My Boy Has A Lot Of Promise

My son started 5th grade 2 weeks ago. He goes to a school that has a short 6-week summer break and starts the next grade at the end of July. School is then in session for 9 weeks, followed by 3 weeks of break. We love the schedule for the most part. It's difficult in some ways now that my oldest child is in middle school and is on a traditional school calendar, but we wish that she was on the modified calendar still!

K Man has been diagnosed with dysgraphia, fine motor skill delay and short-term memory impairment. We have taken him for testing twice since 2nd grade. He tests with a high average IQ which, in Minnesota, disqualifies him for an IEP, but he still is able to have a 504 plan. (Don't know what they are? Please Google!)

We are very fortunate to have a principal that is willing to go the extra mile for the kids in his school, so he found a loophole to get K Man OT to improve his handwriting (it is better, but still hard to read) and extra help to develop his general writing skills. He's also received help with reading since 2nd grade.

The school uses a color system to level the kids for their reading skills. K Man was below grade level all of last year. Just today K Man almost tested at grade level. He was 2 vocab words away from testing AT GRADE LEVEL. This is HUGE for him and I am so proud of him. He has come a long way since 2nd grade.

I know the kid is brilliant in perhaps, non-conventional ways. He will find a niche and blow it out of the water. He continues to surprise and perplex me. I'm sure I'll never understand how his mind works. I'm excited to see his future endeavors.

Then He Started Reading Voluntarily

Before K Man started Kindergarten, he loved having my husband or I read to him. His favorite book by far was Green Eggs and Ham. There was a time that I pretty much had that book memorized, and you know it is something like 65 pages long...just a few words on each page...but still, sixty-five pages of a children's book. We could never read it just once either. It had to be at least twice.

I will not eat them on a train or in a house or in the rain. Or something like that. These days, getting K Man to read is a lot like being Sam I Am trying to convince him to try green eggs and ham. Since starting Kindergarten four years ago, when he was required to start to learn to read himself, he has become much less fond of reading. He seldom even asked us to read to him.

I probably should have seen the flags right away. It's strange for a child who loves books so much to suddenly recoil at the thought of them. But no, I just thought he was too active to sit long enough for a book. I thought it was normal letter-reversals. I remember asking everyone if it was weird that he still confused b's and d's and 2's and 5's and several other letters and numbers even when he was near the end of 1st grade. Everyone said it was still normal, but something still was tugging at my mind. It didn't seem right. So, we had him tested before the start of second grade.

Now here we sit, a little more than one year later. He is making progress in some areas and not in others. Spelling is still a nightmare. His reading, however, continues to improve.

Last weekend, he received his Bible from our church. (All third graders receive either a children's Bible or a traditional Bible from our church.) I chose the traditional Bible for K Man, even with his reading difficulties. He was proud to receive it, I could tell.

Then he started reading it, voluntarily. I'm not sure if you know this, but the Bible is not exactly easy reading, especially for a kid who has difficulties with reading. I asked him about the book and he told me he read about "this lady who wasn't supposed to eat some fruit but she did..."

A see a glimmer of hope.

We Learn to Deal With Learning Disability

 K Man's official medical diagnosis is a "disorder of written expression" (which is also called dysgraphia) and ADD NOS (though I disagree with this assessment since it was made before his dysgraphia diagnosis.)  We obtained the diagnosis a little more than a year ago and floundered all last year about what to do with the information.

This year, the school is taking things more seriously. (It was an unusual year the last part of the school year last year and we wondered if some of the issues were related to family crises such as losing an uncle at a young age and a grandfather having a life-threatening illness.)

We've met and drafted a 504 plan. Thus far, the principal and the district psychologist do not think he qualifies for an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), mostly because his IQ scores during his testing were high. So, we know he is intelligent (which, if you know him, is quite obvious.) but his school testing is consistently below grade level in reading fluency (though not comprehension), writing and especially spelling. Spelling in particular is a nightmare. He has fewer words to study (an accommodation we put in place last year) but still spells only 1-3 words correctly on a given test. Occasionally, there is an anomaly and he'll get 12 correct even when he's only supposed to study 10. (This has only happened twice.)

Under his 504, he will be tested away from the majority of his class in small group settings or just him with a paraprofessional. He expressed great relief when he heard of this because he said "Oh good! Now I don't have to hear the kids sharpen their pencils." It should be noted that he's been known to sharpen his pencil several times during the day, but if he thinks this will help, so be it. He will have non-reading and non-spelling related tests read to him so we can test his knowledge in each subject without bringing his disability into the mix.

There are other accommodations as well.

After I asked some questions, he told me recently that it physically hurts him to write for any length of time. I can't imagine what that is like, especially when everyone is asking you to write all the time. He pointed to the area beneath and around and his thumb and said his wrist also causes him pain. For someone like me, who loves to write and loves the feel of a great pen or pencil on paper, this is disheartening to hear. He'll never love writing like I do.

