Live and Learn

Well, the great 'home schooling experiment' of 2011 is officially at an end. Kate went back to school full time today. She was ecstatic. So am I.

When the schools psychologist gets his evaluation done, we'll get her an IEP that will help mitigate her dyslexic problems, and hope for the best.

We'll be watchful of her attitude towards school, and be willing to re-evaluate if she starts to develop self esteem issues. But for now, she loves her teacher, the psychologist, the speech therapist, pretty much everyone over there--

Chris keeps reminding me that she'll 'figure it out' sooner or later-- eventually she'll learn to 'get around' her dyslexia.

*sigh*

I hope so.

Lesson learned: I can't force her to learn. I can't even help her. I can only be patient and understanding when she is struggling.

Back to life as we know it...

To school or not to school

One benefit of home schooling-- you don't have to sit at a desk!

I got this letter from Kate's psychologist yesterday: 

Hi.  I am introducing some new Ocular-Motor activities with Kate.  I will send you instructions on how to do them at home so that she can do them on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.  They are usually pretty quick, so won't take too much time.

I am starting with Figure Ground, and will continue adding exercises over time.  I have ordered an eye-patch, as the research I have been reading encourages using one eye at a time until they are proficient with each eye individually.  For now, I will just have her cover an eye with her hand.

Figure Ground work is pretty simple...Where's Waldo and I Spy books work great and are fun as well.  There are also on-line seek and find games that I will be searching.  These are the fun activities.  The not-so-fun activity is that I will give her a passage of text, and have her circle all of a specific letter on the page.  I time her to see how many she can find in a minute.  I try to pick the most common letters (S, T, N, L, R, A, E, I, O) so that there are plenty to find.

Another activity is a word find puzzle.  I am going to try it, but will only use it if she finds it a challenge/fun.  I want to keep the exercises at a level where she is enjoying them, and add difficulty as she masters the tasks.

I am excited to move forward on these next activities that I have been researching.  The books that I am working out of areDeveloping Ocular Motor and Visual Perceptual Skills by Kenneth A. Lane, and Eye Power: An Updated Report of Vision Therapy by Ann M. Hoopes and Stanley A. Applebaum

Thank goodness for him, since I seem to be getting nowhere with her. I could do all these things at home, but the problem is, she won't DO them with me. With him, she'll bend over backwards. 

Her report card came home and she is /remarkably/ showing improvement. I say remarkably, because I see no improvement at home. Either in attitude or ability. She improved on her Star reading level, this is the test they give to see what 'color' books she should be reading for AR tests. Her last Star test was a 0.9, or Kindergartener in the 9th month. This test she scored a 1.6, or 1st grader in the 6th month of school. That put her into a new color- so she's pleased about that. While this seems good, it's really a bit deceptive. I watched her take this test on the computer at our SEP conference w/ her teacher. It asks her to read a sentence that is missing a word, and then choose from 4 words to complete the sentence. She is so good at using context clues and 'guessing' that even though I know she couldn't read all the words, she figured it out. She read in her head, but used the mouse to point to the word she was reading, so by following the mouse, I could tell where she was stuck and couldn't read the word. This is how the psychologist says she's 'tricking' the test. 

When she takes the Dibels (reading fluency) tests, she places in the 'well below benchmark' category, back to Kindergarten level. 

We spent almost an hour and a half w/ her teacher in our conference yesterday. Kate was wonderful the whole time, even though it was late, and she was hungry. She seems to want to please her teacher/psychologist/speech therapist so much, that she can put on the sweetest face and do whatever is asked of her willingly. 

Me? Not so much. I get the Mr. Hyde side of her. Tantrums, fits, crying, pouting, whining, complaining. It's been fascinating (read *horrifying*) to see this. When I related this to the psychologist, he actually said that 'working with Kate is the highlight of his week.' *Stunned silence*

So this is where I'm at. Second guessing my decisions. Second guessing my 'inspiration'. Second guessing my relationship with this child. 

If she can get into resource and if she's willing to go instead of staying home, I'm putting her back in full time after Christmas. 

She is the exception to every dyslexic I know of. She LOVES school. She HATES staying home. Therefore, the whole reason I kept her out (to spare her self esteem), is not the issue after all. She's throwing me curve balls faster than I can get up to the plate, and I feel like they are all hitting me square between the eyes. I'm not accomplishing anything with her at home, unless you count increasing the level of contention. 

I guess we'll see what 3rd grade brings, and take it year by year. If she ever gets to the point where she starts feeling stupid and hates school, I'll take her out. But as long as she is happy, it doesn't matter what 'level' she's on, grade level or otherwise, she'll be just fine. 

This is my self justification anyway. I hope it's mostly true...

Speech Therapy

Kate was tested and approved for an IEP for Speech this week. She cannot say her /r's/. This affects how she spells, because she replaces /r/ with /w/. I still think it's cute, but, obviously, it's contributing to her problem, so it has to be 'fixed'. She loves speech therapy, thank goodness. She has a 'speech buddy' that she goes with every week, her friend Sarah. They have stickers and rewards, it works for her, at least it does there. At home, not so much. Same exact system, two different results. Sigh.

