In Which Squirrelboy is a College Student, And I'm Not Done Parenting, But Basically Done Blogging

Squirrelboy is now about halfway through his first semester of college. I won't give you details about how his experience has been because, well, he's an adult, and it just feels a little weird to post about his school experiences at this point.

When I started this blog my kids were in 3rd and 9th grade. Now Kittygirl is in 7th grade and Squirrelboy is a freshman in college. The blog was a great way to force myself to get back to writing regularly after a long hiatus. I was even able to help some people recognize dyslexia and/or ADHD in their kids. I helped some other people learn more about diabetes and get a taste of what it's like to live with diabetes.

But I think this blog has outlived its purpose. I may still post my Valentines Day reflections here because it's a nice way to share them with a wider range of people, but outside of that I don't plan to post anymore.

Here are my thoughts on signing off. Raising kids is hard. Raising kids with a disability of any kind is even harder. You know what's even harder, though? Actually having said disability. We can empathize with our kids. We can understand what they're going through in a way most outsiders can't. But in the end we still can't see into their hearts and minds. Even though I also have ADHD I still don't really know what it's like for Squirrelboy to have ADHD, let alone both ADHD and dyslexia. Even though I've done about a million site changes now and calculated about a billion carbs, I still don't actually know what it's like for Kittygirl to have diabetes. I, along with other parents of kids diagnosed at a young age, can relate better than any other nondiabetic but it's still not my body. 

As I said, parenting is hard. Life in general is hard if you get right down to it. But not every moment of every day. There's also a lot of joy if you look for it. Even the darkest night of the year eventually ends in dawn. Even the hardest time in your life eventually passes. It may leave you with scars, sort of akin to how you'll still have a bruise from running into the bed, post on said darkest night (ask me how I know), but it won't always be so dark.

And through all of it, God will still be good. I've been through my fair share of hard times, many (though not all) since becoming a parent. Sometimes I have seriously doubted that last sentence. I can see how you might. But I've held onto it and it's always proven true. It doesn't take away the hard stuff, but it's a tiny pinprick of light in what can sometimes be unbearably oppressive darkness.

So goodbye my five or six faithful readers. Maybe I'll see you next Valentines Day, maybe not. Take care, love your kids with all your might, and always remember the pinprick of light in the darkness. And just because I can't leave without a photo, here are Kittygirl and Squirrelboy on Parents Weekend at his college. Well, not actually at his college. We spent very little time on campus because we have no interest in football. We took a cave tour not far from campus, which is where this photo was taken.

In Which I Almost Let ADHD and Dyslexia Awareness Month Pass Me By

I find it convenient that ADHD and Dyslexia Awareness month are exactly the same month. Since the two conditions are often comorbid, it gives people less to keep track of. How thoughtful of the awareness month planning people! Okay, so maybe it just happened since there are a lot more than 12 things to be aware of and only 12 months in the year, but anyway it's nice. I nearly let the month pass by without a post, but never fear, here I am writing at the 11th hour, as fitting for a blogger with ADHD.

Squirrelboy is well into his last year of high school now, which is completely crazy because my baby boy should not be allowed to be that old. But anyway, time has a crazy way of passing and he's now taking four dual credit classes at the community college, doing an internship at our church with the media person, and applying to colleges.

When Squirrelboy was diagnosed with dyslexia at the end of kindergarten I knew school would be a struggle for him, and that played out all the way through elementary school. After the dyslexia focused tutoring helped him learn to read it got better, but I still often had to drag him through his work. Looking back, I'm sure the undiagnosed ADHD played into that.

Things got better at the end of 6th grade when Squirrelboy was diagnosed with ADHD and we found a medication that was helpful for him, but middle school was still a struggle. Writing was especially hard. Just writing a paragraph could take him hours.

Before he started high school, I warned him that it would be an adjustment, would likely be hard, and he might get some bad grades while he got his feet under him. I assured him that that wasn't a big deal and that all we cared about was that he tried his best. To my great surprise, none of that happened. He thrived in high school right way.

Sophomore year he was inducted into the National Honor Society. Junior year he started taking dual credit classes and got A's. Senior year he's applying to colleges and his GPA qualifies him for generous scholarships.

He has designed his own system of writing the things he needs to accomplish on notecards, breaking them down step by step. Not just "take a shower" but "get a towel", "take a shower,"  "hang up the towel". It works brilliantly for everything from a smooth morning routine to finishing a long list of assignments.

I'm sure he still has challenges ahead of him, but I've seen Squirrelboy really come into his own this year and I'm so thankful. He's come a long way from the little boy who cried every Sunday night during first grade because school was so hard. 

For so many kids and adults, , ADHD and/or dyslexia are serious roadblocks that they never really overcome. I don't know exactly what needs to change or how to change it, but our schools need to do a better job of identifying these disorders early and giving these kids the intervention they need before they're bitter teenagers who hate everything about school. 

Squirrelboy is blessed to have had parents who have personal experience with ADHD and dyslexia, have access to private testing, and are in a position to advocate for him within the school system. Way too many kids don't have this, and this is a tragedy. This is what we really need to be aware of. Not that ADHD and dyslexia exist, but that we are failing so many kids with our current system.

I don't have a photo to express the theme of this post, so instead I'll leave you with a pile of black kittens that I saw at the pet store today and was really tempted to adopt. I refrained, because Mr. Engineer would never forgive me and also five more cats would be a big expense, but just look at the perfect Halloween cuteness.

In Which My Kids Are Not Super Special Snowflakes

Today is Halloween. Until yesterday afternoon I was planning to take Kittygirl out trick or treating this evening. Then our city made the decision around 3pm yesterday to move trick or treating to Saturday November 2nd from 3-5pm. Why? Because it MIGHT rain tonight and the mayor wants "to err on the side of caution for the safety of the children".

This is a travesty for two reasons. First, while I do acknowledge there are rare times when trick or treating should be moved due to true severe weather, possible rain is not a good reason to move trick or treating. Secondly, who trick or treats from 3-5pm?!?1? To be fair, I should acknowledge that the area of Wisconsin in which Mr. Engineer grew up has done trick or treating from 3-5pm the Sunday closest to Halloween at least since his childhood in the 1980's. However, our city has ALWAYS done trick or treating from 6-8pm. Even on the few occasions when the date has been moved, the time has never changed.

Aside from my love of Halloween and my personal indignation at this change, I feel like it speaks to a  larger problem in our society of treating children as super special snowflakes who must be protected not only from every possible harm but from every possible inconvenience. As the mother of two children who have actual, certified special needs I feel the need to speak out against this trend.

