I hate school/(yearly vent)

I do sympathize with you. He is lucky you are the conscientious mom you are. Tell me, please, where you got the math program you mentioned. I, too, cannot teach most of my LD students their math facts (permanantly).

As one of those hated teachers I can share my frustrations with you. Parents were promised individualized programs, great idea. But, the schools have never been given large enough special ed. budgets to actually DO this. I am a very frustrated special ed. resource teacher who daily lives the frustration of wishing there were more hours in the school day, fewer needy children for me to teach (or another teacher). Aside from a few turkeys here and there, most of us want badly to help, we want to teach more to more children, but the tax payers only allow us what they allow us and we do the best we can.

I can well imagine that many an LD youngster has these feelings about school because so much of the work is so hard for them.

I’ve hated school too. It has cost both my son and I too much in terms of our feelings and our time. The price was too high and it’s scarred us both..

If I had it to do over again, I’d homeschool my son so I understand what you’re saying. In my community, there are small informal “schools” of homeschoolers and I’m wondering if you could find any of those in your community. Do a websearch under homeschoolers in your state and see what comes up. Contact a few churches as some churches have homeschooling organizations within them.

Even if he stays in public school, could you get him an IEP or modify the one he has to allow him less homework? Homework was near the death of my son and me over the years. We could have dealt much better with school if we didn’t have hours of homework at night.

As to soccer and karate, I understand. We had to stop any after school activities - even free ones - to get home and get the homework done.

But what about Saturdays? My local Y offers once a week karate classes and and very inexpensively. If it’s possible, I found for my LD son having an interest on the outside of school helped him to deal better with school.

Good luck to you and your son.

Dear Anitya,

I know the teachers are doing the best they can. I’m sure you are too. It’s just the whole messed up political system that I am blowing off steam about….

I work as an aide in a school also, and I see the teachers trying. But they don’t have the time or the money or the training to help so many kids. It frustrates me so much.

Anyway, the math program I got for my son is called ‘Times Tables the Fun Way” by City Creek Press. http://www.citycreek.com/

This program really worked well for my child. I hope this helps, and keep fighting the good fight!

From reading this postings you have the feeling the school is trying. Why not talk to the teacher. Explain exactly what you just told all of us:-)

I too,would probably homeschool,if I had it to do again. My school wasn’t trying. If your is,talk to them. Re-evaluate the IEP. If homework is worthless,request that they give you the time to do the programs you have obtained on your own anyway. No homework,for actually teaching the skills yourself. I would say that is a fair trade off. At the very least,even if you really are homeschooling your kid already,your saving on daycare expenses. It all depends on the fight, you would have. No fight? Then I’d say talk to them,it’s defintely cost effective.

We’ve been there too, but it is too early in the school year to be miserable. Take stock, ask for what you need and give yourselves permission to have a life. Does your district have anyone trained in LMB who could work with him during his day? Set up your own contract to motivate him to do what you know he can during the day. Do a reasonable amount of homework at night and then sign off -Done, per Mom. Let him dictate to you, enjoy an audio version of a story, etc. Wish you the best.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. We all need to vent sometimes. I personally feel that I know many things about what the LD students need, however I cannot, under the system, actually DO 1/3 of what I know. It is frustrating. Plus, some of the conflicting “movements” out there seem to further confuse issues. Like, in class model, full inclusion………….these serve to possibly reduce the time and quality of SPECIAL instruction that can actually be given to help students.

Every one needs to vent, please come here when ever you need to.

When we do our IEPs we always stress to the team that keeping our
dyslexic son positive about school and himself and being a *normal* kid
is the most important goal - nothing else matters if we fail him in this
regard.

So we - scribe things, do them on the computer, sign off tedious homework,
modify all the time at home, refuse to do things that mangle his mind (word
searches where the words run backwards - for a dyslexic, are you kidding?!),
keep in constant contact with his teachers (email is wonderful), request spelling
words ahead and teach him reading skills at home (this old Dick and Jane, see and
say reader, is now an expert at phonics!).

