Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional homechooling a difficult child

Hi there,

It's been a long time since I posted something on this forum. Mainly a matter of time ...
I ask a few questions first before describing the context of these questions afterwards (in case people get bored before the end of the post )
Does someone out there homeschool a difficult child (a lot of dys-challenges + provocative and impulsive) ? Can you please share with me your positive and negative experiences on that subject, because we are on the way for homeschooling, but still being uncertain (especially, myself, the dad) ?

So, the concern of this email is on "should we homeschool DS8 (nearly 9) ?". He is ADHD (mainly AD), kind of an impulsive and provocative kid sometimes (mainly with us, his parents), dyslexic, dyscalculic, has dyspraxia, has dysgraphia and kind of gifted and finally has a lot of problems with spelling. He does not have truly problematic behavioral issues in school, although he has almost no friends at all (except a few girls). He also has a personal aid-woman at school. He is right now in what corresponds to grade 3 in the states and the school is OK to let him go to grade 4 next year. Nevertheless, he still has a lot of problems with reading, writing and math. We realized during last christmast holidays that in school, he is more or less taken as a disabled kid and he is almost requested to do nothing at school (read just a very few things, write 2 or 3 words a day …). In fact what is happening is that the school says they adapt themselves to my DS (well, OK with that) by being kind with him, leaving him more or less quiet. We should be happy with that. But, it is just a kind of golden trap there. We realized that in fact, this will end with our kid being very late in the “main subjects” and when he’ll get older, he’ll get thrown into specialized schools just as retarded kids (his verbal IQ is 155). They just started during the last school meeting talking about special schools, but told us that everything is under control and that we should not worry …. Just a wasted kid for them … We have to stand up, but how ?
Besides, as we realized the problem last Christmas, we decided to get back to the starting point of reading with the “good’ol”method : learning the association of syllables and phonemes starting from the simplest ones in a very progressive way, then learning to cut words into syllables … And guess what ? It works !!! Well, he is still not a good reader even for a kid in grade 3, but he just did tremendous progresses … His speech therapist is just amazed by his progress (that just makes me laugh, because she thinks that it is due to his 2-year work with him). This is just the result of the work he is doing with us. Same thing for writing … His writing improves but he is still very slow. At least, he’s no more reluctant to take a pencil.
So why this post, if things are getting better ? Well, DS works a lot with us on extra-time, at least 10 hours a week after school and during week-ends. This is not a kid’s life … Just unfair for him. This is just because the school does just respond to his problem by not struggling to get him higher. Let just hide the problem until nobody can do anything …. He is just losing his time and nerves in school. Nevertheless, when we make him work at home, this is definitely not that easy. Even under Methyl phenidate, he struggles first not to come and work and, when at work, still endures a lot of problems to focus on what he is doing. Sometimes, DW gets completely desperate when she does not succeed in making him work properly. Often, he can be provocative, throwing things around, simulating sleeping, dancing on his chair and so on. Even when he works good, it is hard for us to see how far he can be from what can be expected for a 3-grader. As an example, we make DD6 working along with him, since when she is not, he just complains on his sister playing. But although she is 6, she often does better and much faster than he does (so we try to make different stuffs with her not to go into implicit comparison between them)(besides, although she is still in kindergarten, she is about a grade 2 kid I guess). In a nutshell, it is hard to make him work and we are sometimes afraid not to succeed homeschooling due to his behavioral issues and his being very reluctant to work. But at least, we think that with us he will still do more than in school and in a shorter duration.
(DD has no real problem at school, but not a lot of friends. Nevertheless, due to the fact that she is a little bit in advance for her age, we prefer to homeschool her either.)
When you add to this that, DW had to stop working to homeschool DS and DD, we’ll have to really take care on the money side of the story especially in this economic crisis time. Moreover, as we are not that young, when homeschool will come to an end, it will be probably very difficult for her to find back a new job.
So, your experience and advice are welcome.
Thank you for reading my English to the end of this post ..

Hi, Raoulpetite,
I'm sorry things are still tough for you, but I'm glad they are getting a little better, especially compared to last year (is my impression from your earlier posts). We haven't homeschooled yet but might in the future--that is one thing that puts me off, is that my DD9 probably wouldn't listen to me very well and it would probably be a continuous power struggle. However, over here (in the U.S.) many cities have homeschool groups of parents who work together to trade advice on curricula and other things and some are even organized enough to take turns organizing classes or workshops in their area of expertise (at an appropriate level for the kids, of course). Is there anything like that there that you might be able to join to help ease the burden just a little? Also I understand that your DW is stressed, so maybe hiring a babysitter for a day a week, or an afternoon every now and then, might help her get some time to unwind and face the next day with renewed energy.

I'm sorry I don't have anything useful to say about the behavior issues...I have used timeouts with our DD to good effect, but every kid is different. She does best with clear rules and gentle reminders necessary, followed quickly by predictable consequences if she breaks the rules (consequences such as losing video game time, dessert, etc.). Also with our DD we tried to give as many choices as possible--do you want to work on math now, or go for a walk first? and that seemed to help her. I know there are a number of books that have been discussed here that seem to help people, although I don't have personal experience using them; perhaps some of those would help.

Sorry I don't have better advice, but I wish you and your family all the best! Good luck!

Hello --

No personal experience with multiple "dys" issues, but I have a close friend who homeschools her children with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and ADD.

The children have made progress with lots and lots of hard work and an expensive do-at-home reading program. The mother is very busy and often very tired. The family plans to transition the children to public school in the 6th grade, at which point she will be able to re-enter the workforce.

