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Tell Me it\'s Ok…or it\'s not
- This topic has 6 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 8 months ago by
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My DD is in 4th grade. She’s right-brain, dysgraphic and has auditory processing issues.
She’s barely reading at grade level. Her writing is several years behind grade level.
And, honestly, I feel badly that she’s not where she “should be.” We still struggle with neat copywork. Spelling is nearly impossible. Math facts are not sticking. Nor are grammar rules.
Many days I just feel like this is a mountain I cannot climb. And I feel like she’ll never “get” the things she needs to get.
She won’t be ready for dictation next year. She won’t be writing papers any time soon.
Is it ok?
We’re trudging through so many things. She’s doing OT. We’re using Dianne Craft. We’re doing narration and copywork. Times Tales. Hands-on things like writing in sand.
But I feel like I’m doing so much and getting so little progress.
So, yes, this is a unabashed cry for encouragement.
Yes, it’s ok. 🙂 She is where she is. 🙂
I haven’t done CM much so far, but I have done a lot with a dd who had learning challenges. What I learned with her is that I had to take her where she was and work there. For a long time, I had the thought that THIS YEAR, we were going to catch up! And then we were both so frustrated! When I finally realized that she just WAS 2 years behind, and I realized that I needed to be working in that place, we were able to actually enjoy learning and make a bit better progress.
I took the 5th grade book and looked at the company webpage for the amount of writing expected of 3rd graders. It was a sentence or two, instead of a long paragraph or two. She could do that! My dd could manage the content pretty well, so we kept the 5th grade book, but I only asked her to do as much as the third graders were doing. The rest, we either did orally or we just skipped. She stopped crying about copy-work.
We did all her other writing orally–she could tell wonderful stories, as long as she didn’t have to write them herself. I was her scribe for a long time, until she was able to manage the fine motor skills. Somewhere in 6th and 7th grade, those skills started to pick up, and she was able to apply what she had learned orally for all those years.
Letting her do so much orally and backing off on some assignments was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done, but it paid off in the end. She is 21 now, still has ADHD and is an Aspie. But she is a senior in college and doing well acadmically, and is a gifted writer. The time we spent making a way for her to work with her own needs and abilities made a huge difference in the end.
I’m not saying your dd will have exactly the same thing happen, of course. But I do think that she will find the things she excels in, eventually, and you will be glad that you let her forge ahead where she could and made appropriate accommodations where she couldn’t, for a long time.
Thank you. I needed to read that and hear from another mama that it is ok and will be ok. And your practical tip of doing the 3rd grade stuff is super helpful too. Thx!
Yes, it’s ok! One of the beauties of homeschooling is that we can work with our children where they are at. A lot of people only think of that as “We can work with our children and let them be as advanced as they wish.” However it really is “We can work with our children and let them be exactly where they are. There is no advanced or behind, there just is where we are working right now.”
I’ve got a lot of kids (10) and so far have kids all over the place in what they can do at a specific age. For example my current 7th grader still can’t spell. He was a later reader, is possibly a bit dyslexic, and spelling simply is beyond him. His 8 turning 9 year old brother spells better than this 13 year old. I have one child who does fly ahead. My kids all have strengths and weaknesses.
What I do is spend most of our time working in their strengths. We want to keep learning and progressing and feeling successful. Then we work on one or two weaknesses consistently, knowing that small efforts over time build up. We also recognize that some areas will always be weaker because we are all different – and that is ok!
I have to second what @tristan said. I have a dyslexic 6th grade son and, by the standards forced upon us by the education system, he would be considered “behind,” but I don’t buy into that. Is he behind what his peers know at his age? Yep, but when I look at the things he is good at and CAN do, he’s light years ahead of them and his depth far surpasses them. My son is also completely right-brained, so you can imagine trying to teach him and trying to get it to stick. These kids just learn so differently from other people, but their minds are just so beautiful because they don’t think like anyone else! 🙂 It both annoys me and makes me happy. The days are really rough and I worry about him later in life, but…we just keep trudging on at his pace, which is a slow one. His younger sister has read circles around him for ages and doesn’t struggle one bit. She’s about 2-3 levels of math higher than him, even. But…it is what it is. You are not alone, and that’s the main thing I wanted to communicate….and also, that it’s ok! 🙂
Yes, it’s ok. Teach the child. My 10 year old really struggles with spelling. My 8 year old doesn’t. It’s ok. Teach the child, not the curriculum.
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