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 ..
