learning to read

I think the most important thing is to try and make it fun. When reading is a chore, its more difficult to read. If you can find fun ways to read, it will be easier on all of you.

Some ideas:

Buddy reading (you read a paragraph/page, he reads one)

Books on CD or Tape. This is great if you are doing chores or taking a drive.

Find a book about something that he is really interested in.

Play word games in teams. This way he gets help without it being “cheating”.

I agree. Try to make it fun for him. It might already be something he doesn’t like, so you might be fighting an uphill battle if you try to make him like it. My daughter is in 5th grade and I know what motivates her $$$. I’m not saying you pay him to read, but what about some sort of reward system where he earns something like a trip to Target to buy a toy/game or a trip to the ice cream store or whatever. You could keep track of minutes since you probably don’t want to pressure him with pages or books read. Especially if he is slow. And I agree with taking turns. That REALLY helps in our house. I read a page and she reads a page.

Also, if he is at a 2nd grade level you might want to find out which part of reading is a struggle. If it’s comprehension vs. decoding. If it’s decoding, like reading the actual words, then you might want to look into some phonics exercises or games. If it’s comprehension that is so hard, then maybe you read to him and have him work on comprehending the story without overloading him with reading the words at the same time. Sometimes these are both areas that are difficult, but need to be worked on separately.

Hope that helps.
Kathryn

Total agreement here!!!

“Fonnix” is an allie? Ally? Bleh…. I am dyslexic…

I was very very verbal. But reading was impossible till i was about 10…. 2 years later i was reading above grade level. Now i read in 6 languages atleast somewhat passably even if not totally fluent in all. I also read hieroglyphs and hieratic script and old coptic. I read modern western music notation and ancient greek music notation. But seriously, sometimes a system is necesary for putting the letters together! No shame in that! And if that is the problem…. Takes a bit of work…. Doesn’t happen over night, but once it really clicks…. And some sort of serious improvement is noticed. I bet he will be just like me! Spending every moment he can reading! But yeh rewards help…. Have you heard of Orton Guillingham? I am not sure they have games exactly but who knows? It is the only reason i am literate and able to study egyptology at a university level. If not for that system… dear Gods, i would be rotting in some dark horror house a sort of institution for vegetable children. Literacy is…. Maybe one of the top 3 most important things in life. Because once you have that you can get anything else.

thanks
I need encouragement. I have been feeling close to hopeless because he lives with his mom during the school year and she doesn’t see a problem The boys are with us 3 weekends a month and all summer. I am going to try to help as much as possible. I guess it is hard being a middle school teacher and knowing how mean kids can be to students in”Special Ed”. Thanks so much; I won’t give up.

Kids can be mean and cruel no matter what. I tell my kids that. “Kids are mean. If they make fun of you walk away and ignore them.” Easier said than done I’m sure, but it’s true.

Kathryn

Kids, can be nearly as evil as adults. But that is what happens when a ‘them’ and ‘us’ mentality is created and consistently passed on generation after generation… Soon you have slavery and holocausts, ADHD and people being treated as sub humans rather than as what they are. The sick thing is, i find the experts are the ones that start this cycle and perpetuate it in their writing. The way they phrase things and stuff…. They talk about learning disabled like…. we are objects, rather than people. And so, we grow up feeling different and other kids too notice these differences…. And with their parents and society feeding that feeling that some people are just different…. kids get cruel. It is really really sad to go through it as a kid. Torturous even…

The best thing you can do, is treat him with respect. Insist others do too. Especiallyu the experts. Make sure they do not condescend to him when they speak. Encourage him to read their evaluations and tell them he will be reading them. I think it is important they learn to color their language a bit in a way that realizes the humanity in those of us who learn differently.

I meant it. I *am* dyslexic. This fact was established when i was 4. Every 6 months to a year after that first test i was retested by one moron or another until i was 18. I have had pills forced down my throat against my will I have been taunted and essentially tortured… It wasn’t fun. Which is why i am here. To remind everyone…. I am a human being. You wouldn’t do such things to someone because they had a different color skin. You wouldn’t treat them as other and less intelligent and unable to feel because of such issues of pigmentation. And you wouldn’t write about them in a tone that denied their humanity. Being learning disabled is the same it is not really a disability. It is a *difference.* Our minds wrap easily around stuff the “normal’ mind wouldn’t. We tend to be VERY creative. Not only am i an egyptology student, i have a massive education in music built my own harpsichord at like 15. I build instruments of various cultures as a hobby. I have been known to make a bit of money with my music. On top of that, you can find my other arts and crafts in some of the local galleries. I have had to, find alternative routes to so many different things… Now my brain, is just very creative all the time. Also, interesting fact, (archeology student…and all.) Our english and letters are written left to right. Which ofcourse is fine but anyone who knows dyslexic people knows we can turn our letters around, and our writing direction too. Well, Hieroglyphs, are actually written in any direction. Right to left or left to right and the direction the ‘letters’ point, is semi dependent on which direction one is writing. However, there is no rule about it. Nor was it wrong according to the ancient egyptians to turn the lettering around. The also wrote in lines up and down and often enough started at the bottom. So this modern system with so many rules and regulations may be more the problem than any a dyslexic brain.