We're still plunking away at the cooperation issue. Every day, I never know who I'm getting. Kate Jekyll or Kate Hyde. I live for Fridays (when she goes to school all day).

I made her work with clay yesterday. She cannot seem to learn the word 'were'. No matter how many times she sees it, she always says 'where'. So, she made it out of clay, and then since the definition didn't make sense to her, we just came up with a sentence and she made this bat to remind her of it.

"We WERE bats, but then we changed into Vampires!" Honestly, you'd think she'd love this stuff, but it's like pulling teeth...

Testing

I took Kate in at 9am to meet with the schools psychologist today. He gave her a series of tests that lasted about 1.5 hrs. Mostly IQ stuff from what I could gather, arranging blocks into different patterns, finding 2 things the same out of 6, coding, pattern recognition, repeating long number sequences/memory work, finding the missing item in pictures.

I think it was fun for her for the most part.

The Psychologist told me after she left, that he was certain she is 'sharp' and 'quiet bright' and had an 'amazing memory' and 'excellent auditory skills'. She was especially good at coding. He was also impressed with her determination. She wouldn't give up for a long time if she didn't know the answer, she just kept trying to figure it out. He said that was unusual, and a good sign. He was anxious to score her test.

He also did one little eye exercise with her, having her watch his pen while he moved it back and forth, up and down. He noticed that her eyes skip in one area, whereas they should track fluidly from side to side. Apparently this is common among dyslexics, and comes from weak eye muscles, and/or a weak neuro-pathway in the brain. (Because they use different neuro-pathways?)

Like I mentioned before, his son is dyslexic, and they had him go through Vision Therapy for this tracking problem, and said it worked wonders. Problem is, insurance doesn't cover it. So I'm currently researching the costs of the 2 optometrists in the Valley who offer this unique treatment.

Friday she goes back for her academic testing, which is where they'll measure where she's at grade-wise. He'll then discuss the services that he thinks she should get, but as far as I understand it, she won't qualify for resource until she's gone through the intervention process, and we don't want her to go to resource anyway. I'm hoping he'll just teach me what I need to do at home with her.

She went to class all day today. She just got home. She doesn't want to do our work now. Go figure. I'm off to make her do it, if only to make her realize that going to school all day will be very difficult for her. Phhhhbbbt.

It's Official

We are now officially home-schoolers. Part time at least. Now if only I can get Kate to accept that fact, we'll be set.

Back to school?

Friday dawned bright and early, and I went to wake Kate up for school, fully expecting her to have changed her mind and not want to get out of bed. Not so. She very cheerily got up and started getting ready.

Hmph.

When it was time for her to come home, I steeled myself for the tantrum she would surely throw when I insisted we do 'our' work. Not so. Again, she cheerily sat down and went right to work. We were done in record time.

Hmph. Hmph.

This girl is definitely going to defy all my expectations and keep me guessing.

Monday morning she has her test with the school psychologist. I wonder if she'll want to stay after she's done. I wonder if I'll let her.

Part of me wants to throw up my hands and say, "FINE! Go back to school! See if I care!"

The other part knows that she needs to stay home.

Hmph. Hmph. Hmph.

One week down, 30 more to go....

The Decision

So we went back and forth. Back and forth. Should we pull her out? Could I handle it? Should we leave her in and send her to Resource? Could SHE handle that? In first grade, when you get pulled into the hall to read with a Mom, or even the reading specialist, the other kids are just jealous. By the time you hit second grade, they know it's because you're 'dumb'.


In talking with friends about Kate, I have come to discover that several of my friends have dyslexia. They all told me their stories. It was heart breaking. To see a 40+ year old woman get visibly upset when recounting her school experiences, well, it made me think long and hard about subjecting Kate to that. I always thought Chris' school experience was just an exception, but come to find out, it's every dyslexics nightmare. The common thread running through all these people's stories was extreme trauma, and low self esteem. Even though they knew differently now, you could tell they still had lingering doubts about their intelligence. And they all HATED school. Every minute of it for 12 long years.


I don't know for sure that Kate will have that same experience. I can't see the future, but man! Just the thought of her ending up like these people made me cry. I can't do it to her. I just can't. She already feels bad about herself because of the damn pink and yellow dots! What is she going to feel when she has to go to resource every day, and sees her papers and tests all marked up with red?


I don't know what is best for every dyslexic child, but I have to believe that I know what is best for mine. We've prayed about it, gone to the temple, talked to people, read and researched-- all to do my part to 'study it out in my mind'-- and the answer is clear. Take her out of school.

We've decided to home school her half day. She comes home from school fried from the effort it takes her to concentrate on reading, thus, she has absolutely ZERO tolerance for homework. In one short week, I could tell, I was going to have to keep her home if I wanted to do anything with her. 

She seems pretty excited about it. We let her make the decision after explaining how much she'd need to do after school with Mom. She agreed it would be too much for her to stay in school. 

