Shannon, I’m here to tell you that you can indeed homeschool your kids even if you have Dyslexia or Dyscalculia or other learning challenges. My two oldest are graduated now, and when they were younger I could have written your post. I was never formally diagnosed but I struggled in several areas in school and math was the worst. I worried so much about how to make it work and at one point put them into private school for a short while because I felt I just couldn’t do it. (We did pull them back out and home educated through high school.)
In the end my sons were fine with their math education. One son also has many learning challenges and academics were never his thing, but he has enough math to take care of what he needs to do and its fine. My other son has been to college and taken math all the way to statistics. He was well prepared by our classes at home and got Bs in those upper level classes and is in honor society. Here is what we did to get him there:
I realized we had a problem. Around 3-4th grade I realized they weren’t learning what they needed to learn and we got a video program and started over at the beginning. We moved quickly through the lessons but we did learn some crucial things that had been missed- like *really* understanding place value- and saved ourselves tremendous headaches down the road. We used Math U See but any video program would probably be a step in the right direction. I have heard a lot of good things about Kahn Academy so I would second or third that suggestion.
You notice I said “we learned”? As much as possible I learned along with them. And yes, I learned even from the kindergarten curriculum.
My hubby helped with Math, both to explain things to the kids and to coach me to be able to help them when I needed to help them. Often we would just save math for the evening when he was home and could help and I wouldn’t feel so insecure that I was “missing things”.
I leaned on other people (friends, co-op classes, etc and video curriculum as needed to continue making progress.
When we got to Algebra the video lessons were not cutting it enough and hubby’s work schedule was such that he wasn’t available to help on a daily basis so we got a tutor. We used an online tutor with a flat monthly fee and our son could schedule as many hours as he needed. He used a LOT of hours, but he learned it and as I said, went on to do well in upper level math classes in college. The school he went to had a free turtoring program and my son successfully utilized that help him through.
The last thing, and perhaps the most important is that I was honest with my sons that math is/was not my strong suit and that I had to work harder in that area or else we were toast. They, in turn took more responsibility for their own learning and progress and stepped up their own efforts. I tried to model the attitude they needed to have and thanks be to God, they picked it up and made it their own. And really I think how to persevere and overcome in the face of challenges is a more important lesson than equations or fractions or what-have-you.
So, please be encouraged- you have an awesome opportunity to help your kids not only learn math, but lessons and character traits that will impact every area of their life. 🙂
