Another Year

When my in-laws divorced I clung to the idea that once we got through the first year it would all get better from there. You know, the first round of birthdays, holidays, etc. I held out through each event certain that after we had been through it once, the next time would be easier - and then it wasn't. I woke up on the one-year divorce anniversary and was so disappointed to realize we were still in the same place as when we went to bed the night before, except we had another whole round of birthdays and holidays to get through.

In this moment I feel the same about the school year. Every year we start strong. We collaborate with teachers, we get an action plan in place, we promise it will be "the best year ever," - and then it's not. I hear the same complaints, wipe the same tears, and shed my own over the same concerns. We've spent hours on end and dollar after dollar for tutoring, training, medication, and herbal "support." What was it all for if what I hear at the end of the day is still, "I'm the only who can't do it." "I try and try but I can't learn it." "Everyone makes fun of me and thinks I'm stupid...?"

Does anyone else out there feel like their child's school career is destined to be a series of the same frustrations disguised in the context of a different classroom?

I kind of hope so, because if someone else did then maybe I would feel more like this is just part of learning and growing and less like it's probably my fault.

Ok, ok. Time to stop griping and get a grip instead. Let's review some facts: my daughter is a better reader than she was last year, and she was a better reader last year than the year before that. She is doing well in history and in writing and she scored the class high on three different assignments in the first half of this year. She has improved and for that matter, so have I, so regardless of our homework meltdown tonight, there are lots of things that have changed for the better this year. Something that has not changed and will not ever change is that SHE CAN LEARN and SHE IS NOT STUPID.

I suppose every year is another round of spelling tests and timed drills to get through, but it has to be more than that. It's a year - 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, - of learning lessons (whether you like them or not), and in that year it's the moments and not the grades that count. I don't know if we will ever have a school year where Dyslexia and ADHD don't trip us up a bit. Whether or not we have a day when I don't compliment my daughter, give her encouragement, and tell her I love her, is up to me.

A new calendar year is approaching and the school year is half way done. We're better than we were before and who's to say we won't be better yet? So, bring on the new year - we'll be taking it one day at a time.

In The Morning - 12/14/12

In the morning I groan when I hear the alarm go off - I'm not a morning person. We gather the kids, say a prayer as a family, and send them still bleary to brush their teeth and get ready for school. I make breakfast, they pack their lunches, we drive the 25 minute commute to school.

Our Friday morning was a carbon copy of our every other normal school day morning, but across the country the school day morning at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut was shattered by gun fire, violence, and terror. A school shooting, 28 dead. Children, families, communities devastated in minutes.  Our everyday morning became an afternoon of mourning.

In considering this tragedy I found comfort in these words:

"When Christ rose from the grave, becoming the firstfruits of the Resurrection, He made that gift available to all. And with that sublime act, He softened the devastating, consuming sorrow that gnaws at the souls of those who have lost precious loved ones.

I think of how dark that Friday was when Christ was lifted up on the cross.  It was a Friday filled with devastating, consuming sorrow that gnawed at the souls of those who loved and honored the Son of God.

But the doom of that day did not endure.

The despair did not linger because on Sunday, the resurrected Lord burst the bonds of death. He ascended from the grave and appeared gloriously triumphant as the Savior of all mankind. And in an instant the eyes that had been filled with ever-flowing tears dried. The lips that had whispered prayers of distress and grief now filled the air with wondrous praise... 

Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.

But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come. No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, Sunday will come. In this life or the next, Sunday will come." Joseph B. Wirthlin: Sunday Will Come

I celebrate Christmas because I believe that Christ was born on earth and lived as the Son of God. I believe He gave His life on the cross and became the Savior of all mankind. I believe that on Easter morning He was resurrected and because of that all of us will also be resurrected and reunited with our loved ones. And in that day, like on the morning of Christ's resurrection, there will be joy where there was sorrow. 

I ache for those who will spend nights of anguish and emptiness as they mourn this tragedy.  I pray they will remember when they face Christmas without their children, that because of Christmas, they will have their children again, and that because of Christ, "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."Psalms 30:5

How Do You Know?

