Motivation

Dee, I’m certainly no expert but when I took my child out of ps 2 yrs ago,we had to unschool for months. We did fun things like going on field trips and then would discuss what we saw etc. He is probably just too anxious right now to learn or feel motivated. Try giving him some time to wind down and not have any pressure. When he is more relaxed notice what he likes to do and plan your lessons around things that he seems to enjoy. Who says he has to write!!?? Let him do a lot of his work verbally. If he is a perfectionist,he hates making errors in spelling etc so let him dictate stories sentences etc to you or into a tape recorder. Just try not to pressure him to perform.You might want to check out thegifteddevelopment.com site. This site has a lot of great ideas about how to teach to your childs strengths not their weaknesses. I also purchased several of the pamphlets Linda Silverstein has written about teaching math and spelling. Hope this helps. Jan

I think Dee’s advice is good.

First, de-stressss and break out of the failure cycle. At age ten, he’s had four or five years learning to be a failure; don’t expect him to change overnight or even in a few weeks. You’re in this parenting business for the long haul, and look at a year, two years, ten years ahead.
He may take a month or two to just stop many of the bad habits; others will take a long-term fight to get rid of. OK, it’s June now, call it summer vacation. You can stop formal schooling except in very small doses until September. By then he should be ready to do something different. In the interim, go for all those educational trips you always want to do but never seem to have time for — museums, zoos, nature parks, historical sites, and so on. Try to find hands-on things for him to do, like living history parks where you talk to people who stay in character as revolutionatry soldiers, etc. Alsop sign him up for kids’ sports (LIttle League? Soccer? Swimming? whatever he likes and you have available) Find out what catches his fancy and try to get him involved.

Here’s an important and useful idea: make a journal and scrapbook of all the educational things you do with him — every zoo visit, every internet search, every book read to him, every nature show on TV that you watch together and discuss, every kite made, every sports practice and game, every Sunday school lesson and text memorized, etc. This can add to your homeschooling portfolio and act as proof that you are indeed educating him.

When you get ready to start back to formal schooling — and he may *ask* you to help him, once the pressure is off — forget trying to force him up to grade level right away. I always recommend the old saying “make haste slowly”. This means that if you do something right and finish it properly, you don’t have to correct errors and re-start and do it over again several times; in the long run, doing things at a reasonable pace gets them finished faster than rushing and re-re-doing.
I almost always re-start reading students at Book 1, and tell them we will review quickly. This review helps them get into the swing of things, feel success, and pick up any basics they missed. With math students I start a grade or two at least behind where they are “supposed” to be; the level of mastery is not what it should be in general.

Do try to get away from the perfectionist habit — it is a recipe for failure, as you have discovered. Since nobody is perfect, the ultra-perfectionist gives up before he starts. Encourage a more relaxed attitude and learning from mistakes. I try to break students of the habit of math-must-be-done-in-pencil-and-erased, since that leads to hours of work producing filthy papers with nothing on them; I try to get them to write in pen and cross out errors. It is amazing how much psychological energy is devoted to the pencil-and-erase school of thought; some college students go hysterical if they can’t erase their work, which tells me something about why they have no mental space left for understanding or solving math. A little messiness can be a good thing, if it gives you a little space to work on things and experiment.

Look at the Teaching Reading and Teaching math boards for suggestions on methods that are successful for teaching, then start at the beginning and work with your child, and you will be able to do well.

Dee,

I can imagine that you feel a lot of pressure to make measurable progress, but I agree with Jan and Victoria that the first thing to do is just to back off on the required work. Here are a few things to do until he’s ready to start with some more academic work.

1) Set aside a regular time for reading aloud to him, and read whatever books he enjoys, whether it’s “educational” or not. Lots of kids like the series books, like Star Wars Jedi Apprentice, or mysteries like the Encyclopedia Brown stories. Don’t expect him to read, just listen and enjoy.

2) Field trips, movies, etc.

3) Play board games or card games. My kids like UNO, Yahtzee and Sorry. Great way for you to enjoy time together. Set aside a regular time for family game night if you like.

4) If he enjoys a sport, art, music, be sure to encourage him. The self-confidence from succeeding in one thing will spill over to other areas.

When you do go back to school work next fall, take it slow and easy, and spend at least half the time on literature, history and science activities that do not require written assignments. He needs time to collect ideas and information before he is going to be able to put them on paper, but in time he can catch up.