My kids have special needs. One needed years of extra help to learn to read and write and will always struggle in that area. In order to concentrate in school, the same child needs to take medication daily. He has a harder time regulating his emotions and controlling his impulses than people without ADHD. My other child has a body that does not produce a hormone necessary for life. She will need to receive insulin through either injections or an infusion pump throughout the day and regularly check her blood sugar for the rest of her life (barring a cure). However, they still live in the real world and they're going to need to learn survive in it without it constantly being rearranged for them. They are not and should not be treated as super special snowflakes

When Squirrelboy grows up, if he works for a traditional company, he will need to get used to the fact that any written work he needs to do for his job will be due when it is due and his boss is not legally required to accommodate his dyslexia or his ADHD with a 504 plan. When Kittygirl grows up, she will need to manage her diabetes completely on her own, even in stressful situations. She can't put off picking up insulin if it runs out just because she doesn't feel like going out in the rain.

The prevailing mindset among today's parents seems to be that everything needs to be arranged to suit their kids. This doesn't just involve trick or treating.  Your kid got a bad grade? Time to call a conference at which you pressure the teacher to change the grade or provide extra credit to raise your child's grade. Clearly the bad grade is the teacher's fault. Your kid broke the rules at the trampoline park and got hurt? Time to sue. Clearly it's the corporation's fault that your kid took a swan dive into the foam pit, hit the wall, and chipped his tooth.

When these kids grow up (and some are already there or getting close) they'll go out into the world thinking that everyone is going to bend over backwards to serve their needs. They'll get  a nasty surprise. Their employers (and even their college professors) are not going to treat them the way their parents did. The parents of these children are doing them a serious disservice.

We need our children to know that we love them, and we need to provide them with the things they genuinely need. Sometimes these things include a modified educational environment or other changes to meet their needs.  However, an effort to protect our children from every single negative experience is not good for them. Let's start by letting them trick or treat in the rain

In Which Little Things Make a Big Difference

When you have more than one kid, it's always difficult to balance their needs and juggle their schedules. This fall, Squirrelboy has gotten the short shrift schedule-wise, as I mentioned in an earlier post. Because of Kittygirl having an after school activity four days a week and Squirrelboy having one her one free day, it has been rare for me to have a free afternoon to bring Squirrelboy to the other side of town to go mountain biking.

This week there are no regular ballet classes because there's a show, which Kittygirl elected not to be in. I quite suddenly remembered that yesterday when the kids were at school. I didn't have to pick up Kittygirl until Girls on the Run ended at 4pm, so I calculated that I had enough time to run Squirrelboy to the trails and get back in time to get Kittygirl at 4pm if I brought his bike with me at pickup.

He threw a wrench into the works when he called and asked me if he could stay 20 minutes late to help make a video for the school news show. However, I got the reaction I was aiming for when he came out and saw his bike. His face lit up, and he eagerly agreed to go out to the trail. I needlessly stressed myself out thinking that I might be late picking up Kittygirl, but it all worked out. Despite getting a flat near the end of his ride, that chance to do his favorite activity made his week.

Taking Squirrelboy to the mountain bike trails was a little thing, but it made a big difference for him. It served as a reminder to me that little things can make a big difference in a lot of realms, especially when you and/or your kids have some kind of special need or challenge in your lives.

The other day Squirrelboy asked me, "How do some people make it to high school and still be so immature?" For a few years he lagged behind many of his peers in maturity, so it was simultaneously surprising and heartwarming to hear his question. I realized that he has reached this point as the result of a million little things Mr. Engineer and I have done as parents.

One thing we've done is to insist that he always put forth his best effort. Sometimes, because of his dyslexia and ADHD, it takes 3 times longer (or more) for him to be his best work than it would take one of his typical peers to do their best work. It would be so easy for him to throw in the towel and just not do the work at all or rush through it and put very little effort into it. We never put an emphasis on grades or praised A's over B's. We made it clear that his best effort was what mattered, whether that best effort earned an A, a B, or an even lower grade.

We also worked for many years, and are still working, on teaching him to think before he acts and to think about what effect his words and actions could have on other people. He's usually pretty good at this in public at this point. With his sister, not so much.

Finally, we taught him to respect authority. Even when he didn't like his teachers, even when we didn't like his teachers, we taught him to respect their authority and listen to them unless they were clearly doing something wrong. We taught him to respect our authority as his parents and worked to earn his respect.

All of this has added up to a kid who looks at a segment of his peers and asks, "How did they get this far in life and still be so immature?" I'm not saying that the parents of every single immature kid has done everything wrong. I can't see into these kids' brains. Maybe there's something going on that makes it more challenging for them to control their impulses. Maybe their parents worked just as hard as we did but the kids are currently in a deep rebellion.

What I do know is that Squirrelboy would not be the happy, well adjusted, polite high school freshman he is if we had not done a million little things to guide him in that direction over the past 14+ years.

In Which I Break Topic (Mostly) to Share My Love of Halloween

I love Halloween. I really, really love it. I'm not your run of the  mill Halloween lover who goes to all the haunted houses in the area and hosts and amazing haunted house on Halloween. I don't love blood, guts, monsters or vampires (well, I did read and enjoy the Twilight books). These pictures of my Halloween decorations should give you an idea of the version of Halloween that I love.

Ghosts and skeletons only make it into my Halloween bubble if they're cute. Black cats and bats are already cute, so they're good as far as I'm concerned. Evil witches, not so much. Cute kid witches, come on in. And witches from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, the more the merrier.

What I love most about Halloween is the permission to dress up. This is especially true for kids, but even adults can get away with it, especially if they're parents coordinating with their kids. When I was growing up in the 1980's, Halloween was one day. You chose a costume. In my case my mom then slaved over a sewing machine for quite a few evenings making said costume. You wore it a school  on October 31st for the Halloween parade. You went out into  your neighborhood that evening and trick or treated. Then it was over.

Over the years, Halloween has crept its way backwards so that at this point it has basically taken over the whole month of October. I think this is awesome, because that means there are a lot more opportunities to dress up. Squirrelboy has never loved picking a costume and dressing up on the level that I do. Every Halloween he chose a costume, often a pretty creative one, wore it on Halloween and possible to one other event, and called it good. This year, his first year in high school, he has decided that he's done with trick or treating and will stay at our house to hand out treats. I suppose it's an inevitable part of growing up, but I trick or treated through my junior year of high school, so it makes me a little sad.

Kittygirl, at 8, is nowhere near being done trick or treating, and she's a girl after my own heart when it comes to her love for costumes. She attends at least one Halloween even every weekend during October, and she wants to wear a different costume for every one. So far this month she has been Ginny Weasley (this is what she'll use on Halloween), a black cat, Anne of Green Gables, and Squirrel Girl. This is costume week at gymnastics, and this afternoon she'll go as an elf in the following ensemble:

This is just Christmas clothes with the addition of a Santa hat. Her favorite Christmas themed costume of mine was when, at five, she pulled together a Christmas fairy outfit. She used a Christmas dress and wings with Christmas decorations taped to them. It was awesome.

