Since our lives are not all about dyslexia.... what's your decorating style?

We have lived MANY years in "We have kids chic" design and I've had about enough. Now that the boys are old enough to really clean up after themselves, I have decided to pick a damn style and go with it. Relax, Pat, this does NOT mean that I will be spending willy-nilly to re-decorate the house. BUT, I will be re-arranging things so that what we have seems to make sense. I like order but we have been too busy running around trying to keep up that we simply CAN'T keep up!

So, a logical start was to try to decide what my style is.... and then, what Pat's style is.... and then how we can compromise so that we both feel comfortable with our furnishings. So, I started with this quiz from hgtv. Of course, as soon as I started, I knew why I have so much trouble with decorating. There isn't ONE answer to any of the questions they ask.... but, it sounds like my style is "transitional" OR "cottage shabby chic." I put together some pinterest boards to show to P and see if he could decide what his style was and I was surprised at the results.

However, we both agree that there are so many elements that we like, from each, that we should be able to slap something together that works for us!

Some information on dyslexia.

People often ask me about the symptoms of dyslexia. Until we started this process, we didn't know a whole lot about it ourselves. In fact, even NOW, we only have a very basic understanding of the one kind of dyslexia that seems to run in the family. In my searching, I found many resources, so I thought I would try to put a compilation together here. If you think that your child might have dyslexia, these resources are a place to start.

A. The International Dyslexia Association

1. offers an "adult self-assessment tool" to help you determine if you might be dyslexic
2. provides dyslexia fact sheets that can answer many of the questions that you might have.  

B. Of course, The Gow School offers a nice list of FAQs about Dyslexia, as well as many other helpful resource links. I found the following Q/Q on the FAQs to be interesting and wanted to add an editorial comment:

Q: How long does it take before results can be seen?
A: This varies from student to student and depends both on the method of remediation chosen, the intensity of the program,  and the motivation of the student. With most students, significant progress can be observed after one or two years. With some it may take longer.

Editorial Comment: "Results" come in many forms. This question, most likely, refers to a student overcoming the academic issues presented by dyslexia. However, there is a bigger picture of "results" not addressed in the official Answer. A student who has struggled with dyslexia, in a traditional education environment, has probably found feelings of, at best, frustration and, at worst, total failure. The RIGHT program for a student with dyslexia should eliminate that feeling of failure, helping them understand the learning disability itself and then proceed to, systematically, help the student compensate for and/or overcome the obstacles that the disability places in their educational path. For Zack, The Gow School provided him with an environment in which EVERYONE was battling dyslexia of some kind, so the stigma of taking longer to read something, or total confusion at what was on the page, was gone. All of his classmates have been, or are, where he has. We saw "results" within a week of starting school, simply because Zack was able to focus on content, rather than struggling to decode every little detail on the page.

C.  Orton-Gillingham: the pioneering technique that has helped MANY dyslexics, the world over!

D. The Scottish-Rite offers support for dyslexics at their Children's Dyslexia Centers. They also offer Orton-Gillingham training  for educators and parents.

E. PBS has a great website full of resources!

OK, I will leave it at that for now. At a later date, I will add to the list- stay tuned!

"Surviving" the Holidays! (alternate title-that glass of egg nog is half full!)

Yes, I know what you're thinking,  "Well, that's a fine attitude to have during the season of miracles!" And, yes, I know that the holidays are supposed to be a wonderful, magical time. In fact, they ARE wonderful and magical, especially once they are behind us. However, when in the midst of the magic, sometimes it can be hard to see how wonderful it all really is (probably because it's buried in a mountain of wrapping paper and blurred by that jug of wine.) So, I am taking this moment to do what my, fantastic, therapist calls "re-framing" and looking at things from a slightly different point of view.

- A whiney (vocal), alternately pouting (expressive) and shouting (tenacious) 11 year old is re-framed will, one day, be a politician, championing the rights of the downtrodden.

- A 13 year old that sleeps 12 hours (building brain cells) and, when not slapping his 11 year old brother (building eye-hand coordination), eats his weight in food on the hour (keeping Wegman's in business) will, one day, be the brains behind the "smart bomb" that makes everyone in the world want to live in harmony without destroying a single life.

