My Happy Dyslexia Story

I have been homeschooling for over 10 years now. When I first started I remember reading blogs and books written by ladies with even less years in the saddle. I considered them as professionals with loads of experience. Somehow I don't feel that applies to me after 10  years. There are still so many things to learn and go thru.
 I seemed to breeze thru the first 3. Then I suppose the pressure has just ramped up having #1, 2 and 3 in higher grade levels when I'm still teaching more kids to read and count!

Or not teach them to read! I sort of let #4 slide when it came to school, focusing on the older kids so much. He basically learned to read on his own. Then when I decided to buckle down and totally incorporate #4 and #5 into the school room, I thought I'd loose my mind. I struggled for 2 years until we finally realized that #5 is mildly dyslexic."Mildly" should be encouraging, but I tent to be excitable, I proceeded to make pandemonium out of each school day. #4 got lost and further behind. I stopped and restarted #5 too many times to count. #6 never even made it to the schoolroom. Burnout in view.

"I am 10 yrs old and I cannot read!", #5 wails.

"I have 5 other kids to teach, and I don't know what to do with you!", I wailed.

This year started out no better, one month in, not much learning and I seriously considered giving up. In fact I did give up. I, once again, let the poor guy out of the school room and did what I could with the rest of the kids. I tossed public school around in my head everyday. But how are "they" to have more time with him? Yet aren't they trained to teach kids with....sigh, disabilities? Toss and Toss.

There is a happy ending to this story that I want to get to so I am leaving out the rest of the confusion and doubt. Why go thru it again. If you have a dyslexic child you know exactly what I mean.

What did we do?
1) Well first off I have to say God gave me a measure of grace, because the mountain I was making of this was too hard to climb. This calmed us, lowered my high bar to a reasonable level, made me willing give up some pride and let go of the pressure to keep up with the Jones kind of program. Wisdom too, to get  some activities off my plate (4-H is out until next year), with all the children. Amazing Grace is all I can say.

2) Chiropractor. Maybe not in all cases but in ours my little #5 had several pinched nerves in his neck. The Doc worked on him for sometime and gave us several eye exercises to do: crawling, climbing, focus points etc. Noticed changes immediately! Right away the next day he was trying ( I say trying as he does not have many reading skills) to read road signs and book/movie titles. I noticed this because he NEVER has ever even tried to do this before.

3) Essential oils. I have been diffusing Attention Assist from RMO. in our school room everyday.

4) Started a Right Brained Phonics Program by Dianne Croft. I didn't buy the flash cards but can I say the following very loudly?

***To make your own flash cards: WRITE WORDS AND SOUNDS ON COLORED PAPER !***

I make a simple sketch of an apple (for example) with a black marker and the letter "a" inside the apple on this flashy pink card stock.
 BLAM! "I can read that", #5 says.
Fascinating how adding color (card stock) AND embedding the letter within the picture pulls both sides of the brain together. Why couldn't he tell me that the black on white wasn't working and why couldn't I figure that out - did I say frustrated???

5)I shouldn't even try and write this post with out the book in hand that helped free me from fear and dried some of our schoolroom tears. The Dyslexic Advantage (by Brock L. Eide M.D. M.A. and Fernette F. Eide M.) But it is back at the library. I recommend it to anyone who has a loved one even remotely dyslexic.

I am flabbergasted (I love this word) at the progress! It started with the chiropractor, well, no, my prayers were answered and in the beautiful sequence that God orders for those that love Him we were brought to everything we needed for relief. Why did it take so long and then suddenly everything falls into place? God's timing. We still have our bad days. Some math concepts are very confusing with #5 but I find that it mostly is  in the way I'm (not) explaining procedures - keeping creative and gentle. Grace still abounds. With that tool I can quietly shut the books up, change the atmosphere and pull us back together.

I hope this encourages anyone who has felt the frustration in teaching a dyslexic child how to read. #5 is an amazing boy with the sweetest, kindest disposition and human perception in our family. And we have  a ways to go but the tears and frustration are down considerably. Our school room is a place to learn and enjoy doing so, for all of my little students.