• Dec. 15, 2007
Part 4 dyslexia and ADHD Our story

I left off yesterday with Carl and I
going to a home school meeting. It was
a meeting to explain to parents that were interested
in what homeschooling is and
how it works. If you have
a homeschool group I would suggest doing this.
It was so helpful to us.

When we left that meeting Carl said thats it.
That's what we are going to do and so
our homeschool journey began....

I was so excited to start. I planned and
went shopping for supplies. I had everything
ready but...
It wasnt all that I thought it would be to start
out. It wasnt what I envisioned in my head.
Although it really is now but then no it wasnt even close.
Princess fought me on everything. I think every
homeschool mom says this... I had an idea of
what school was and it wasnt working for us.
Princess would wiggle all around her chair.
She hated school at home just about as much
as she hated school away. I didnt know her
abilities or not her abilities. I remember wanting
things to be fun. One day I took her out of our
learning area . We went into her bedroom and
snuggled on her bed and began to read a book.
Princess could barely read at all. She tried
to read the text backwards from right to left.
She skipped complete rows of reading and this
ended in tears. The thing was I had no idea.
We had read together but we were rereading
text the school had already gone over with her.
I think that she actually had things memorized.
I know that sounds odd because I said that
Princess couldnt always memorize things.
However there were some things that she
could. She could repeat a movie to me
almost word for word. She loved stories
just couldnt read them. It was odd I didnt
know what I was dealing with. Since she
seemed to skip complete words and rows in
text I started pointing to the words as we
went one by one. It was still a stuggle. I
talked again to the ped. and he suggested
checking her eye sight. Now why didnt
I think of that. So I took her to the eye Dr.
We found out that Princess needed glasses.
She really didnt need a strong perscription.
The Dr. said she was straining her eyes to see.
That was a blessing in itself. A blessing in knowing
that she needed these and they would
help her.

Princess had been
calling herself stupid since the day she
came home. When she got those glasses
she began to actually see the words.
She said mom I can read. Once she got
used to the glasses she could read a bit
better . She at least didnt skip complete
rows but she still wanted to read right to
left or would reverse the order of the words.
I also noticed as time went on that if
I was teaching two concepts to her and most
come that way. She would reverse the
concept everytime. It was so frustrating.

One day I thought that is it. We put down
our books and took our science lesson to the
creek. We were doing a lesson on floating or sinking.
I put the kids in their swimsuits and they had a blast.
From that day forward thats how learning was for us.
It was actually fun. Who knew and to top it
off Princess was learning and beginning to like it.

I still had this nagging feeling though that
something was really not quite right here.
There were behaviours and things that I noticed.
Carl told me Princess was dyslexic. He said he
could see it. I didnt really believe him. She could
write . She could read a little bit. She  did reverse
some letters but mostly b, d, p, g, q. She also
reversed numbers . Not writing them backwards but
reversing their place value. 53 would be 35.
I had talked to a teacher friend and she said the
letter reversals I spoke of were normal for her
age. Carl was adamant that this is what she had.
He told me there are different levels of dyslexia.
She just my not have it as strongly as he did.
I still wasnt convinced but I respected his opinion.
 You hear so much about
Add and Adhd. I was conviced that was our
problem. That it was a focus issue. I guess we
were both right.

More to come. The visit to the Psychologist and
a little about Adhd..

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