Call your IEP now and relate everything you told us and then tell the IEP team
how you’d like things to be for you and your son.

good luck and hang in there!
Anne

I hope you were really having a bad day when you wrote that and things are better now.

But I too, have the same feelings you do. I loved school as a child and did very well. As a parent of a 3rd grade, moderately dyslexic ADHD daughter, I share your feelings all to well.

I am broke for the money I’ve spent on tutors, but my daughter has made great progress in reading. We’re waiting for her writing to improve/take off as well. We continually fight with the school to maintain resource room for her every other day - which I question - because what she has most benefited from so far is the private expensive tutoring we got for her. The school constantly questions her eligibility for help….given the time we spend with her on homework and her tutor she “doesn’t look all that different from the other kids.” Her summer was spent with daily reading, subtraction flashcards and summer bridge workbook, because I felt this child couldn’t afford a backslide. This makes me crazy that in the way the laws are written, these children have to be 1-2 grades behind to get proactive specialized help for them, and even then “it’s a Chevy, not a Cadillac”. I believe that had we not persued all this special help for her on our own, she would be 2 grade levels behind instead of running in place, so to speak, to struggle at maintaining grade level.

My child is artistically creative and also wants to try acting/singing. I feel it’s very important for her to develop a talent to maintain good self esteem. I’ve also read that it’s best for kids to discover these talents by age 10. But we don’t pursue any of this right now…why? because we spend all our time on homework. Even Saturdays…we go to religion then because we couldn’t handle this during the school week, do our religion homework (give me a break!) and then catch up on homework/schoolwork she couldn’t finish during the week. I’m getting resentful because she is missing opportunities.

Accomodations? So far, the school has been reluctant to offer these (“but she’s doing fairly well….”).

Sorry, for my rant……….

Two questions/suggestions for you:

I’ve heard that Lindamood Bell is for the dyslexics that also have CAPD (auditory processing issues). Does your child have CAPD too? If not, another Orton Gillingham method, may work as well too. You can get this from a university reading program (waiting lists, but fees are sliding scales), a private OG tutor (get a local contact in your area through their web site - interdyslexiaorg - something like that) or buying the Reading Reflex book at amazon.

Also, I’ve heard “Type to Learn” is excellent typing program. I think Scholastic puts it out.

Good luck and have a better day!

This math system worked wonders for my NLD stepdaughter who couldnot learn her math facts. It turns the fact into a verbal picture for her (just leaving it visual would not work for her) and she can remember that verbal picture.

It is a whole system, or can be broken into pieces and purchased separately.

May I join you in your vent!! I have a friend and she and I both taught our children how to read. She and I have both decided that maybe we shouldn’t have taught our daughters to read. Then maybe they would have been qualified for services sooner. We’ve both had to fight to get our daughters qualified. I had to get my daughter qualified under ED, even though private testing showed that she has a disability in written language and spelling and has the reading patterns of a “remediated dyslexic.” I’ve also hired tutors and I became certified to teach Phono-Graphix so I could teach my younger daughter how to read before the school got a hold of her (sorry - I didn’t want to chance that whole language would work for her).

I have not been very involved at all in my older daughter’s homework as of yet. She hasn’t had that much!!! She’s had spelling, reading and math. She now has a long term science assignment and a long term assignment where she has to research her family history, though. Now the fun begins. But she has yet to have a social studies or science test — that I know of.

I’ve been spending a little more time trying to help my younger daughter. I’m hoping she doesn’t have the same difficulties as my older daughter. Although she is struggling with some things, I haven’t seem the level of difficulty that my older daughter has.

The other problem is that the school accomodates rather than remediates. For the first time in years, I did not have my older daughter tutored. It was a nice break for her, but I always feel it’s “catch up” time for what the school didn’t do.

I am dreading it when my older daughter starts having tests in social studies and science. I’ve repeatedly told the school she has no idea how to study. I end up working with her and it is not fun. It takes forever for all the information to sink in. But then, it’s like trivial pursuit with the “high stakes” testing we have here in Virginia.