Mr. Engineer is even less into dressing up than Squirrelboy, but we've managed to talk him into participating in a handful of family costumes. The two main ones were the two years we attended Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party at Disney World. The first time was ten years ago when Squirrelboy was 4 and Kittygirl was just a dream. Squirrelboy was obsessed with a Playhouse Disney (now known as Disney Junior) show called My Friends Tigger and Pooh. In the show, Pooh and Tigger run a detective agency with a little girl named Darby. They call themselves the Super Sleuths. In my version of the backstory, Darby is Christopher Robin's daughter, but that's actually mentioned in the show. We found a Tigger costume at a consignment sale and added a t-shirt from Goodwill with the Super Sleuth symbol on it. Yet again, with the help of Goodwill, I found a yellow outfit I could turn into a Pooh costume for Mr. Engineer, again with a secondhand Tshirt with the Super Sleuth symbol. Darby was the easiest. I just had to find some clothes that resembled her typical outfit. Everyone knew who we were and it was a ton of fun.

On our second visit to Mickey's party, Kittygirl was four and Squirrelboy was six. That year we veered from the Disney theme and had two pairs of historical literary characters. Kittygirl and I went as Mary and Caroline Ingalls, thanks to my  mom's great seamstress skills. Mr. Engineer and Squirrelboy's costumes need a bit more of an explanation. There's an amazing series of graphic novels about American history by an author named Nathan Hale entitled Nathan Hale's hazardous tales. In the first book, the spy Nathan Hale is on the gallows and speaks his famous last words, "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country." In doing so, he inserts himself into the history book, quite literally. The gallows turns into a big history book, swallows him up, and spits him back out having imparted the knowledge all future American history to him. The rest of the series is Nathan  Hale telling the hangman stories from American history to delay his execution. They're amazing, especially for reluctant readers including dyslexics who can read but get overwhelmed by a lot of text on the page (see there, I DID tie this into the theme for the month :)). Squirrelboy, of course, dressed as Nathan Hale and Mr. Engineer went as the hangman.

The one thing I do not love about Halloween is spending large amounts of money on costumes. Given that Kittygirl wears anywhere from 4-8 costumes every October you might presume that that's exactly what I do, but you would be wrong. I limit the costume buying to one costume per year, and everything else needs to be pulled together with things we already own. This year for Kitty girl I bought a red wig (actually intended as an Anna wig from Frozen II) and that was all. To be Ginny Weasley Kittygirl is adding the wand we bought at Universal Orlando this summer and a Gryffindor robe Squirrelboy wore to be Harry Potter at her age (that year, incidentally, was the best sibling match year ever - two year old Kittygirl was a Hogwarts owl). The cat ears and tale are from her costume bin, bought cheaply one year after Halloween. She used the red wig and wore an old fashioned looking dress to be Anne. Squirrel Girl was accomplished with a brown dress, brown boots, a furry brown best, and squirrel ears and tale that were Squirrelboy's main costume a couple years ago.

I've always loved Halloween and dressing up. However, it has taken on even more meaning during my years of parenting, and especially during my struggles parenting kids with invisible disabilities. Halloween, and the whole Halloween season, is one more opportunity to seize joy and to help my children have beautiful memories of their childhoods even amid the struggles they've also had.

These two memes sum up my attitude really well. I don't always do it as well as I usually do in October, but I want to not let our challenges make me or my children bitter. A big part of doing this is to choose joy.

In Which I Ponder My Children's Futures

In addition to being dyslexia awareness month, ADHD awareness month, Down Syndrome Awareness month, and probably a bunch of other things I'm unaware of (somewhat ironically) awareness month, I recently learned that October is disability employment awareness month.

Most of us have seen the feel good stories about businesses that exist to employ people with autism, Down Syndrome, or other disabilities. There are also people with those disabilities working in "normal" jobs, though it's not highlighted on the news so often. Unfortunately, when you have a visible disability like Down Syndrome that everyone knows includes some level of intellectual impairment, it can be hard to get people to take you seriously as an adult and employ you, even if you're perfectly capable of doing the job competently.

When you have an invisible disability, the struggle is different. You need to decide whether you should even reveal your disability to your potential employer and what effect it might have if you do. Barring a cure or an amazing new treatment that allows her to ignore her diabetes, this question will be most applicable to Kittygirl when she enters the workforce. Diabetics struggle every day with this question. If they reveal their condition to a potential employer during the interview it might be a strike against them. Even though they can't legally be discriminated against due to diabetes, it does happen. However, if they don't reveal it in the interview process, they need to decide when or if to make the big reveal after starting on the job. If they reveal their diabetes they might face prejudice, but, if they don't, they might be in a dangerous or even deadly health situation if their blood sugar drops very low and their coworkers think their odd behavior indicates drunkenness or illegal drug use.

Those with an invisible disability like dyslexia or ADHD won't be at risk of dying if no one knows about their condition. The question they face is more along the lines of whether they want to risk facing prejudice if they reveal a condition that is part of what makes them who they are. This is particularly true for adults who take medication to treat ADHD. Most people are okay with kids being on medication for ADHD, but the presumption is that the kids will eventually outgrow the need. Since the stimulants used for ADHD are sold and used illegally, adults who take such medications for legitimate reasons can come under scrutiny.

Both of my kids, as I've mentioned before, will need to have good health insurance if they need to continue on the medications they're currently taking into adulthood. For Kittygirl, of course, insulin will remain a necessity unless there is a cure or an alternate medication that treats type 1 (in which case that medication would become a necessity). Squirrelboy, on the other hand, MIGHT outgrow his need for the help that his medication gives him as he matures and learns more strategies to deal with his chaotic brain. He also might not.

Unless the U.S. wises up and approves a program that provides free or cheap healthcare for all paid for by our taxes, my kids and many others will need to consider what kind of benefits are offered or how they will pay for them independently as they consider future careers.

Squirrelboy's current dream is to be a filmmaker or YouTuber. Since those aren't exactly careers that offer guaranteed steady work, it will be interesting to see how he tackles that issue as he moves into adulthood. Insurance wouldn't be the only issue. Running your own business also requires organizational skills that Squirrelboy doesn't have and that would be very difficult for him. In his defense, not many 14 year olds would be ready to run their own business and he has time to learn. As long as he's committed to learning the extra skills that he'll need to master because of the way his brain works, I think he has a bright future ahead of him.

In Which My Kids "Look Normal"

The thing about invisible disabilities is, they're invisible. Shocking, I know. Overall, it's not a bad thing. People with visible disabilities often encounter a lot of prejudice just because of the way they look or act. I have a friend who has visible mobility issues as well as speech struggles that are quickly apparent, and she is often treated as if she is intellectually impaired even though, in actuality, she has a PhD and works as a college professor.