If you are the parent of a child with reading difficulties at one point you may ask, "How do I know if my child is dyslexic?"  Once you've answered that question for yourself, other parents will probably ask you the same thing.  I'm no professional and certainly have no qualification to diagnosis my own or anyone else's child, but I am in the midst of round three for diagnosis (yep, a lot can happen in two years) so let me tell what I've seen and you tell me if it sounds familiar:

1. Loss of enthusiasm: With each of my children we noticed a marked and initially inexplicable loss of enthusiasm for reading. Our bright, inquisitive, imaginative children started the school year (kindergarten for one, first grade for the other two) with a jump in their step and a bright outlook and left it feeling dejected and frustrated. In hindsight, the decline in enthusiasm correlated with the incline of reading difficulty introduced in the classroom. Ok, so the work gets harder and the kid likes it less. That's perfectly normal, but wait...

2. Increased effort resulting in decreased performance: As I watched my children work at home, the amount of effort they put into their schoolwork should've resulted in high scores, but despite their hard work they consistently floundered just below average. There's nothing wrong with average mind you, but as their high input repeatedly resulted in a low scores, their frustration grew and that declining enthusiasm morphed into avoidance, belligerence, sadness, and anxiety. 

3. Employment of coping skills: One of my darling dyslexics showed fairly pronounced and classic reversals. She was the one who started our adventure. After we knew what we were dealing with I noted more subtle reversals with my other children, BUT they had developed techniques that got them around the concept being taught and enabled them to achieve the desired end goal. They weren't being manipulative or intentionally evasive. They were developing and using coping techniques. 

4. Observation of a broader use of reversals: Here's what I didn't know the first time around; dyslexia does not mean merely writing letters backwards. Not until we met with a specialist the first time did I learn that reversals manifest in writing both individual letters and numbers or complete words backwards. Reversals also occur in reading words backwards or just reversing small letter combinations within words, or may even be limited to reversing vowel combinations in words. Lastly, dyslexics often reverse the order in which they hear things, so instructions given in a list may be done in reverse order, or they may just become confused and unable to complete the task. 

Ok, great. But what does all that actually look like? Picture an otherwise upbeat and well adjusted child slumped over in their chair, head down with tears in their eyes, moaning and whimpering after being asked to read a 10 page, first grade level book. Listen to them tell you they hate to read, that it's too boring, that they can't do it.  

30 minutes of homework drags on painfully for more than an hour as you sit beside them trying to coach, coax, redirect, encourage, bribe, and cajole them to complete the assignment.  They study verbally with you and know every detail for the quiz, but the quiz comes home marked in red with a failing grade. They practice the spelling list every day and know all the words, but the test looks like they never practiced at all. Eventually they simply refuse to do their homework. The teary eyes become full blown tantrums. They resent school and are reluctant to go or participate in class. They may even start to say they are stupid.

As they read out loud,  words like "saw" are read as "was" and "has" is read as "saw." Sometimes as they track while they read they move their finger directly to the end of the word, then go to the front of the word, but say a word that starts with the ending letter sound. Words that end in -er are written as ending in -re and vowel combos like -ea and -ou usually end up as -ae and -uo. They can't tell from hearing it which words need a silent e on the end and which don't.  They count out loud correctly but they write 13 as 31 and 26 as 29. 5 and 7 are usually written backwards. 

They read their assigned homework book fluently but if you cover the pictures they suddenly don't know what the page says. If you point out words individually they can't tell you what it is unless they start at the beginning of the sentence and work their way to it. They sometimes forget to keep looking at the page while they continue to "read" the book they've memorized during their reading group that day.  They try to guess a lot of words by context instead of sounding it out.

You give them logical instructions about ordinary tasks but they drop one or more steps from the list and end up perplexed. For example, you ask them to put on their shoes, grab their coat, and get in the car. They put on their coat, get in the car, and don't have on any shoes. They are more bewildered than you are as to why they are in their bare feet, in the garage, in January. You tell them to make their bed, pick up their clothes, and put the toys away in their room, and they stand there blankly. When you ask them why they aren't cleaning their room they say, "I don't understand how." 

After our observations we opted to have professional assessments done to confirm our suspicions about our children's dyslexia. Even then we needed a second opinion with one of our children before we confirmed it. The official diagnosis was helpful in connecting us with resources and coordinating a support plan with our school. I have to say that even without it we still knew they were dyslexic. They seemed to know too. They just didn't know what to call it. 

I know that overcoming dyslexia is possible and we pray for our children's success in doing so everyday. Their challenges are real but so are their abilities and I know they'll come out on top. I know they're smart. I know they're capable. I know that with the right help dyslexia will eventually become an enabling gift instead of a stumbling block. How do I know? Because I'm their mother, and there are some things moms just know.  

