This year is so different from last year. Now that my son would be in sixth grade, I am spending more time trying to figure out how to prepare him for college.
My son is finally getting physical therapy three days a week now that he has the dyspraxia diagnosis, but he wasn't happy about having the diagnosis on paper. It is a hidden disability and I think there are times he prefers to keep it hidden, but I know we did the right thing. There was no other way to get the help he needs for now and later in college.
I was beating myself up for not being able to figure out how to make handwriting and number writing automatic. He did Handwriting without Tears, but at age 11 he still occasionally reverses numbers and letters. He took down a phone message yesterday and wrote the 9 backwards. He said it isn't because he hasn't had enough practice writing 9's. He said it is like when people make mistakes in speaking even though they have lots of experience in speaking. He was talking about bloopers made by actors and newscasters. These people don't need more practice speaking because they do it for a living and get plenty of practice. The bloopers happen because it is like a glitch. It just happens. I thought about that a little. People don't question a newscaster's intelligence or actor's (well maybe some of them) but it isn't a matter of intelligence. Yet there are still teachers and other adults my son might come in contact with who can't understand this and he has to deal with it. I want him to have the confidence to keep trying new things and keep a sense of humor about the bloopers.
He is in 4H this year, learning how to ride and take care of horses. Horse riding is supposed to be good for kids with low tone like my son, but horse riding wasn't his idea of fun. I had to coerce him into doing it. He was resistant to the idea at first because he thinks anything to do with living in a rural area is boring and he wants to move to a big city, preferably somewhere in Japan. But a cute young girl taught him some of the basics the first day and he didn't complain about all the insects flying around his face and the dirt blowing in his eyes or getting horse poop on his shoes like he normally would have.
He learned that there is a lot more to showing animals than he thought and now when his piano teacher talks about her son showing animals he knows more about it because of this experience. A very nice woman down the road from us is letting him choose a horse to work with and to show if he wants to do it.
He is also taking a homeschool drama class and it doesn't require dancing. The first day of drama class, a group of girls his age invited him to sit with them. They didn't invite any of the other boys to sit with them. They really seemed to like him. He said he didn't know why they would like him because he hadn't done anything to encourage them but I told him it was because he is cute and smart and funny just like his dad and a lot of girls like that. He said "only until a football player walks by."
He is focusing on math this year and also needs to focus on writing. He is trying to improve his mental math speed. He likes doing brain games that require quick mental math because dysgraphia doesn't impede his speed in mental math. Since he likes word problems, he is doing more of those and he is using the Life of Fred books. Science and technology is something I don't worry too much about. He will be taking a homeschool circuitry class. I found a good way to get my son to get out of bed. I can start reading an interesting article out of Wired magazine and it works like coffee does for me. It gets him moving and talking, but more talking than moving. He is also still working on reading through the Human Body encyclopedia, spending more time on things that interest him or those things he has personal experience with like learning all about muscles when he is doing physical therapy so he can be more specific about which muscles hurt or neuropsychology because of the interest in neurological disorders or immunology because his dad is a cancer survivor.
In his free time he has been playing a free online game called ERepublik. On the website it says "As a citizen in this New World of 45,524 you have the power to make a difference and fulfill your economic, political or military goals like never possible before." He was already interested in economics and politics so he really likes this game. I don't think he would have much time for playing games if he didn't homeschool. With dyspraxia and dysgraphia, I am sure homework would take him much longer to complete and it would be difficult to do therapy and everything else he needs to do.