When people interact with Squirrelboy what they see is a confident, kind, and curious teenager who does well in school and interacts easily with both peers and adults. If they look a little closer they might realize that he makes a greater than average number of spelling mistakes, but, after all, he IS still a teenager and they're not exactly known for their excellent spelling.

What people don't see is that it can take him an hour or more to write a seven sentence paragraph for school. They don't see him asking me to read over every email before he sends it to make sure he hasn't made any grammar or spelling mistakes. They don't see him coming out of his room at 10pm freaking out over the fact that he forgot he had a math test to study for until he was trying to go to sleep and the million other things in his brain had begun to calm down.

People with invisible disabilities have the privilege of "passing" as typical. This is advantageous most of the time, but it does require mental (and sometimes physical) effort that can be incredibly draining to the person with an invisible disability. A friend of mine who has a child on the autism spectrum who "looks normal" shared this meme on Facebook today, and I thought the message was applicable to more than just autism.

Thankfully, Squirrelboy's struggles (and my own) are significantly fewer than the struggles faced by many, including those with "high functioning" autism. That doesn't mean they don't exist, however. What identifying my own struggles and helping my kids live with theirs has taught me is not to assume that "looking normal" is easy for everyone,

In Which It Can Feel Like Dyslexia Is Contagious

One little known characteristic of dyslexia is difficulty with word recall. Even though a dyslexic may know all the right words, it can be difficult for them to retrieve them at the right time.

One of the seminal works on what it means for your child to have dyslexia is Sally Shaywtiz's Overcoming Dyslexia. I read it soon after Squirrelboy's official diagnosis, and I saw him in so many of its pages. One cartoon in particular struck me. It pictures a little girl reading a book and picturing a volcano in her head, yet producing with word "tornado."

This is a really common thing for Squirrelboy. He'll say a word with a similar number of syllables, maybe even from the same category (tornadoes and volcanoes are both natural disasters, right?) but it won't actually be the word he's looking for. 

Both Squirrelboy and Mr. Engineer have mastered the art of circumlocution. If you don't know the word, you just talk around the word until your listener figures out what you mean. I'm familiar with this skill as well. When I'm speaking in Spanish or Swedish (both of which I speak proficiently but not at the level of a native), I sometimes forget a word and have to use words I DO know to describe what I'm trying to say.

This is usually something deemed acceptable by native speakers when done by a non-native speaker, and it's completely acceptable within our family circle though we're all speaking our native language, but it can be embarrassing when you're out in the world and can't recall the right word. I found a post on Facebook the other day that captured this perfectly.

This particular characteristic of dyslexia has made Mr. Engineer aware of the fact that there are a lot of dyslexics in the engineering world. It seems as many as half his coworkers are dyslexic. He'll tell stories about them all sitting in a meeting trying to figure out the right word for something. Eventually they sometimes just choose an alternate word and move on because they all know what they're talking about.

Weirdly, though I am not the least bit dyslexic, I seem to have picked up this characteristic over the years of being married to one dyslexic and raising another. In reality, I'm sure it's just a combination of my brain getting older (I'm 44 in case you want to know) and my brain being so taken up with the details of life that sometimes the words I want can't dig themselves out from the avalanche of other things in there.

At this point, Squirrelboy, with his interests in mountain biking and video production, has actually learned a lot of words I've never known. He doesn't often struggle to remember those words, though it does happen on occasion. Since Mr. Engineer has managed to have a successful engineering career despite his occasional need to resort to calling something a "thingamajig" because he can't find the word, I'm not worried about Squirrelboy in this respect. He'll make his way in the world just find, even if he calls the occasional volcano a tornado.

In Which My Son Could Have Been Born Into a Different Family

A week ago I posted about how Squirrelboy lost the genetic lottery when it comes to the invisible disabilities he could have inherited. He not only got my ADHD and Mr. Engineer's dyslexia, he got a more severe version of both. However, he's blessed to have won the situational lottery, by having been born to well educated upper middle class white parents who knew how to advocate for him and had the resources to get him the intervention he needed.

I have often wondered what would have happened to Squirrelboy if he had been born into another family. Of course, he couldn't literally have been born into another family, but children with disabilities like his are born into other families every day. Unfortunately, not all of those families have the knowledge, the resources, or the will to get their children the services they need to be successful in life.

While I was homeschooling Squirrelboy I met many families who had pulled their children out of school because the school wasn't serving their learning disabilities well, or, worse yet, was ignoring those disabilities altogether. Many of these parents had made great sacrifices of their time and income in order to give their children an education that would allow them to thrive.

Unfortunately, the majority of children with learning and attention disabilities don't have parents who are able to provide them with an individualized education at home. Most children with learning and attention disabilities are educated in the public system, and a huge percentage of them do no receive the accommodations and services they need.

I'm not blaming the teachers who let these kids fall through the cracks. As I've discussed before, even most reading specialists are not well educated in dyslexia. There are always exceptions, but the large majority of teachers want to see all their students succeed and will everything they have in their toolboxes to make that happen. Unfortunately, their toolboxes may only include a hammer and a Phillips head screwdriver when the tool little Johnny needs is an 1/8 inch Allen wrench.

One of the greatest disservices done to students with disabilities that are not diagnosed before they enter kindergarten is the concept of "waiting to fail." The idea behind this seems good on the surface. Children develop at different rates, and the idea is to wait until the end of second grade to let children catch up before evaluating them for learning disabilities. I'm sure there are a few children for whom this policy works. If a child is bright and has no learning disabilities, but comes into kindergarten with minimal exposure to books and letters, that child will eventually catch up with a good standard education.

However, students with dyslexia will never learn to read well without targeted intervention, and the earlier that intervention begins, the greater the chance of success. Despite evidence of this fact, parents are often told that it's not possible to diagnose dyslexia until 3rd grade.  This is patently untrue, and even the National Institute of Health knows it, but all too many schools don't.
Children only get evaluated earlier if their parents know enough to suspect dyslexia early on and aren't afraid to speak truth to power when it comes to advocating for their children.

Since I'm proficient in Spanish, I was sometimes called upon by Squirrelboy's elementary teachers to work with students from Spanish speaking families who came into the school with little or no knowledge of English. Squirrelboy's school had a strong ESL program and those students got a lot of support and most of them were working at or above grade level in English within a couple of years. All the students I worked with who came into the school in the upper grades could read and write proficiently in Spanish and just needed to transfer those skills.

