want to see.

Parents said they found the heat of the moment prompts particularly useful and that their partners were more likely to provide support when the smart phone pinged — indicating that the parent was stressed.
Some parents took advantage of quiet moments to review reflective strategies and prepare themselves before a stressful situation occurred.
Based on the insights gained, researchers have applied for a grant to conduct a study on a larger number of parents. “Ideally, all parents, or guardians, and children in a household should wear sensors,” Pina said.
Some parents in the study reported that the prompts would be even more useful if they occurred before stress reached its peak.
This would mean that computer scientists will have to find a way to refine their data analysis so that the system doesn’t just detect peak moments of stress but also stress build up.
During the second week of the study, the system detected stress accurately 78 percent of the time.
Researchers believe access to voice and other data will help them be more accurate. But they have to balance this with the users’ need for privacy.
“System design has to be very sensitive to the context of using it in real life, with real people,” Pina said.

From: http://psychcentral.com/news/2014/06/05/new-app-helps-adhd-moms-manage-stress/70841.html