If your DW has the strong desire and the stamina to homeschool, and if you have the financial resources, you might find your child makes more progress in less time. Homeschool doesn't have to be forever. The children can go back to school at any time if your life situation changes.

Really, only you and your family can know if homeschooling will work for you. My recommendation is to try some Saturday summer school at home this summer, after your son has a few weeks to wind down and de-school. See how that goes before anyone quits their job or makes a big commitment.

Best of luck!

Kitty

Thank you goodluckkitty,

Well, the mother wants to "save" her boy just from the depth of her heart. She'll do anything for that. She always tells me that she is just longing for that. Moreover, she does not fit in her job (computing engineering) and she is not happy with that. Should we have a lot of money, my boy would already been homeschooled.

Yes, we often did attempt to reproduce homeschool during morning on the week-end days. And sometimes, DW is just desparate and sometimes she is enthousiastic depending on DS behavior and work. Anyway, it is very hard to compare with what homeschool could be since during the holidays and week-ends, DS knows that he should not be working at all ...

Raoul --

Have you asked your son if HE would like to try homeschool next year? Disclaimer: I'm kind of liberal, but I think it's important for the child to be a willing participant.

He probably needs a whole month to decompress after school lets out. Maybe you shouldn't even try experimenting until then.

Kitty

Your family speaks French, right? The American homeschoolers use a program called "ortho gilliam reading" for teaching reading and writing to dyslexic and a speech-to-text computer program for dysgraphic.
I read a book called "The Well Trained Mind" about a history/liturature style of homeschooling. For very young kids you do their reading and writing for them, except for handwriting class. This way they can learn to think and do their lessons without their reading and writing holding them back. For example, we have made a "book report notebook". My son reads a book. He tells me what it's about. I write down what he says. This way he learns how to think about a book report without holding back. For handwriting he has to copy one sentence word for word.
For history we have a notebook. I read his History assignment to him. He has to tell me about what I just read. Sometimes I have to read it again because he wasn't listening. He tells me what it was about. I write it down in the notebook. His job is to listen, understand, and explain the history lesson. I do all the reading and writing. The idea is to make them read for reading class and write for penmanship class, but for history and science and math you take most of the reading and writing work for them, then they can focus on learning the lesson instead of being distracted by the extra work of reading and writing.
This is probably really bad, but I use an old fashioned "cure" for the provocative days. I give him some of the coffee from my cup and put him out in the yard. My grandma would use Coca Cola but I think coffee is the same effect. The bad part is he asks for coffee other times, but I tell him it will stunt your growth and you can only have a little bit only sometimes.

Schooling on the weekends and vacations didn't work for us. It could have, but why do more work when you have already been in school all day?

We are not homeschooling ... yet! But I am pretty sure we are heading down that direction (DS4.9 and DS3.2). I know all the behavior issues sound scary but I would certainly give it a try. Once your son realizes that he'll be spending a lot less time doing school work since a lot more can be accomplished with a one-on-one schooling rather than trying to get through the school day and homeschool on top of that, he might start to appreciate it more and behave better. I can't imagine public school being fun for him so just time time thing alone might be a great motivation for him and once he sees more progress he might get a lot more excited about learning.

I can relate on the "special school" front. DS3.2 has a high functioning autism diagnosis. The Psychiatrist said he should be ok in a regular classroom, maybe needing an aid. Yet when he started therapies in the school setting, he completely checked out, is completely non-compliant, angry ... in just 5 weeks of twice weekly therapy it has gotten so bad I pulled him out as of yesterday. The way he acts at school the therapists basically told us they can't imagine him functioning in a regular classroom. He would need to go to an all autistic class where they concentrate on behavior and basic life skills. There is absolutely NO WAY we would agree with any of that. Aside from the fact that this would be exactly the thing that he can't stand, we are not going to put a child that started reading and doing math at 2.5 years old, is starting to spell, understands quite complex contexts just by looking at them into a class where the main focus will be breaking his behavior? Especially when this behavior only really comes into play when he's at school? At home and other non-stressful places he acts quite close to normal. So, needless to say, we are determined to make it work financially and homeschool if we find it necessary. Plus DS4.9 would likely benefit from homeschooling as well. So while I can't relate to your son's "dys-" issues, I can certainly relate overall

And you can always just try it and if it doesn't work out, there is always a public school system to go back to!

I am no expert as I am still trying to figure out things for my own child but have you done any developmental vision testing?

My son is ADHD and they suspect Dysgraphia but he recently began telling me about how things were moving on the page like numbers switching places or + sign changing in to x sign for math. We are still finishing testing but when I saw how he responded to having certain parts of testing I thought it VERY similar to how he responds to schoolwork. I don't yet know how much is related to vision issues but it seemed clear that part of his "stubbornness" was really about his eyes not working well enough to do his work. It is a bit unpredictable with sometimes less vision issues that others. Maybe this is something to look in to for your son? It certainly wouldn't hurt to rule it out if it is making the prospect of homeschool more difficult.

I have read that "Convergence Insufficiency" is 3xs more common in ADD/ADHD children and it fits my son's symptoms. Others on this forum recommended seeing a COVD (developmental) optometrist and that set me learning about this.

Best wishes in your decision. It sounds like this is an important decision point for your son.

As usual, I agree with Master of None's advice.

We have been educating our DD13 at home for almost a decade.

Some days, it is a continuous power struggle. Those days are horrid.

But even with those days, it is far, far better than the alternatives.