I wondered what would happen, though, to a student with dyslexia who entered school with limited English proficiency. Chances are that student's struggles would be attributed to lack of English proficiency and a learning disability would not even enter the discussion until late in elementary school, possibly even later than third grade, when evaluations are most often considered. If the student's parents are immigrants with limited English proficiency and no understanding of the public school system and their rights to advocate for their child, that child would experience significant failure before any attempt at intervention began. All too often these are the kids who develop serious behavior problems and drop out of school as soon as they can.

This is much less common, but kids with invisible disabilities can also be held back by their parents. Homeschooling parents can fool themselves into thinking that their children will read "when they're ready", and continue to pursue a standard education with accommodations because they have an idea that having a label will hurt their child in the future. I have a friend who taught for a time at at Christian high school that admitted quite a few students who had been homeschooled through 8th grade. She told me about a few students she had who showed every sign of dyslexia, but who had never received any intervention because their parents did not want them to be labeled. These students struggled greatly at this rigorous high school, but their parents continued to believe that a label would be more damaging to them than failure.

My dream is for dyslexia, ADHD, and other invisible disabilities to be destigmatized so that parents are not afraid to seek out labels for their kids if they show signs of these disabilities. The second part of the dream is for public school teachers and administrators to be thoroughly educated in these disabilities and others and to begin identification and intervention as early as possible, allowing all of their students to succeed instead of waiting for some to fail.

Squirrelboy is successful today because he was given the supports and interventions he needed. It breaks my heart that not only is this not true for every child, it is not true for a large percentage of children with the same challenges he has.

In Which My Son Wins (Or Maybe Loses) the Genetic Lottery

Squirrelboy has a lot going for him, statistically speaking. He is white. He is male. He is Christian. He is from an upper middle class family. He was breastfed not just for a year, but well into his preschool years. His parents read to him regularly in early childhood and still continue to do so. He has had the privilege of traveling abroad as well as to many parts to the U.S. In terms of being given a good start in life he is sitting in clover. That's not the way he sees it, however.

He does recognize that he has a lot of privilege and a lot of advantages, but he thinks that the hand our genetics dealt him was incredibly unjust. Neither of us knew this about the other at the time, but, when we married, Mr. Engineer and I were creating a potential family with a high genetic risk for dyslexia on one side and ADHD on the other. Heck, our poor kids got an extra helping of dyslexia risk since it seems to run in my family as well, though I'm not affected.

When one parent has dyslexia, every child born to that parent has a 50% risk of having dyslexia. In our case, it happened to work out that one of our two kids has dyslexia, thus 50% of our kids have dyslexia, but the math doesn't always work that way. The risk is 50% for each child.  Another couple I know that could have passed down dyslexia genetically has three biological children, none of whom have dyslexia. A third couple I know has four biological children, three of whom have dyslexia.

For ADHD, the story is more complicated. Having a parent with ADHD definitely increases the risk for a child to have ADHD, but I couldn't find any hard and fast numbers. ADHD is also affected by environment in ways that dyslexia is not, which complicates the picture. The one statistic I could find was that 1 in 3 fathers with ADHD have a child with ADHD. I couldn't find any statistics about mothers, so we'll just have to presume that having a mother with ADHD (officially diagnosed or not) also increases a child's risk.

So any child we had had an approximate 50% risk of having dyslexia and maybe as much as a 33% risk of having ADHD. I don't know of any studies that show that the risks compound each other, but I wouldn't surprised if they did, even if only anecdotally, since the two often coexist. Our genes combined to create one child with both challenges and one child with neither, and the child who got both is pretty annoyed about that.

It does no good to point out to him that his sister was apparently born with a susceptibility to develop an autoimmune disorder and she wound up with type 1 diabetes. He simply points out that a) Kittygirl wasn't born with T1D and b) there is no guarantee that he won't develop diabetes or some other autoimmune disease at some point in his life.

So what can we do as parents to assuage his anger at the genetic profile we unwittingly passed down to him? We can remind him that we also passed good things down to him and gave him the best start in life we could, which was pretty darn good because of all the privilege we enjoy. We can also remind him that he's made it this far in life with much more success than failure. We can remind him of all the people in the world who have similar challenges and have gone on to be successful.

Finally, we can remind him that he is a unique and beloved creation of God and that God can and will use him to impact the world. Sometimes this may happen in spite of his challenges, other times it will happen because of his challenges.

In Which Dyslexia Has, Ironically, Made My Son More "Well-Read"

If you're old enough to remember when Alanis Morissette's song "Isn't It Ironic" was a hit, you  may also remember that the large majority of things referenced in the song are not, in fact, ironic but merely unfortunate. The definition of the word irony is frequently stretched in popular culture, and I can't say with absolute certainty that what I'm posting about is true irony or just a somewhat unexpected turn of events, but I decided that, if a hit singer/songwriter can misuse the word with impunity, I can take the risk :).

I was blessed to have a wonderful model in a mother who read to us frequently, well past the age when many parents stop reading to their children. In fact, in the case of my younger brother, who has no official diagnosis but fits all the criteria for dyslexia, she read nearly all his school material out loud to him all the way through 8th grade. I'm not sure whether he switched over on his own in high or she decreed it, since I wasn't living at home during his high school years. Even my typical older brother and I benefited from many years of listening to great books. This includes a readaloud of The Swiss Family Robinson, which I speculate she may have edited, because I discovered upon reading it as an adult that it is in the running for most boring book in the history of boring books.

When it became clear that it would be a long time before Squirrelboy was reading independently, I doubled down on my commitment to read aloud to him. I read him most of the Magic Treehouse books that were out at that point (seriously, how does Mary Pope Osborne keep cranking those things out?), and I have to confess I actually enjoyed them. I read him quite a few other silly, easy series books that his peers were reading. However, I also read him books that a child of his age who was only reading on his own would be unlikely to encounter. When Tonight on the Titanic led Squirrelboy into a Titanic obsession, for instance, we read our way through most of the Titanic books in our library's collection, including a few from the adult section.

Squirrelboy also discovered the pleasure of listening to audiobooks. He started devouring the Percy Jackson series via audiobook the summer after 3rd grade, and also listened to the follow up Heroes of  Olympus series, though, to my chagrin, he never really got into the books about Egyptian or Norse myths.

I had the opportunity to fully indulge in my readaloud obsession during the three years I was homeschooling Squirrelboy. In November of his 6th grade year we put our regular history curriculum aside and spent a month doing a unit study on the Pilgrims (whom we learned, as an aside, did not actually call themselves that). If he had been a typical kid who was reading well by second grade and had gotten used to doing most reading independently, I might have stuck with the curriculum, had him read a chapter book about Squanto, read aloud a few picture books, and called it good. However, because I had accustomed him to hearing books officially "above his level," I was able to add in a lot of nonfiction that gave a more balanced and nuanced view of the Plymouth colony and the Native Americans with whom they forged a tentative and, ultimately, temporary peace.