She'll miss all of language arts, and go back for Math and the other things they throw in at the end of the day. We'll have to get some accommodations built into her IEP about making those classes dyslexic-friendly, but I don't think it will be a big deal. Keeping her out of language arts will eliminate confusion for her as the school's way will be so different from what we are doing at home. 

Her teacher has been super supportive, and very willing to do anything she could to help. BUT, the poor woman is in her 70's, and has 29 students. It's not fair to expect her to figure out a new way just for Kate. I know that legally, I can demand it, but what will be the cost? She may resent Kate, she'll have less time for the other struggling readers, and she might not ever figure out the right thing for Kate anyway. I think she is secretly relieved that I am willing to shoulder the burden. Or maybe she thinks I'm going to ruin Kate. Who knows? At least she's been nice. 

The perfect solution would be to hire a professional, trained and certified to teach dyslexics, but at $40-50/hr. that's just not going to happen. It's me, or her public school teacher. Those are the options. 

I have very low expectations, the key to low stress-- right? I'm not trying to get her up to grade level this year. I just want to figure out the best way for her to learn. Once we can figure that out, catching up should be easy. I know she's smart. I don't know what I'm doing, but I believe the Lord does. He knows what's best for her. I just have to be willing to step into the dark...

Oh, and she's still going through the official testing process with the schools psychologist. That will tell me where her strengths lie. He and I have been communicating via email, and he's been very helpful. He has a dyslexic child as well, and is going to tell me about the Vision Therapy that worked wonders for them. I can't wait. The more information I have, the better chance we have of finding the right thing for Kate. 

So tomorrow we start on our journey. I hope it won't take long to find the right path-- Kate's path. 

Behind

Kate is behind in her reading. Really behind. She tests at 0.9 level, which is basically a Kindergarten level. She reads 20-40 wpm. The average for a second grader is 90wpm.  Her teacher last year had her do pull out reading, and by the end of the year, she had met her 85% goal, so I figured, she was 'caught up'. I read with her almost every day all summer long. I thought that would keep her where she was at.

Well, apparently, she wasn't 'caught up' last year, because she is WAAAAY behind. Almost 2 full grade levels behind.

Reading with her over the summer, I started to notice that she was switching letters, like b and d. Or words, like reading saw, instead of was. I wondered if she had a touch of dyslexia. After sitting through her 2nd grade assessment with her teacher, it was painfully obvious that she is way behind. I discussed the possibility of dyslexia with her teacher. She was super helpful, but told me that she would have to do a series of 'interventions' before they would test her, this could take months, even the whole year. And then, the test would be for general learning disabilities, not specifically for dyslexia. I left practically in tears, and very discouraged for my child.

The second day of school, she came home and through tears said, "I wish I could read better. I can only read pink and yellow dots!" (Kindergarten level books) Needless to say, I was heart-broken for her. And indeed, at back to school night, I noticed on Kate's desk her 'book', basically a pamphlet of a few pages stapled together, while almost every other desk had chapter books on top.

I came home from her assessment and started researching dyslexia. What an eye opener! Kate has about 50% of the signs, and I learned that most public schools are not equipped to handle the special type of learning that these children need. I left the website up and went to bed, thinking, I'm going to have to have her privately tested ($400-500) AND then I'm going to have to pull her out of language arts every day and homeschool her with a special program ($2-3K). My head was spinning.

In the morning, Chris told me that he had read the entire site after I went to bed and said he had 100% of the signs, and was positive he has dyslexia. He's always known that he has ADD, but the dyslexia revelation was new to him. Interestingly, dyslexics have a very high occurrence of ADD.  I'm not sure Kate has ADD, but my Mom thinks she does, so maybe I'm just too close to it.

Anyway, Dyslexia is genetic, and we think my Dad has it, so she got a double dose in the gene pool. Oh! My heart aches for her! Knowing the years of struggling that Chris went through and the nightmare experiences he had in school, I am sick. However, if she does have it, it's not too late to intervene. Hopefully she won't have to be nearly 30 yo before she is a fluent reader, like her father was. He used to hate reading, now we can't make him stop, still, I don't want her to have to find her own way like Chris did.

So, what to do? I emailed an old friend who has severe dyslexia, did her Masters research in it, and became a school teacher. JACKPOT! She said she will come read with her THIS weekend, and then will LOAN us the system that will work best for her, since she owns most of them!  I am so grateful to have remembered this friend, that I don't stay in touch with, and that she is so willing to help Kate. I'm sure she feels it is her personal mission in life to help dyslexic children, but whatever her motivation is, GOD BLESS HER!

I also have a meeting w/ the Resource specialist tomorrow, but I already have a feeling that that will get me nowhere.

And just a FYI, I learned that dyslexics are not 'slow'. The condition is diagnosed by the talents as well. Dyslexics are usually very bright, spatially oriented, gifted in music, art, athletics, sciences. Just check out the list on the left. Some people equate dyslexia with the capacity for genius.