Jean

Figure out what’s happening here. Talk to him (or get somebody else to talk to him if that would be easier for him). It sure doesn’t sound like he’s having any fun or any success at all.
I put some ideas down about making the transition from school to homeschool for kids with LDs — it’s at http://www.resourceroom.net/homeschooling/index.asp. There might be some ideas that ring true (or not :-)) there.

Another suggestion is to connect the learning to real life situations. For example I explain to my kids if they want to be able to eat they need to be able to cook. In order to be able to cook you need to be able to read and do simple math. The boys take turns cooking with me and they love it. I have them read the recipe with me the 1st time we do it, the next time they read it to me. We might play a game like if you wanted to double the recipe what would you do, or what if you wanted only half. They get a real charge out of it. When we drive places we play a game of who can read the sign first. We play map games like if we have to travel 600 miles and we already travel X miles how many are left, or if you go 55 miles and hour and you have to go X miles how long will it take you to get there? They also go to the bank with us, go over bills, go grocery shopping ect, all are used for opportunities for reading and math skills with the added bonus of being life skills. My boys seem to do better when things are connected to something they can see or experience maybe this is what your son needs.

about de-schooling and reducing anxiety. Stress interferes with learning.

My 11yo dd still does much better when I sit with her while she works and keep her company. Some children need the support and encouragement of a warm body much longer than others.

The difficulty with writing can be dysgraphia, and dysgraphia can be very resistant to any kind of therapy. There’s nothing wrong with a child doing as much work as possible orally. This is a much more efficient way for a dysgraphic child to learn.

If you have not taken him in for a complete speech and language evaluation, I would do that. This is usually covered by medical insurance. The best way to go about it is to first find a good speech and language pathologist, and then call the clinic to ask about insurance. They deal with insurance every day and can tell you exactly what you need to do to ensure coverage.

It sounds as if your son has severe phonological awareness delays. This can usually be remediate with a program such as Reading Reflex or Lindamood Bell LiPS programs.

Many children with a reading problem this severe also have undiagnosed visual or auditory processing disorders (or both). I would want to either rule these out or identify them so appropriate therapies can be started. (Neither problem is tested in regular vision and hearing exams.)

Check out http://www.childrensvision.com to see if he fits the profile for functional vision problems. You can find developmental optometrists in your area at http://www.covd.org.

http://pages.cthome.net/cbristol/ has good information about auditory processing problems, including a search engine to locate CAPD audiologists in your area.

Children with special needs often find themselves in hostile learning environments. When they experience frequent failure, they learn to stop trying.

My own dd had severe phonological awareness delays (kindergarten level at age 9) and severe developmental vision delays (1st percentile on some of the tests). With appropriate interventions, she went from a preschool reading level at age 8 to fluent 5th grade reading 18 months later. (We did vision therapy, cognitive training, and Phono-Graphix.)

You may want to join the DyslexiaSupport list at http://www.groups.yahoo.com. I haven’t been there in quite awhile, but the archived messages are a good source of information on the topics I have raised. Try doing some searches on “vision therapy”, “CAPD”, “cognitive training”, “FastForWord”, “FFW”, “Phono-Graphix”, etc.

Mary

Hi Dee, I agree with everyone else, but I think I recognize the first stumbling block to parents homeschooling. Take a deep breath and say, “I don’t have to do it their way.” Then everytime you get scared you’re wrecking your son’slife repeat three times. I was lucky I worked with an experienced homeschool Mom who’s two kids are bright, successful, wonderful and as it turns out the eldest was ADD and she just never noticed since she let him learn his way. As a brilliant young conductor he wanted to improve his memory for piano pieces and was finally diagnosed. Your job is not to teach him but to find out how he learns. And LEARNING DOES NOT HAVE TO INVOLVE A PAPER AND PENCIL!!!!! In fact the highest degrees involve an ORAL dissertation.
Get Read, Write, and Type CD from Amazon.com. Should be about $12.00. Why not get Math Blaster. Reader Rabbit Math, Also the Zoombini Logic game is good for critical thinking. All at Amazon.com Let him “play” these thru summer.
You might explain to him how his brain works, why he has trouble.I used a computer download analogy with my son. He was born wo the one for reading.That doesn’t make the other kids smarter,just lucky. Skip the things he can’t do -find the things he can. Don’t worry about grade level or age for now. If you find the way he learns he’ll catch up quickly. Then if you can find a Lindamood-Bell LIPS tutour. I’d normally say try PG first, but where he’s had so many failures it might be worth it to go straight to LIPS rather than risk another. Goodluck

Sounds like he would benefit greatly from one-on-one speech therapy designed to address his CAPD, etc.