Most recently, Squirrelboy has been listening his way through most of the work of Agatha Christie via the Libby app on his phone. I went through a brief Agatha Christie phase in high school, but I only made my way through about half a dozen of her books before I turned away to other interests. I also continue to read aloud to him when we can fit it into our busy schedule, occasionally something for school but most often something for pleasure. Just last night I introduced him to one of my favorite, and, sadly, little known, books: L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle, my copy of which is pictured below in all of the glory of the early 1990's editions of the author's work.

Not very many teenage boys would be interested in a love story taking place in early 20th century Canada, but, because I have conditioned Squirrelboy to enjoy good books of all kinds, he's eating it up.

Of course, all of this is possible if your kid isn't dyslexic. However, I can testify from my experience so far with Kittygirl that it's more difficult. Because she reads well, she's more likely to want to read on her own in the evening than to have me read to her. She does love listening to audiobooks in the care, however (we just finished the Harry Potter series, which we started over the summer), so all hope is not lost.

In Which I Realize Just How Useless My College Major Was

Today at breakfast Squirrelboy commented that some of his friends who go to other schools have been surprised that his favorite class in high school is English. Mr. Engineer and I reminded him that we, too, were surprised his favorite class was English until we got to know more about his teacher and how the class is run. What Squirrelboy loves the most is the fact that, because his school focuses on project based learning, they're learning to write things with a practical purpose and learning that writing will be useful in their adult lives. I told Squirrelboy that, while I loved English class because reading and writing are my favorite things in the world, most of the writing I did was writing papers about books that were simply for the purpose of my English teacher and read an assign a grade too. Then I paused and realized that, because I have both a B.A. and and M.A. in Spanish with a literature focus, that's pretty much what I spent the majority of my educational career doing. I read books that most people don't care about and wrote papers about them that were of no practical use to anyone. Well, good thing I wasted six years of my life......

No, seriously, my college and grad school experiences were great and helped make me the person I am today. It is, in fact, really useful in my daily life to be proficient in Spanish and to have a knowledge of other cultures. However, when it comes to actual marketable skills, my education netted me very little. Ultimately, that was not detrimental to me. I did manage to pick up some teaching skills by being pushed into the deep end as a teaching assistant in grad school. I continued teaching part time while working as a campus minister for a parachurch campus ministry and attempting to raise up enough financial partners to do ministry full time. The whole fund development thing never worked out well for me, and I eventually left and found a full time job teaching Spanish at a small Christian college near Chicago. I would have needed to continue my education and get a PhD to keep that job and get tenure, but then year Mr. Engineer and I got married and moved back to Kentucky after just one year teaching there. I continued to teach part time as an adjunct at two local schools and substitute teach in the public schools until Squirrelboy was born. Since then I've been a stay at home mom. I made a few (literally, just a few after expenses) bucks teaching coop classes when I was homeschooling Squirrelboy, but, for all intents and purposes, I have not been gainfully employed for the majority of my adult life.

This has worked out fine for me because a) I was born into privilege and could fall back on help from my parents when I was single and not making much money b) I had not chronic medical conditions that required regular doctor visits or medication so it was fine that I was without insurance for a couple years and c) I'm now married to a man with a stable job, a good income, and health insurance. If either a, b, or c were taken away I could have been in serious trouble at some point and I might have thought more about studying something that would more logically lead to a job. I had the freedom to study what interested me, and I never realized what an incredible gift that was. When I look at my kids today, I wonder if their challenges will allow them to have that same freedom.

Thankfully, the medication Squirrelboy takes for ADHD is not necessary for him to stay alive, but it makes the parts of his life that involve attention to detail and focus about 1,000 times easier. Right now this mostly applies to school, but it's likely to apply to whatever job he has as well. He's currently interested in photojournalism and/or filmmaking. Neither job, at least in today's marketplace, normally comes with a steady paycheck and insurance. Before we meet our deductible, his ADHD medication is $200 a month. I don't even want to know what it would be without insurance. I don't want his atypical brain to stop him from pursuing his dreams, but I do wonder if it will have to be figured in.

Kittygirl, on the other hand, does need synthetic insulin to live. In case you've been living under a rock, and haven't heard about this, there are many people in the U.S. who can't afford their insulin. There are multiple stories of young adults who died just months after leaving their parents' insurance or being laid off because they couldn't afford the substance that keeps them alive. In addition, managing Kittygirl's diabetes is a million times easier because of her insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor. People  with diabetes without insurance, or with pathetic insurance, struggle just to get enough insulin to stay alive. Using devices like Kittygirl's is completely out of reach. I don't want this to be Kittygirl's story in young adulthood. I want her to be able to pursue her dreams and not worry if they don't result in obvious marketable skills. However, already now I find myself nudging her toward careers that would be likely to provide a good insurance policy.

Here's where I turn political. It shouldn't have to be this way. In the majority of nations in the developed world, healthcare is a right and not a privilege. Yes, you can't always get the absolute top of the line services that the privileged elite in the U.S. can get, but you can still get what you need. Sometimes there are waiting lists for things like insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors. However, you can eventually get them if you're patient. You're not fearful of going bankrupt if you get cancer or you or your loved one are involved in a catastrophic accident that results in months of hospitalization. My hope and prayer is that, before my kids reach young adulthood, the U.S. will have caught up with the rest of the developed world and being able to afford to stay alive (in Kittygirl's case) or to live well (in Squirrelboy's case) will not be on their list of adult responsibilities.

In Which I Am Greatly Surprised By My Dyslexic's Favorite High School Class

Due to a combination of dyslexia making reading a writing a lot of work for his brain, ADHD making it difficult for him to a) concentrate in the school environment and b) force himself to be interested in the writing prompts his teachers gave him, Squirrelboy came out of elementary school basically hating to write. In the state writing test he took at the end of fifth grade, he scored on the novice level. That's the lowest score possible. I don't think his teachers were incompetent. The methods they employed worked to teach a majority of their students to write well. However, they did not work for Squirrelboy. Unfortunately, what they did was make him hate writing.

When I started homeschooling Squirrelboy, I approached language arts in general and writing in particular as slowly and gently as a I possibly could. The writing for the first program I tried involved the rewriting of fables, which is a hallmark of a particular stage within classical education, a style that is very popular within Christian homeschool circles in particular. The idea is that the student learns to write by imitating good models. There is nothing wrong with that model for the right student. However, Squirrelboy was not the right student. He hated it with the burning passion of a thousand suns. It turns out they had spent a brief amount of time in fifth grade rewriting fables, and the idea of spending an entire school year rewriting fables was anathema to him. I decided to back off the fable rewriting and just focus on the other parts of the program, which made it at least slightly palatable to him.