He consistently reverses letters and numbers even now in 3rd grade. Bs and Ds are especially difficult still, as well as 2s and 5s. He's been taking his spelling tests on the computer for a while now. When he reads he skips words, skips entire lines, adds words and sometimes simply guesses on what he thinks the sentence will be. His fluency has improved since the end of July (when my bigs started school) but it is still below grade level.

I wish there were some magical solution to make his brain work like most everyone else's, but I suspect that he wouldn't be the unique kid that he is if that were the case. The challenge is to teach his differently-wired brain to learn the things he needs to succeed in life. Our journey is just beginning and I worry daily. I don't ever want to have a regret I didn't help him enough.

As I Once Again Consider "Unschooling"

There is a reason for traditional education. People make judgements about you by the way you speak, the way you write, even the way you dress. I once got a job because I wore nice shoes to the interview.

There are also reasons to buck tradition and cultivate unique talents in individuals. It used to be that you could graduate from high school and get on-the-job training. It seems that is a thing of the past and I think it's sad.

I'm willing to bet there are several qualified people out there who couldn't go to college that would be perfect for on-the-job training, who would also happily work at that job for a lifetime. Many businesses are going to only hiring college graduates now. I think these are the people who will view any "starter job" as just that. Temporary. Then the company will be forced to train another person every 1-2 years instead of training one person for 30 years.

I went on this tangent of thought following my son's school conference. He has much work to do to catch up to his peers. Dyslexia sucks. (But I will take dyslexia if it means avoiding cancer and more craptastic obstacles in life.) He is trying SO HARD to learn and it is still falling short. I am trying with everything I have to make sure he knows he is SMART. Oh boy is this kid SMART!

I can't help but think of genius like Einstein.

Don't misunderstand. My son's IQ is not in the genius range. (And I'm happy that it isn't.) Super intelligence seems to beget super problems socially. My son is very social and very enthusiastic about life...most of the time.

But my son struggles in school. He's reading at about a first grade level near the end of second grade. His writing is sloppy (in Kindergarten it was remarkably neat...I don't know where it went wrong.) and his spelling is atrocious.

I wonder how much these things matter though. How often do you hand write something at your job? When do you not have access to a spell check? (Seems like spelling tests should focus on homophones.)

If you are going to be a cashier, learning to make change is still important. What if you type in the wrong thing to the register? Is it really necessary to call a manager to make change when someone has a bill of $12.06, gives you a $20 and 6 cents?

There is a disconnect with teaching children real life skills.

Things most people should know by the time they are adults:

1. How to separate clothes before washing.
2. How to run the washing machine.
3. How to toast a slice of bread.
4. How to make change.
5. How to sew on a button.
6. Basic manners: ie: holding a door open, letting a pregnant woman pee before you if there's a line, expressing gratitude when someone helps you, and for the love of God pick the thing up if someone drops it.
7. How to make small talk and make someone feel special. (I have crapped out on this one.)
8. Recognize that the world owes you nothing.
9. Give your elders the respect they deserve. (Not if they are abusive or other non-respectful crap.)
10. Know what to do if you are separated from your group.

My son is very intelligent. His niche is there, whatever he wants to do and to be.

Traditional school does not hold my heart.

And The Boy Struggles On

My son is a remarkable person. I'd guess that most people who meet him will remember him for a long time. My evidence of this is when we visited Amish country one year later and one of the Amish ladies asked us if we'd been there before. We said yes but there was no spark to her memory until K Man came around the corner and started chatting with her. "Oh yes!" she said, recognition breaking through. "I remember him!" He makes an impression.

When we finally had him tested for ADHD and learning disabilities, it was a hard decision to make. I worried that he would be diagnosed with ADHD and we'd have to put him on medication. I worried he'd be a different kid. It turned out that he was "borderline" ADHD which led us to test him for learning disabilities.

Short story, for those who haven't read about it, is that he has "a disorder of written expression" which is a round-about way of saying he has dyslexia. (Or a more specific way of describing the area of his particular disability.)

We met with the principal of his school who then met with K's teacher and other staff to make a plan for him. The plan was implemented last quarter. Or at least we thought it was.

My son's self-esteem has dropped. Kids at school are teasing him because he "won't get enough points to pass" second grade. His teacher told me she didn't have time to do some of the things in the plan. He started refusing to do even math problems that he knows how to do (saying he didn't know how to do them). That was a big signal to me that he is feeling badly.

I take some of the blame in that I didn't speak up immediately. So now we've lost an entire quarter of my son's academics staying at a flat line once again instead of moving forward.

I spoke with the principal again and he spoke with my son's teacher (who, I'm told, was crying and the kids thought she was being fired. ::guilt::) and the plan is supposedly going to be followed now. MY plan includes checking on the plan at least once a week.

I can admit that my social anxiety gets in the way sometimes, but I will definitely advocate for my kids. I also need to do more reading about how to help teach my son. What have other parents of kids who struggle with dyslexia done?