Now if you can excuse me. i am going to go put my epigraphic talents to quasi use and play with some of the old writing from Nubia. Someone has to decode it one of these days…. It is annoying to only know names of gods and royalty and about 25 other words that we can’t place in context as we haven’t been able to decode the rest….

Have hope! I suspect your son will be fine. It could also be some sort of reaction to a fractured family… Just a thought…. Often times weird stuff happens with kids when parents divorce…. Though i have no idea when you and your son’s mother split i can be waaaaaay off.

I have hope though, that one day your son will be the one to crack ancient nubian…. That is if i don’t manage to do it first….

Thank you for your wonderful reply. Sometimes I get sucked into thinking in a screwed up way. I love my grandson for who he is and I will NOT let anyone treat him in a disrespectful way. Thank you again, I hope everyone reads this forum

Your way of thinking is *not* screwed up at all. It is completely natural for where you sit and what information you are receiving and from who the info is coming from. But you need to remember something…. And let me explain.

In Archaeology, we learn about ancient cultures. We learn about a society that has been gone for so long it is barely a myth. Little evidence of it exists on the top layers of strats. We like the experts, go looking for proof, and to interpret that proof…. The thing though is, is as archaeologists relying solely on the remains of broken down beaten up what ever was left behind and trash middens etc… There is only so much we can actually find out… Because, we can’t know how they thought or viewed *anything* To understand, requires an epigrapher. Which is more what i do. i read the ancient texts written by the ancient people. And they *tell* you what is important what they kept track of what they didn’t what their social stucture was, how their society worked its laws and punishments, its beliefs and prayors etc…. And then, you can fit the pieces with the discovered remains, and you get a clearer picture. And soon you understand what the relevance of the sun disk was during th Amarna period for example why it would be painted on the vaes…. And you will understand even more of how they thought and lived.

The ancient egyptians had armies, they were very very dangerous to their neighbors the Kush through most of history. In that initially they were buddies…. good friends, trading back and forth. But then, the trade relationship grew insufficient and the Egyptians began raiding and taking over periodically and demanding tribute gifts rather than fair trade, sacking cities in ancient Nubia…. etc…. Soon they raped the wome and kidnapped the children. Killed the men in battle sold the wives and kids into clavery back in egypt…. Their raiding got steadily worse…
No doubt the Nubians at certain points were terrified, as would any nubian child listening to this last paragraph, as it is a description of horror that will quite likely effect his life in a very bad way. Understand, i am a student of Egyptology. My studies and goals are to understand and elevate the ancient egyptians… or rather to ‘hype’ them so to speak. I am not an expert on Nubia. Their ancient society is poorly understood due to lack of excavation and lack of ability to read their texts. Fortunately i like mysteries and am more familiar with them than most students of egyptology would be. Based on that last bit they look like helpless abused battered victims…. But, later in time, they had a whole empire of their own. They, at certain points, even took over Egpt, their kings and queens ruling over it as pharaoh. Now an archaeologist specialized in Nubian archaeology could tell you this… But most egyptologist could as well i guess but they would tell it to you from the perspective of Egypt and not that of nubia.