Okay — my vent is long enough! Thanks for listening!

Margo

I to have been there - I am now wrestling with high school issues. What worked for us from elementary to middle school is to meet with the staff and modify the program. You are doing most of the work. It is understandable that you can make the most progress, but is unreasonable for your child to have two school days in one - with you and the public system. Play, sports, music and the like are important. The most progress my son had in math is when we declared summer to be school free and I had him swimming every day and taking piano lessons. I swear something happened in his brain. When he returned to school in the fall he did so much better in math. The school staff wanted to know what I had been doing to tutor him. I would make an agreement for none to minimal assigned homework.
Some suggestions to consider:
If schools and parents could work a partnership there would be a lot more progress and a lot less bitterness. See if the school will count the work he does with you for credit. Be flexible, some classes like foreign language can be taken for no grade. Make a fit between the child and the environment. For example, some children are hypersensitive to noise and not all children can stand still for music programs. An alternative such as office helper or library assistant can be replaced for the school period. Find ways to present the class material such as videos, movies, and books. Have him read class material like history and science outloud to you. If nothing else it is great reading practice and also a learning aid. Tape class notes so your child can listen to them in the car or at other assigned times. If manual dexterity is a problem, have him excused from coloring, cut and paste projects. The learning value is minimal and for some children it is torture. I replaced some of the coloring in the line projects with collages which were much easier. Class papers can be taped instead of handwritten or replaced with visual presentations. Make some times in the week “no school times” such as Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. I had good success with getting other kids together for peer tutoring. I sponsored a study group of kids who were school strugglers. My son learned his math facts a lot faster with a cute red head tutoring him than with months of me trying. Sorry, I was so long winded, but there really is hope.

TO: “d”
You have been through the same process I have, and because of that, I want to warn you about Middle School. I have a 6th grader with ADD and I think she too, has slight dyslexia. She always walks in a room and has no idea why she’s there. She almost always switches D’s for B’s. Through painful re-examination in the last month, I now think her unwillingness to do Summer Bridge Books at all, is because she probably has ODD, Oppositional Defiance Disorder. There are discarded flash cards,100s of dollars worth of computer learning programs and extra study grade books packed away now in boxes. Somehow, through the grace of god and divorced parental suppport, she has been a B-,B,B+,A- student. Her elementary school teachers flexed perfectly with her, despite her great difficulty and hate for school. She has allergies, she was the picked on “nose picker” of the school, she is big for her age, and it’s a miracle she has a smile on her face at all.
However, we changed to Middle School this year and we changed School Districts, to a smaller, supposedly better SD. ((I now think they are better because they push extremely difficult math and science for better overall School Test scores which looks good on paper and to taxpayers)) My child fell into a black hole. She and her teacher are a bad personality match, despite the teacher’s saying she is proactive with Special Education.
Because her teachers flexed with her in the past, no where in her records does it say ADD. Luckily we have had her independently tested all through the process. We finally met with the IST teacher 5 weeks after we requested evaluation. She absolutely must get Special Ed. protection now, because they say 6th grade is nothing compared to the difficulty of 7th grade. They told me she must fail before she can be deemed to need help! I told them, she won’t be failing anything, because I will put her in Cyber Charter School before that happens. She has personally failed and struggled so much, I will not let her fail anymore. However, I work, how in the world will I homeschool her? I have now become a less cooperative parent, and a very vocal, angry parent. That makes them think I am the problem, and not their process! However, I have learned, a loud parent gets action. I also extremely tired of 5 years worth of too much homework for a normal kid, let alone mine.
Be very glad you have pursued help during this elementary stage. I resisted having her “labeled” in the first few grades. Later in 3rd and 4th grade, I would say “Enough struggle! She needs to be Special Ed.”, and the teachers would flex another way and we’d get through it without the IST. Now, I see the transition to Middle school would have been much less painful had I pushed for an IEP long ago.