I hunted around for another writing program and landed on Susan Wise Bauer's Writing With Skill series. This is another curriculum from the classical education viewpoint, but it approaches the teaching of writing in a very methodical manner, teaching students to notice key details in reading, write summaries (well, actually narrations, but they're similar), make outlines, and eventually write paragraphs about a nonfiction topic. This program didn't create a lot of excitement around writing for Squirrelboy, but he didn't hate it. We used it on and off from the end of 6th grade all the way through the end of 8th grade and he definitely gained some valuable skills from it.

Through a friend and neighbor who has homeschooled all of her kids, most of whom have learning differences, I learned about the Bravewriter program. This is a language arts program started by a homeschooling mom and professional writer that focuses not so much on developing specific skills in a methodical manner as helping a child find their own writing voice and making language arts in general and writing in particular an enjoyable, joyful experience. First I borrowed the basic handbook of the program, The Writer's Jungle, and took Squirrelboy through the process detailed in it. It wasn't a cure all for his hatred of writing, but it was a nice break from the useful but fairly dull skill work in Writing With Skill. Two things we picked up that we used regularly were freewriting, in which Squirrelboy wrote for a set number of minutes about any topic he chose, with no attention needing to be paid to grammar or spelling. This helped him begin to get over his fear of doing writing wrong. Not directly related to writing, we also began to have regular poetry teas, during which we would enjoy a treat together and read poetry to each other. This time gave him an appreciation for a style of writing he previously disliked, though it didn't make him fall in love with writing poetry.

As 8th grade approached, I knew I had to prepare Squirrelboy to write for others. I attempted to do that by a) signing him up for two Bravewriter online classes and b) putting him in a writing class at our homeschool coop. Both were good experiences for him, but the online classes were particularly valuable. Having feedback from a professional writer on what he did right in his writing and how he could improve and having very concrete steps to follow to complete a specific project on a topic he chose was very helpful to him. He came out of 8th grade still not really liking writing, but not hating it, and able to do it competently when he was willing to put the work in.

Even with all the work I did over three years of homeschooling Squirrelboy and in 8th grade in particular, I was still nervous about how his freshman English class would go. He had had fairly limited experience writing for others, and none of that writing had been for a real grade. I was afraid that he would get overwhelmed by the requirements of the class and shut down. To my great astonishment, the exact opposite has happened. English is Squirrelboy's favorite class by far, and, while he's doing fairly well in all his classes, he's doing astonishingly well in English. His teacher has used his work as an example for other students (amazingly, this does not seem to have made the other students hate Squirrelboy). How has this miracle occurred? It's all about a passionate, supportive teacher who drew Squirrelboy in from day one, engaged him, and made him care about doing his best work all the time. That's the thing about people with ADHD. It's not that they can't concentrate. It's that they have a harder time than the average person concentrating on something if they don't care about it. If they're passionate about something, they can, in fact, give even more to it than someone with a typical brain. Squirrelboy's teacher has, to my great astonishment, made him passionate about the writing for his class. The other thing he has done is to choose assignments that are applicable to the real world and that show Squirrelboy and other students that being able to write well is a valuable skill for life. Squirrelboy has spend the past several weeks writing a grant proposal that will actually be presented to a community foundation and may result in funding for a drone for the journalism club (which the amazing English teacher also encouraged Squirrelboy to join).

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that Squirrelboy's new passion for writing has not transferred to his other classes. He has had to do a decent amount of writing for both Health and Civics, and he has complained loudly about it. However, he has at least done it competently. Perhaps in another year of high school a different teacher will get Squirrelboy excited about their subject and he'll be able to transfer the passion for writing well that his English teacher is fanning into flame.

There are a lot of successful people in this world with ADHD and/or Dyslexia. What most, perhaps even all, of those people have in common is that someone, at some point in their life, believed in them and pushed them to do their best and pursue what they were passionate about, even if it was hard. Mr. Engineer and I have always tried to do that for Squirrelboy, but it's always better for parents to have other adults in their child's life as partners in this effort. Squirrlboy's Freshman English teacher is proving to be a great one.

In Which It Is Okay That My Dyslexic Has Not Read All the Classics

I am a bookworm. I had read my way through most of the children's section at the library by middle school, and, while I sometimes took to reading rather questionable novels (V.C. Andrews, anyone?) I often picked up classic novels in my teens. I was one of the few people in high school English class who truly enjoyed The Great Gatsby. I went on to read a good deal of Fitzgerald's work. Sometime in about 7th grade, as I remember, I read A Christmas Carol for the first time. I'd seen movie versions, of course, but the book pulled me in, and I actually listed Charles Dickens as my favorite author on some kind of survey I filled out at school. I read my way through much of the work of Dickens, though I must admit I didn't always understand it. I fell in love with Hemingway after reading The Old Man and the Sea for English class and made my way through most of his work in high school as well. I'm not sure how it took me so long, but in college I started on Jane Austen, who introduced me to another side of Britain and cemented my identity as an anglophile.

Despite my occasional forays into questionable literature, I always presumed I would introduce my children to the classics at a young age and they would also devour them. As you may remember if you've read my first post on the subject of books, my children are not exactly bookworms. However, I have reconciled myself to that fact for the most part, and have tried to give Squirrelboy especially (because I still have some hope that Kittygirl will get over her graphic novel phase and pick up a copy of Jane Austen at the least in her teens) exposure to what I learned from the classics in other ways. I handed him a few graphic novel versions of classic novels when I was homeschooling him in middle school. I found others on audio, and surprisingly, he occasionally did too. He actually willingly listened to Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped of his own free will when he was about ten years old. It was so full of Jacobite politics that I barely understood a word, but for some weird reason he ate it up.

He also managed to become an anglophile as I did in early adolescence, first through the British car show Top Gear (to this day he refers to the windscreen instead of the windshield of a car), and later through Downtown Abbey. I introduced him to Agatha Christie a couple years ago and read Murder on the Orient Express to him before taking him to see the latest movie version. Now he's obsessed with Agatha Christie audiobooks and checks them out regularly to listen to on his phone. We went to see the Downtown Abbey movie at the theater tonight, and, as in several movies we've seen together, he managed to lower the median age by at least a decade. He understood and laughed at all the right places, and we both loved the movie. All that while closely analyzing the cinematography, which was apparently perfect.

Despite not being exposed to the classics in the same way I was, my son has managed to grow up with a taste for high culture and for things not of the present moment, while still being very much a 21st century teenager. I only hope I can manage the same for my daughter.

In Which I Bust Some Dyslexia Myths

It's October 1st, which, among other things, means it's the first day of Dyslexia Awareness Month. For that reason, I'll be posting quite a bit about dyslexia this month. I'll start by busting some myths about dyslexia.

