“I never had any desire to teach.” I have lost track of how many times I have heard it from moms, trying to figure this homeschooling thing out. They did not grow up imagining themselves in a classroom. They don’t love the Target dollar section’s educational supplies. They never really wanted to do this. But…
Interest-led homeschooling can get complicated when you have children with varying interests. Here’s how we make it work! One morning last week, my oldest son yelled and asked me to come into his room. “I’m with your brother. Give me a minute!” I yelled back because I am super serene and classy like that. I…
After almost a decade of teaching my children with learning differences, this is, by far, my best advice for helping a struggling learner. “I am not sure he is ever going to learn to read.” I said this to my husband, over coffee and through tears one morning about a year ago. My then twelve…
If you are homeschooling a child with dyscalculia, you may have already been asked this question by your child. “Why is math so hard?” When my son was in second grade, math was a big deal. His class practiced timed tests every day (the same way I did 30 years earlier) as a way to…
When my youngest son was four years old, he attended a sweet little preschool Montessori program. As part of his “graduation” to kindergarten, his teacher prepared a portfolio of his work for us to review at our last parent conference. I loved his teacher. I trusted her. She was engaged, excited to come to work…
I realize that it was not any one thing that helped my struggling reader. It was all the things. This is everything I want you to know about homeschooling a struggling reader. My youngest son is reading. He is really, truly reading. His reading skills have improved dramatically over the past year. He can play…
“Why is writing such a difficult subject in our homeschool?” I have been asked this over and over again, especially this year. Writing is not working for a lot of kids right now. Here’s how you can help. Broken pencils. Big tears. Avoidance. Outright defiance. Total breakdowns. These are just some of the words parents…
If you are a mom headed into your first IEP meeting, please know you are not alone! The following includes crowd-sourced, practical advice, from real moms who have gone before you and are happy to help. For the first time in several years, I sat down in an IEP meeting last Fall. I was overwhelmed,…
My first serious boss, at my first serious job, used to repeat it over and over. It was a mantra to try new approaches, to work harder, to get the job done. A few years later, when I was now the serious boss, I used to say the same thing to my team, expecting creativity,…
What’s the difference between learning disabilities and learning differences? Does it matter? I have been thinking about this a lot lately. My youngest son continues to struggle academically, in ways that go way beyond helping him learn in a different way. We have tried every single approach I can think of: educational therapy hands-on…
When my oldest son continued to struggle with homeschool high school math, this is the very best decision we made to help! Math has been a difficult subject for my oldest son for as long as I can remember. It started with timed tests back in second grade. It continued with difficulties with algebra. It…
My oldest son is graduating this year. In just four short months, our time together homeschooling will be finished. One of the subjects that caused the greatest concern and frustration for him (and for me!) was always math. Part of it is the very real fact that he has dyscalculia. Part of it was not…
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