Taking issue with LDonline's summer advice to parents.

Well call me no fun des, but I agree with LDonline. It’s not exactly that I think you are totally off. Kids are, in fact, way way overscheduled. (But that’s all year and not just summer.) I do think kids should have time for catching frogs and lizards, swimming (outside of classes), sandlot baseball (does this actually exist anymore??), and vacations.

I am a big fan of all fashioned camping (you know tents and s’mores) and some of the newer camps like Space Camp, even went there one year myself.

BUT, the 3 month vacation break was for back when kids spent most of the summer milking cows and working in fields. With many families with both spouses working the idillic times don’t exist much anyway. Kids spend lots of time on the tube or playing video games, not catching frogs and camping.

Another thing is that I think the average (non-ld kid) spends 2 months just remembering what they forgot. It would be really nice not to have to do this.

I doubt we’d go to something less archaic like longer breaks and something like a one month break in the summer. Still I don’t think kids will suffer really if you have your kid read a book once in awhile. I think continuing tutoring after some sort of break is sane. I encourage parents to give my kids a break (though most do not continue tutoring in the summer). Two or three hours a week tutoring (say) in reading per week isn’t so much but might make a lot of difference in the fall. In some kids it could be the difference between failing behind and catching up.

signed,

—no fun des :-)

One more thing to consider is learning and fun can be combined. For example, we recently visted Sequoia and bought a guide book of flowers of the Sierra Nevadas. So every time we came across some interesting flowers we’d look them up, learn the names, and I’d have my son read out loud any interesting details. Everyone learned something and some of it was surprisingly interesting (like a flower that Indians used for tooth pain!).

There’s also interesting places to visit; museums to discover, visits to the zoo, etc….

I think just visiting a stream and letting kids play in it, build damns, observe tadpoles…then maybe pick up a book about them at the library later in the day is both “academic” and fun.

As for summer school…. in the past I’ve had a really hard time coming to terms with it. I have one non-ld child who it has never been recommended for. She’d be extremely bored. And then I have the ld child who it might benefit. So, I’ve thought, the one child who excells in school, feels good about it, and is successful at it gets a break, while the one who struggles and feels completely unsuccessful there is forced to deal with more of a negative situation. That doesn’t make sense to me. So instead we do take a break and I enroll my son in various summer camps that focus on activities he enjoys and feels successful with (chess camp, robotics, “non-competitive” basketball, art, electronics, etc….), and we visit different places, see friends, (hey, the social stuff is not only fun but therapeutic too!), cook and bake together, take lots of walks, be lazy, and focus on family bonding.

I’m all for fun and vacations, but children who are behind in reading MUST take advantage of the summer to ever have a chance to close the gap. Otherwise, they’ll likely eventually drop out of school and have more free time than they know what to do with. I doubt that would be so fun.

Janis

Fun and Reading! You might want to check into the StudyDog program. It is like a game on the computer - but it has very sequential skills built in. My kids love it and they think they are playing. But really they are learning.

At the web site you can see the studies on the curriculum and choose the level you want for your kids. You can download the lessons for free from the internet to your computer.

I’m all for fun AND reading as well. (There will be a lot of us having fun AND reading in July when Harry Potter 6 comes out.) But if a kid is very delayed it may not be that much fun, and sugar coating rarely helps severely dyslexics anyway. Still I think it is time to use. And dont’ think it precludes going on and having fun doing OTHER things.

—des

Summer has always been a time for my son to catch up to his peers. We worked hard every summer but not all day every day. 1 hour per day accomplished quite a bit of remediation of specific deficits.

He is going into 6 th grade next year and without this extra work he would be a child dreading the onset of middle school. I see so many friends’ kids hitting a wall at this age. One friend’s regular ed child still doesn’t know his times tables, I think about all of our car trips skip counting, reciting the times tables etc.

My son doesn’t need summer school because he has developed the skills he needed to learn effectively. I wonder, if your child couldn’t walk would you tell the doctor that summer was no time for therapy.

I am sorry if that sounds a bit harsh but it is really the way I see it. Denial is but a luxury that I found I could not afford.

Its not fun not being able to read when your peers can. And it won’t be fun if my son can’t close his literacy gap and perform up to his potential as an adult. Unfortunately LD children don’t have the luxury of taking the whole summer off. And many of them are more comfortable when there is structure to their day .

We just went shopping today for the books my son will take to camp with him . He can finally read well enough on his own to read for pleasure and that reading alone will probably be enough. But if we felt tutoring or some other form of remediation was necessary we would absolutely do it over the summer when there are not other pressures.