OK, so it's possible that I'm stretching a bit with those two, but you get the general idea. Sometimes being a glass-half-full type of person is a challenge. I once had a teacher tell me, "Becky, you could find something nice to say about Charles Manson." During a dark time of my life, this would not have been true, but these days, it probably is.


And, I'm ok with that..... because looking at life with a positive attitude makes it a lot easier to navigate those tricky days when life challenges me.

Finally Friday and here comes Christmas Vacation!

Today is the last day of school at Gow, until the new year. The boy is half way through his school year (in terms of grading, anyway.)That means that our fabulous 13 year old will now have two weeks of, hard earned, freedom. If we would let him, he would probably leave a permanent butt print on our couch by playing "minecraft", stopping only for basic necessities.

Truth be told, he has probably earned a couple of days of rest... but his parents are mean, unreasonable, lazy people who see him as our personal slave (snicker.) And, so, there will be daily lists of chores for him to do, and then, nightly, harping to have him do the chores the right way. Ahhhh, 'tis the season, right?

 For those of you that are unfamiliar with Gow, the boys dress in a sport coat and tie, dress slacks, nice shoes, etc. daily. (as seen in the group pic from the first day of school, below)

Their work day is about 12 hours long with athletics between their regular classes and their mandatory study hall. The kids start with breakfast at 7:30 and end at 8:30 after the evening study hall- so calling him our slave might be an understatement.

Seriously, though, this schedule reflects the truth about learning when you have dyslexia; you have to work twice as hard as everyone else if you want to be successful in the "real" world. As wonderful as adaptive technology is, there are still some truths that cannot be avoided. Writing takes an interminably long time. I'm not talking about forming the thoughts- Zack can tell a story and re-tell story events like nobody's business, although he may not remember the exact order that they happened . Sometimes, he's a little hard to follow, but that's just because his brain is moving much faster than mine. It's just that the physical act of writing is an immense chore. Zack uses a computer program to help him with this process, using predictive spelling, but it is still an agonizing process, frought with (lack of) capitalization and punctuation and, plenty of,  frustration.

Back to the original thought (way, way, waaaaaay up there at the top); Zack gets two weeks of vacation, so,  for the next week he will work very hard at slacking. Never ONCE will he utter the word "bored" because he won't want to risk a longer list of chores. He IS for hire, and he comes dirt cheap, so send a text/email/smoke signal if you'd like to put him to work!

Labels....

Labels are so easy to apply.... accept.... share....even, embrace.  Some labels are subjective (That is brilliant! That house is gorgeous! He is stubborn.) Some are even helpful: Caution! Explosive! Danger! As a wife mother human being, I have been guilty of labeling. We all have, I suppose. Our brains like to have things categorized and labels certainly help the world make sense to us. The trouble begins when the applied label doesn't quit fit the labelee (is that a word?) Please bear with me while I share the story of how we found the "right" label for Zack.

Zack is our first born (gee, maybe we should play "count the labels in this post.") He was the first grand child for my Mom and his first five years (or so) were everything that we could have asked for. He had a natural schedule that allowed us to sleep, initiated potty training at 16 months, and entertained all that he met with those blue eyes and that big smile.

 He has always been a fiercely independent, self-sufficient child. Even at the age of 2, when he had the flu and I wanted to sleep in his bed, instead of coming and going all night, Zack would say "You go your bed now, Momma." He just didn't want me in his space. During his play time, he relished in creating and building new things out of every day, household items and was always SO proud to show us what he'd done.  We visited the library every week and sang our ABC's, checking out age appropriate books, working to learn the basics of letter-sound correlation. As a teacher, I just knew that I would have Zack reading in no time. Learning the letters wasn't so difficult for him, but when it came to understanding/remembering the sounds that the letters made, it was a chore.

     Since Zack was our first child, I thought that this was just normal; that his Kindergarten teacher would use a magic formula to teach him what I could not. By end of first grade, we realized that Zack was not learning at the same rate as other children. His teachers chalked it up to "immaturity," so we waited. By the middle of second grade, we were spending hours on homework and Zack was in tears, out of frustration. I began to talk with his school about testing him for a learning disability and they suggested waiting a little longer to see if he might catch up. At the end of second grade, I requested the testing and was told that he really didn't seem to have a disability, and he wasn't tested. By mid- third grade,  I put my foot down and demanded testing. I insisted that Zack was far brighter than his reading and writing were showing.

