Adventures of the Right-Brained Homeschooler

So, here's the fabulous thing about homeschooling. You can totally take a second spring break if you need one.

I wasn't planning on taking most of this week off. In fact, I had written out a strict schedule detailing exactly how much we needed to do each day so we could be DONE on May 31st. Every morning lately has been work, work, work.

But we're not taking a break because we're burnt out, we're taking a break so I can get my ducks in a row.

Last week, I just happened to be on Pioneer Woman's homeschooling section, and there was a question from a homeschooling mom about how to teach her child with Dyslexia. I started browsing the comments, because that's what I do. I'm a dedicated blog comment reader. As I read, other moms were using terms and websites I wasn't familiar with, but in between the jargon I started to notice something very familiar. They way they were describing their dyslexic children's learning styles sounded exactly like Thing One.

So, I did another thing I always do: internet investigation. First, I read about the symptoms and characteristics of Dyslexia and was surprised to discover that Thing One had every single one. Then, I read from several sites that it's one of the most inherited conditions, and if there is a family member with Dyslexia, every child has a 50/50 chance of having it too. I reread the symptoms and it dawned on me that Seth had a lot of them as well. In fact, all but one. Huh. Interesting. So, I decided I needed to learn what this condition actually is.

I knew very little about Dyslexia, other than that Cosby episode where Theo is diagnosed, and I thought it just had to do with switching letters. Here's some new information about Dyslexia that really struck me:

1. Dyslexia is much more than letter switching. It has a lot to do with language comprehension, and students with Dyslexia process information in a completely different way than "regular" kids. It affects much more than just reading, but spelling, writing, memorization of rote facts, penmanship, test taking, and grasping arbitrary concepts like the rules of grammar.

2. It's estimated that 40 million people have Dyslexia, and only something like 2 million are diagnosed. The rest just think they struggled in school because they were "bad students".

3. Dyslexia affects more boys than girls.

4. I wouldn't necessarily label Dyslexia a "disability", except in the sense that nearly every mainstream school is not prepared to recognize and help dyslexics. I've felt for a long time that brick and mortar schools are geared toward girls in particular, and are focused on meeting certain state standards. Their goals lean toward teaching to the test, seatwork, and aren't able to embrace different learning styles. I don't   blame teachers for this at all. I can't imagine trying to tailor a lesson to a room of 30 students with an array of learning styles. It would be chaos. I had a friend tell me the other day, and it rang true for us as well, that she and her spouse were on equal ground intellectually, but she did better in school than he did because she was a girl. She enjoyed the school environment and taking tests. He would have preferred activities and hands on learning.

5. There's a long list of famous dyslexics, including several inventors, geniuses, musicians, athletes and entertainers. Roughly half the staff at NASA is dyslexic. This is because dyslexics are often able to grasp large concepts in a way the rest of us can't. One of the bigger symptoms of dyslexia is a student who is extraordinarily bright in some areas, but still struggles with reading and writing. They also tend to have an area of natural ability in athletics or arts. Studies show dyslexics actually use more of their brains than the rest of us.

6. There is a vision component to dyslexia that I still need to do more research on, but it has to do with tracking and muscle fatigue of the eyes. Black letters on a white page will often dance around to a dyslexic, and seeing a special optometrist is recommended.

Here are the symptoms that made the scales fall off my eyes where Thing One is concerned. One of the biggest is spelling. I have long struggled to get Thing One to master spelling. He seemed to do better taking oral spelling tests, but even doing that, he would not retain the information. He could just finish spelling a bunch of words out loud, but then fifteen minutes later, if I asked him to write them on his own, he'd miss the majority of them. And when asked to write in sentence form, he'd consistently misspell high frequency words, like where, what, because. Writing a complete sentence was such a trial. No matter how much we focused on capitalization and punctuation and parts of speech, it just wouldn't stick. He could read okay, missing a few words here and there, but he was so focused on saying the words right that his comprehension of what he was reading suffered. He struggled with memorizing lists, even seemingly simple ones like saying all the days of the week in order. Awana was a royal pain in the rear. It was just impossible for him to remember references and tons of verses and questions and answers in order and without helps. (In fact, Awana, I think you kind of suck as far as helping kids memorize Scripture after Sparks, unless those kids are girls and traditional learners. Rant over.) I started hearing him say things like he wasn't smart because he wasn't a fast reader and couldn't memorize things. But I knew that wasn't true and assured him of it. This is the kid that absorbs scientific facts that he hears like a sponge. He has a brain for math concepts and geography. He's great at reading maps and building with Legos and can remember events with crystal clarity.  He's a natural athlete and spends half his time doing headstands and round offs. He's also shown a little bit of natural talent where drums, piano, and guitar are concerned.

There had to be a reason he wasn't grasping language concepts.

I can't tell you how happy I am to have figured this out. I feel like a burden has been lifted. When you're homeschooling, it's so easy to attribute any difficulties to being someone's fault. I blamed myself for not being able to teach him better. I blamed him for being unmotivated sometimes. I felt bad when I'd let him do spelling tests orally or helped him read the word problems on his math homework--guilty because I wasn't doing things the "right" way.

Well, now I can say with full confidence, screw the "right" way.

The great thing about this is now that we know what it is, we can tackle it in the appropriate way. It's not that Thing One can't master reading and spelling, it's that he wasn't being taught in his language. I'm now investigating all the curriculum and programs available for dyslexics, and homeschooling makes just so much sense right now. I'm so thankful. Thankful that I live in a day and age where these things are studied, dissected, and figured out. Thankful for the internet. Thankful for all the experts who have put so much work into making curriculum geared toward dyslexics. Thankful that we are able to homeschool. Thankful that we can totally make this work for Thing One.

So, I'm still trying to figure out what the rest of this year will look like (hence the second spring break) and I'm getting really excited for next year. And now, I totally get these clips from The Cosby Show.



A very helpful website I've been spending a lot of time on: http://www.brightsolutions.us/