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,…