The point is, when one is told something by someone specialized in something, they have a certain understanding of that thing. And they view it from a very particular direction generally and have a certain kind of experience with it… Also, as most experts make money from both the drug companies and parents of children, it is in their best interests to make something sound as terrifying to the responsible parents as possible. The more scared the parent, the more they view their kid as broken, the more desperate they are to fix it. And this is *not* the wrong way to react when one is told their child is broken goods and is ‘useless’ on the market. They then tell you the story often with drama to keep the attention of the parent, about how that brokenness, will ultimately cause their kid to contract ebola or something… And ofcourse, parents hearing that froma respectable person with respectable status in our society say, medicate my child! Fix him fix him! Do whatever you have to! Not the wrong response… Just lacking half of the picture. That which can be presented by the *child* itself…. These experts are like archaeologists. They took aerial photos, and have found ‘mounds’ they think there is something there and they want to dig, though it is a very destructive process and harms the environment. They want to go through the brain in a methodical academic fashion like an archaeologist does to the strata when they dig. maybe they have found somme old bones in a cave that seem to have been chewed on…. Because of such a find they declared the dead people cannibals, though the bones have not been evaluated to see if they are even human or not and the teeth marks have also not been looked into….. On closer inspection they likely find, the bones were chewed by animals or are those of animals and not people either way no cannibalism in this particular context. But this could have been easier, had they had access to the words of the dead people in the cave, to tell them what they ate and didn’t eat, if they could see the world the way they did through their eyes, rather than having to run academic simulations of the environment in the time period…. There *is* value in what they find, and their interpretations, are not always way off base, but they lack a certain perspective. And they forget, that no person, LD or not, is an object to be dated by typology. (Process for pottery the more similar the shape, the closer in date they are, and the less decorated and more simple the older it is.) But that is why archaeologists have ‘exact’ dating methods. To place things in time. There is *still* a margin of error but it is pretty close. Experts in LD don’t have such exacting tools in *many* cases and with many forms of LD. In some cases, they dig to china and find nothing no relics in the ‘mounds’ they thought highly suggextive of a settlement or something in that location. I hope my analogy is not too scattered…. So they find nothing but still insist it is an indication of something, and so they write in their publishment of their excavation about the mound…. And how it clearly shows there is something there…. Just as some see the existance of the Bible as proof of God. Then they go on to describe how they dealt with the mound and they start to ‘see’ things int he rocks they dug up, suddnely the rocks were shaped by man! And they were tools even though no signs of humans may have been found on the sight. Still they claim humans could have passed through… They could go on and on and on theorizing on something that if true, will promote their carreer and enhance their standing. Then the stone tools may be viewed by someone else, who laughs and says this is all crap…. And even if it is not, humanbeings LD or non LD, are not disectable in the way the academic text book is. When these ‘experts’ tell you something, it *can* hold value… But you are better getting many opinions. And you are better to consider the position of the ‘source’ and what the agenda of the source is. You are better, as someone with far more experience with this ancient culture or child, to trust your *own* perspective. And better to try to view it from the child’s view… And to hear about the experience of being the child from the horse’s mouth. Archaeologists would sell their souls in many cases, to actually go back in time and ask an actual ancient person from the culture we are studying, our questions directly. You can ask yours… So why ask someone who has such a clearly defined academic interest and a total lack of full understanding when you could ask the horse how his hay tastes? *always* consider the source. especially when you are getting advice on how to fix something broken. because if i listen to my text book and go by that, i will likely make a mess rather than fixing something that could provide alot of information, but if i ask someone who has spent a lifetime fixing objects like this one (once i am convinced it is not a new shape and is actually a broken thing) to help me fix it…. To be there to assist me and to point out when i am putting the item together poorly etc…. again i hope the analogy didn’t get too crazy to understand…. and as i said, if you view it from the perspective of the source rather than that of whatever is being studied, you are getting a removed perspective that is rather limited…. I know they talk a good game. However, like the archaeologist, with only ancients empty structures…. all they can say is that they are made out of mudbrick. They can’t tell you how they were used or for what and which were the most relevant nor can they tell you how many lived in the area etc…. They are missing too many pieces…so don’t feel your thinking is wrong…. Think instead, that these ppl have something to say, but they have their own reasons for saying it as much as they do fo0r saying what it is they are saying. Reminf yourself they have only seen your children or the children you are concerned about for a very short time and in a very particular setting. their interpretation, may be mildly to majorely off the mark. So don’t take the version they are selling you as hard cold fact. Instead say thank you, and get alternative theories… Experts are almost as pedantic as archaeologists…. They love to argue amongst themselves too just as we do. And you don’t need a degree to understand how someone else thinks. Just to get payed for knowing it. So see what other credible theories are made from the same ‘evidence.’ then you be the epigrapher. Interpret the words, and the reasoning. as well as viewing from another perspective that of someone who goes to the mound because they like the view the area offers rather than for reasons of excavation. See what you notice… or friends and family. Sounds like the kids in your life are different. But i don’t think they are likely to contract and then spread ebola any time soon. and yes i am over dramatiazing the fear they commonly inspire in parents by bringing up ebola it is partly me being cynical. All the ssame they talk about the difficulties of life bla bla bla let you kid tell you if things get too hard. Because the kid has their own creative ways around these things often, and sometimes not and has to develop something… Yes that can be challenging, but too hard and challenging are not the same. Just keep in mind the perspective of the source and its very closed and angled view. And remember all these guys are doing is interpreting behavior. And behavior, is not always read the way it is meant. Or is not always properly or totally understood. Especially when it comes to a child’s maturity level and ability to verbalize and explain themselves verses that of an adult who hasn’t been a kid in 20 years declaring what is age apropriate and what isn’t. Especially in a society like ours where kids are getting so many mixed messages.

If one’s behavior indicates one is disabled, the average age in America for sexual activity is i do believe the early half of age 15. Therefore, should we be worried about every child over 15 and a half that doesn’t have sex? Should we view them as behaviorally retarded and socially defunct? Does this tell us they have ADHD, if they also don’t like school? It’s not listed as an indicating factor yet it is all about interpretation of age apropriate behaviors and doing what the peers are doing…. If anything is broken it is the logic of these experts.

Why would your grandson make you miserable during the summer? Does he have behavioral problems with his learning problem?

Does he qualify for summer school or maybe private tutoring would help?

As the first 2 posters indicated, learning needs to be made fun with games. Try to understand your grandson better than his parents do. Use a reward system for at least making the effort to do some work over the summer.

It’s hard to work with a special needs child. I have one and sometimes I am so tired of clapping and singing praises for everything he does or attempts to do. It’s getting old. I just wish he would just do it.

You are taking on a huge task. God Bless your attempts and efforts with your grandson.