     The initial testing showed an IQ of 126 and a reading level 2 grades below where he should have been. The school told us that Zack would now be classified as having a "learning disability" and placed in a "mainstreamed" classroom with some "regular" kids and some special education children. We quickly realized that this would not be sufficient for his needs. The classes moved more slowly, so he was bored. He was given reading support, but it dealt more with comprehension than decoding words. Zack continued to struggle to decode and we requested further testing. At that point, the district informed us that they don't do prescriptive diagnostics and that if we wanted that,  they would pay to have independent testing done.

So, we took Zack to a reading specialist and he was diagnosed as having phonological dyslexia.

     This diagnosis was a huge relief to us. Now that we knew WHAT it was (a-hem, we had a LABEL), we thought it would be easier to work around or through it. We worked with our Committee on Special Education (CSE) to formulate a plan, utilizing the Wilson SRA program and, immediately saw some improvement. We were thrilled to see Zack come home less frustrated every day, but homework continued to be a challenge.  When Zack went to Middle School, we saw a noticeable drop in his performance. He would do his homework but forget to turn it in or lose it between home and school, and he was as frustrated as ever with reading. He was placed in a computer program called Read-180 which claims to have had great success with students with learning disabilities.

     Unfortunately, the program did not work for Zack. He was able to listen to a story and answer comprehension questions (that were read aloud via computer) but could not actually read the text. His writing continued to be a struggle, impacting his written assignments, as well as note taking. His difficulties in reading impacted every area of his education. He was assigned to a "resource room" program, where he went for re-teaching and homework assistance, but continued to struggle. Conferencing with his teachers, administration, and the special education department did not help. The district offered him MORE resource room time and MORE Read-180, so we were looking at MORE of a program that didn't work. All the while, we were watching Zack become more and more defeated. He hated school. He hated his teachers. He hated us for our constant hounding about school. Around the middle of 7th grade, we realized that something had to give, but we had no idea what.

      We took Zack back to the reading specialist for further testing and got confirmation that he was falling further behind in his reading skills. When asking for suggestions, the Doctor suggested many things, including smaller class sizes, and use of a laptop with a text to voice program for Zack's textbooks. He also suggested a daily phonics program, such as Orton-Gillingham, and stated that Zack needed to "over learn" the rules of phonics until the rules became second nature, helping him to decode more fluently. When we took the recommendations to our CSE meeting, we were told that Read-180 is one of the best programs available and that it focuses on phonics enough to help Zack. When we grew more adamant about the need to implement an Orton-Gillingham based program, we were told that the district didn't have the funds and that we could not "compel" them to follow the doctor's recommendations. They wanted to continue with more of the same and we were not going to let another year of frustration trudge by.

      A friend had mentioned The Gow School, a private (read, expensive) boarding school specializing in Dyslexia. The school is only 30 minutes from our home and would not come cheap. The tuition was more I make teaching in a year. After much debate, we decided to have Zack interview at the school and file for financial aid. Zack was accepted and we were offered slightly less than half in financial aid. Even at that price, the tuition went far beyond anything we would be able to afford. After talking with current students and their parents, as well as many dyslexics who had not gone to Gow we felt that it would be worth the price to send him there. So, we reluctantly asked my parents if we could use the money that they'd set aside for Zack's college education. WITH the financial aid, it was just enough for a year at The Gow School. Our hope was that one year would give him enough basic skills to get him through public high school. We have maxed out every credit card and are in the hole every single month in order to keep him in school there.

     Four days into the school year, we knew that we had made the right decision. In addition to assistive technology on his own laptop (like electronic textbooks with text to voice, etc.) he was in small classes with teachers who were trained in Orton Gillingham- many of whom were former students at The Gow School, and dyslexic just like Zack. There was no more shame or fear of participation because all of Zack's classmates were in the same boat. The school has high expectations and Zack earns high grades. He has grown so much in the three months that he has been there. I fear for what will happen to him if he returns to public school, so I am on a mission to keep him at Gow. How? I guess that's why I'm here. Got any suggestions???

Who, me? BLOG?

I am not the writer in this family. I don't have a quick wit, I have a tendency to put my foot in my mouth and my life is not terribly interesting. However, *I* follow many blogs because I find other people's lives interesting. *I* follow the blogs of people that I respect and admire. *I* can't turn away from an interesting story. And, so, I hope that someone out there will want to follow mine.