These strategies consist of environmental controls, teacher support, electronic listening devices, and most of all, love and emotional support.
Controlling the environment at home isn’t too hard. Turn off the television, make sure only one person speaks at a time, and make sure you have your child’s full attention before giving instructions. Controlling the classroom environment can be much more difficult. We have found that having Hannah sit as far as possible from the heating/air conditioning unit has helped, and we have been able to request teachers that are known for maintaining tight control in their classrooms.
Teacher support consists of having the classroom teacher seat your child as far away from the talkative children as possible, standing next to your child when giving instructions, and seating your child near the front of the classroom so that he/she will be able to maintain good visual attention. Teachers should also break instructions down into single components, rather than giving a long string of complicated directions.
Electronic listening devices (or FM trainers) are devices in which the teacher wears a special microphone and the student wears special headphones which are tuned into the microphone. Everything the teacher says is amplified for the child. Unfortunately, many teachers forget to turn the microphone off before speaking privately to other students or teachers, and some CAPD students know everyone’s secrets. These can be very beneficial to some children, but my daughter refused to wear one because she didn’t want to look “different.” I decided that her self-image was in bad enough shape, so I didn’t argue about the trainer.