Two years

It's startling to think that it's been two years since I wrote that last post. It's disappointing to think that I've written so many thoughts in my head and never sat down to put them in print. Sometimes I was too busy. Sometimes I was too intimidated. Mostly I was living life as a dyslexia parent instead of writing about it. But now I think I need to write down so many of the things I've felt and learned - still feel and am still learning. Maybe I need to say it. Maybe someone needs to read it. Mostly I just want someone else to see it and say, "I know what you mean."

Dyslexia was the first learning difficulty to become a part of our family. Since that first post we have also begun coping with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), NVLD (Non Verbal Learning Disorder), and Anxiety. Don't worry, it sounds worse than it is. I might change the slant of this blog to address all of those areas. I hope that won't alienate anyone - remember, we're all parents regardless of which challenges may or may not apply to our children. While it's a lot to swallow I really want to do this - to say what I am so constantly thinking about and to hear the experiences of other parents. So potential readers, I look forward to meeting you and hope we can learn a lot from each other. I intend to set a better pace than one post every two years, but my new and improved blog isn't likely to be an overnight renovation. Please bear with me, I've got a lot to catch up on. 

Making "Melonade" (October, 2009)

Recently I saw this posted on facebook; "When life gives you melons, you know you are dyslexic." Lemons - melons, confused letter order - dyslexia... Oh, I get it. Ha,ha. Well, a week later the joke was on me, and I didn't laugh.

My 7 year old daughter was diagnosed with vowel specific, visual dyslexia, auditory sequential memory delay, and scetopic vision. That means her mind struggles to keep written letters in their proper order and associated with their correct sounds, particularly when vowels are involved. Also, when she hears a set of instructions she will confuse the order or mentally eliminate instructions from the set. Finally, as she reads black print on white paper the print will move, swirl, blur out, or blank out, making it impossible to follow all the text. This diagnosis answers a lot of questions. It presents many more.

Is this why she has been throwing tantrums about doing her homework and going to school for the past 7 months? When I have been nagging her to get chores done have I been giving her instructions that she can't remember or fully understand, and then blaming her because she didn't do it? Is this difficulty a lifelong companion that she will take with her everywhere she goes? Yes, yes, and yes. So what do we do?

A light filter on the page when she reads will help reduce the visual distortions. Tutoring can help re-teach her mind to put sounds and letters in order. We need to give instructions only one or two at a time. We'll have to inform the school about all of this...

Driving home from the assessment testing, words and their meaning are prominent in my mind. Read, letters, see, sound, challenge, hard, stupid, hurt, can't. All of those words fit a different context for me now. Finally I'm glimpsing what she has been up against and how hard she has worked to perform what was expected of her, when in fact some physical impediments made it impossible for her to do so. Sad, sorry, clarified, optimistic. Those words are part of how I feel. There are new words: Erlen filters, normalize, multi-sensory, Wilson program. I don't know what they mean yet. And a pile of books for me to read. Which do I start first? How do I fit in learning about all of this when I am focusing on helping her learn? How do we provide help for her without making her feel more self-conscious and embarrassed? Love, support, encouragement, hope, believe, accomplish, non-threatening, calm. These are some of my favorite words today.

We've made some changes. The job chart, with it's horizontal rows and vertical columns and black lettered words on white paper, is gone. It's been replaced by colorful graphics hung to form a "guided pathway" from the bathroom, down the hall, to her bedroom. The visual aides prompt her to brush her teeth, make her bed, pick up her room, and turn out her light, so she doesn't get confused about what comes next as she gets ready in the morning. We swathed a corner of the basement floor in painter's canvas and covered the walls with paper to create an art studio. This provides a place where she can indulge in her favorite passion and expend her creative energy whenever and however she wants - no straight lines, no particular order, no phonological awareness required. There are light filters in every room and the books of her choice are within an arms reach. They are usually read while wrapped in a warm blanket and sitting on someone's lap.

Reading fluently is possible for her and it will come. I don't know when, or what getting to that point will require, or how it will change the little girl who deals with it. What I do know is that we are in this together and for the long haul. We'll put in the time and make the effort and I fully expect that in the end, this challenge will create opportunities for her, for all of us, to expand in ways that we otherwise wouldn't. If reading is always a bit of a struggle for her that's ok. She can find success in her efforts to read and when the burden is too heavy, we'll read to her. We love her. We believe in her. We'll help her, and we'll make sure she can read that, loud and clear.