for those who do not believe in labels

>>That’s it, just dyslexia?<<

I wonder if his new self awareness will help him this fall?
It will be interesting to see.

I know that feeling, wondering what the new year will
bring.Hoping for the best but not being able to stop
yourself from dreading the worst.

We start school August 27….

Anne

Wow, you start school in August?!?!

My son, luckily doesn’t start until September 9th. I am happy that we get a little extra time before he goes back!!

K.

Tslking honestly with our children helps them so much. My son is now 15 and with his quick wit and memory for information he has developed a standup comedy routine. He has been taking a class with his father and this week they will perform in public. Part of Toby’s routine involves dyslexia and his special school. In geography class he was reading about a South American country where terrorists were trying to take over. He read terrorists as tourists. “Boy those are pretty violent tourists. Honey take my picture aiming this machine gun…” Point being, with honesty and a supportive home he can not only weather the ignorance of so mnay, but he can find success and even humor in his learning disability.

I believe knowing the label dyslexia has also helped our son (now age 12). He’ll occasionally hear about celebrities with dyslexia and more recently was on a field trip to business where they specialized his dream career (science) and he said one of the most interesting speakers that was a scientist who said he was dyslexic. He just didn’t let it hold him back from going after what he wanted, and he had 3 PhD’s.

What a funny story; I love the resilience your son demonstrates. What an essential skill that is. Some kids have it and some take any negative comment to heart and makes it become their reality. I’d like to believe that it is a skill that can be acquired…

I like this saying:

Self effacing humor is an affirmation of dignity.

I never looked forward to September, I hated it. I hate to admit this, but when my daughter, Jacquin, ‘resigned’ from high school when she was a junior, it was a great relief. If your son is a true dyslexic, an auditory learner, one consolation, college is easier, if that is his goal! In ele, middle, and high school, material is based on the written word, in college it is the spoken word, lectures. Actually, my daughter, (who was 24 yesterday, I called and reminded her about the pain I went through to have her!) told me that college was much easier than high school. Noone cares about her rough draft, with it’s spelling and grammar errors, how she does her math problems, all they care about is the final product! She told me that if she would have known that college was this easy, she would have quit school before the 11th grade! Just thought I would give a pep talk to you parents. I thank my lucky stars that she never gave up. She is so happy that she can go to college and make it. She recently told me that she didn’t care how long it took her to graduate, she knew that she would have a future. She wants to be a radiation therapist. She is going to pick and choose her courses and when to take them. She doesn’t want to get a ‘C’! She works at an ‘Outback Steak House’ and she asked her boss if she could take second semester off this year, and her said that that was fine. She told me that she is going to take first semester off and work a lot of hours and not go to school. She is then going to take four courses second semester and not work. Her rationale is great! She has to take a few science courses that demand knowing how to spell scientific words and this is going to take her a lot of time since she still can’t spell. This is the only deficiency that she has and will always have. I hope that you don’t mind me bragging about my child, my biggest hero, but I hope that her story helps some of you. Her life in school was a complete nightmare. I have a long post about Jackie on the ‘Parenting LD bulletin board’ if you want to get to know her better.

She is always on my shoulder when I teach and remediate the ‘deficiencies’, (dysteachia) of my students in high school. The very first thing that I tell them is that there isn’t anything wrong with them, we just didn’t teach them how we should have. I take all of the responsibility of their lack of being taught so it takes all of the guilt from them. I think that I spend as much time teaching as I do giving them pep talks. You can’t have high expectations for your students if their self-esteem is in the ‘basement’. I use and abuse my daughter when I give my first pep talk, the first day of school. I do this because my students receive their first syllabus and realize that they are going to write a two page research paper by the end of first semester! For the first month, I teach Phono-Graphix so that they all can read and then I use Step Up to Writing to teach them how to write. Last year, my students, including a few mildly mentally challenged, gave me a 3-5 research paper! They were so proud! Okay, I will stop bragging. I hope that this has helped some of you. It is so hard raising a child with any kind of deficiency.

I am glad that this helped your child understand things better. Thing is, my son was labeled dyslexic but now he reads very well. So that label doesn’t work anymore.
He still has visual perception and motor difficulties. These labels help me because they point to a specific remediation/treatment option. Labels that don’t do that are not useful to me. If my son asks why he has to do this extra work I just say you learn better with your ears and I am just trying to help you learn equally well with your eyes.

I used the above labels with his swim teacher recently (she is a high school teacher) It was a disaster. I gave her way too much credit thinking that she would understand that though he learned diffierently he could still learn.

She just used it as an excuse to not teach him. He has a problem, why bother working with him when there are others on the team that will get her the championship she wants.
I will never do it again. I will never give a teacher the out of saying this child has a problem. The child doesn’t have the problem. The teacher just has to teach them right.
So now I use phrases like he learns best if you speak the instructions rather than visually demonstrates them. I point out what works, not the deficits.

Thanks, Shay, for sharing about you and Jackie. Wonder where she got that confidence, self understanding and resilence….? :-).

We start here on 14 Aug. Both boys are in summer school which ends 26 Jul not much of a vacation for them. I must admit though that both benefited from the experience so don’t have any real complaints. As a matter of fact my oldest son asked me permission to take an “early bird Class” in reading if it was offered. What this is is a class offered before the official start of the school day. They will publish a list of classes available but the student must get guidance and parent permission before signing up. This is a student who use to avoid classes and school related work like the Plague. Neither boy minded giving up their break and are looking forward to sucess this coming fall. Good luck to us all as the next “round” begins.