Name: Thrive! NCHE Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-05-22T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-05-24T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Winston-Salem, NC

Tagged: Motivation, Perseverance

This topic has 20 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 11 years ago by amyjane.

Viewing 6 posts - 16 through 21 (of 21 total)

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April 9, 2014 at 4:46 pm
LindseyD
Participant
Amy, I’m so sorry about your son’s struggles! That breaks my heart.
Can he type? What if he did his dictations or other (normally) written work on the computer with larger font? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with oral narrations, even into later years. As you said, he will have to learn to compose a paper, but perhaps typing with larger font would work better for him? That’s really the only suggestion I have to offer.
Would some type of occupational or vision therapy be helpful for training his eyes to be still? Our dd is in OT at a local public school once per month. We do the rest of her therapies at home and just go there to check her progress. It’s free through the school.
Does that help at all? Or are these things you’ve already tried?
April 9, 2014 at 5:11 pm
amyjane
Participant
He is learning to type now. And I have him dictate to me and I type because he is not fast at all yet. Unfortunately nothing will make them be still. His eye doc once told us that people sometimes develop nystagmus from brain injuries and many of the patients commit suicide because they knew what it was like to see before without the shaking and their brain can not adjust to seeing like that. But because those born with nystagmus have always seen the world their brains adjust. And while it is still exhausting to focus they manage. We have had fantastic docs and have an apt with our new one since moving to NY in 2 weeks. I hope he can help me since all of these struggles have really began in the last two year. Last year he had to have 2 eye surgeries to clip and move the muscles in hopes to help his neck muscles. So we did VERY little writing while recovering from those. When he was younger and only wrote for copywork it wasn’t such a struggle. But as more writing has been expected he is having such a hard time. So I am hoping he can shed some light on what to do.
The typing will be great for him once he really learns to type. He is doing well but of course it is a slow go. So until then I will just have him start doing more orall narration, spelling and such. I decided to wait on Grammar other than reading grammar land together this year. Thanks very much for thinking out loud with me. I am such a verbal thinker and I apreciate your time 🙂
April 9, 2014 at 5:13 pm
LindseyD
Participant
So, do you read all of his books to him as well? Can you find books w/ larger fonts that he can read independently?
April 9, 2014 at 5:34 pm
amyjane
Participant
He has an ipad and he reads on kindle app. He can blow up the words and change the background to black so it is more of a contrast. The books we can not get on kindle I read to him or he uses a magnifier and reads very very slowly as they don’t help a ton. I think he has only done that once. IPad makes school work for us.
April 9, 2014 at 6:06 pm
missceegee
Participant
I am changing my original post as I hadn’t read the part about the OP’s son’s vision problem. That’s a different issue from the attitude one I was addressing.
Perhaps Phonetic Zoo would help with spelling since it’s auditory. There are only 15 words per list. Writing them twice is only 30 words. You could even break the lists in half.
I’m sorry for his struggles frustrating him.
April 9, 2014 at 6:10 pm
amyjane
Participant
I agree Christie and he and I just finished that conversation after I confessed to him that I want to help him more with his struggles. We talked about the flip side as well which was along the lines of what you said. It was a great talk and I think we both felt heard and understood!! Good stuff!!