Myth 1: Dyslexia is not very common

You wouldn't believe (or maybe you would) the number of teachers I know who are sure they've never had a student with dyslexia. The fact is, dyslexia affects approximately 1 in every 20 people. That's 5% of the population. That means that, in the average classroom, there is likely to be at least one student with dyslexia. You probably know someone with dyslexia, even if you don't know Squirrelboy or Mr. Engineer. You just may not know it, especially if the dyslexic you know is an adult.


Myth 2: Dyslexia is primarily about seeing things backwards

Have you heard this joke? What keeps dyslexic agnostics up at night? They're pondering the possibility of the existence of the dog. The point being, of course, that dyslexics see words backwards; therefore God becomes dog. The bad taste of this joke aside, this is not actually true. Dyslexia is a language processing disorder. The dyslexic brain has a difficult time understanding the relationship between sounds and symbols. Dyslexics do on occasion read words backwards and mix up common, similarly spelled, words like of and for, but that's simply because their brain isn't correctly processing the relationship between the symbols on the page and the sounds they stand for, not because they're actually seeing the words backwards.

Myth 3: Dyslexia cannot be diagnosed until the 3rd grade

Kids can, in fact, show signs of dyslexia starting at a very young age. Young children with dyslexia may talk later, frequently mix up the pronunciation of common words, have difficulty with rhyming, and be slow in retrieving the right word when speaking. They may also have a difficult time distinguishing between right and left. The truth is, the earlier a child is diagnosed, the earlier intervention can start, and the better the chances are that the child will experience success in school.

Myth 4: School Reading Specialists are the best people to intervene if your child has dyslexia

Sadly, this is not usually true. You'll run across the occasional reading specialist who is well educated in dyslexia intervention and uses an appropriate program, but this is very rare. In fact, the average reading intervention teacher knows little to nothing about dyslexia. This is not the fault of the teachers themselves. Reading teachers, on the whole, are passionate about helping children learn to read well. The problem is, they usually don't have the correct training to give students with dyslexia the type of help they actually need. I know one family that has left intervention for their dyslexic child entirely up to the school system. He began to receive reading intervention services in 2nd grade. Now, in 11th grade, he is still reading 4 years below grade level. In contrast, Squirrelboy was reading on grade level after 2 1/2 years of outside tutoring. He continued to build his skills for another 1 1/2 years and scored at a proficient level on the state reading testing starting in 3rd grade.

Myth 5: Only a professional can help your dyslexic child

If you suspect that your child has dyslexia, you should absolutely pursue evaluation by a professional. If dyslexia is diagnosed, the best way for a child to learn to read well is tutoring with a program that uses the Orton-Gillingham  (OG) method. This is a slow, deliberate, repetitive method of teaching phonics and training a person's brain to connect sounds and symbols. Many people, myself included, choose to pay for a tutor who has received training in this method. However, there are programs that are designed to be used by parents or other not previously trained people with a connection to the dyslexic. The training in use of these programs is included with the program and lessons are strictly scripted so that it's very difficult to mess them up. One such program is Barton Reading and Spelling. This is the program that was used with Squirrelboy and I can testify that it is excellent. However, if you find a tutor that uses a different OG program or you have access to a different one that you feel capable of implementing, that is perfectly acceptable. The programs differ in details but not in substance.

Myth 6: Your dyslexic child can never be successful unless he/she learns to read competently

Of course, the goal is that early identification and intervention will allow children with dyslexia to pursue all of their goals in life with no accommodations needed. However, this is not always possible. Sometimes dyslexia is found so late in a child's educational career that accommodations such as readers and scribes for schoolwork are necessary, at least for a time. Other times a person's dyslexia is so profound even years of concentrated intervention will not allow this person to read above an elementary level. In this case, accommodations can and should be made and this person can still pursue any dream they want to. My favorite example is the cousin of a former boss of mine who, despite his profound dyslexia, serves as both an Orthodox priest and as a professor of theology at a university in Romania. He can barely read, but, thanks to accommodations throughout his schooling and now in his work, he has been able to have a fruitful academic career.

Myth 7: Dyslexia can be fixed with special glasses or colored filters to put over paper

As I detailed in myth 2, dyslexia is not a vision problem. No amount of special glasses or colored filters is going to help a person's brain to understand the connection between sounds and symbols. That said, it is absolutely a good idea to have your child evaluated by a developmental optometrist if you suspect dyslexia. Sometimes a vision processing disorder can be mistaken for dyslexia, especially if people believe myth #2. Other times, a person may have both a language processing disorder (dyslexia) AND a vision processing disorder. There are glasses and colored filters that can help people with vision processing disorders and, if your child is diagnosed with such a disorder, it's valuable to use all the tools at your disposal.

Myth 8: Dyslexia can be cured by brain training

There is no cure for dyslexia. I would argue that dyslexia does not need a cure. If I made up the names for things I would classify it as a language processing difference, not a disorder. The fact is that, in a literate society, a brain that has difficulty processing the connection between sounds and symbols is at a disadvantage. However, many people with dyslexic brains excel in some other area. Common areas of giftedness for dyslexics include spatial reasoning (there are a lot dyslexic engineers in the world), creativity (there are a lot of dyslexics in the arts), and verbal communication (there are a lot of dyslexics in Hollywood). If your child is diagnosed with dyslexia, you will inevitably run across services that tell you that their computer program with rewire your dyslexic child's brain. Or maybe they'll offer you a set of exercises to do to "integrate primitive reflexes." Many of these things are valuable and can help in a small way, but, ultimately, a dyslexic will only learn to read well with a targeted OG based phonics program.

Myth 9: Dyslexics are stupid

This is not so much a myth as a dangerous way of thinking that unidentified or poorly taught dyslexics can fall into. Dyslexics are not stupid. With the proper intervention and/or accommodations, dyslexics can achieve just as much as their neurotypical peers.  In fact, many dyslexics are extremely gifted. However, their difficultly with reading and writing can mask their giftedness. Some students have a mild form of dyslexia that has been nicknamed "stealth dyslexia." A kid with stealth dyslexia probably performs on an average or maybe even slightly above average level. They likely have problems with spelling, but read competently. However, what's actually happening is that their giftedness is masking their learning difference. If given the proper intervention and/or accommodations, these students will soar far above many of their peers.

Myth 10: Dyslexia is equally common among girls and boys

I actually thought this was true until today. The research has gone back and forth. Initially it was thought that dyslexia was more common in boys. Later researchers concluded that it was simply that more boys were diagnosed because boys were more likely to act out due to frustration, whereas girls might remain quiet and try to hide their disability (promote gender stereotypes much?). The most recent studies show that dyslexia is, in fact, more common in boys than in girls. However, that doesn't mean that your daughter's reading difficulties aren't due to dyslexia. All it means is that, if there are 20 people in a room and one of them is dyslexic, that person is more likely to be male than female.

I hope I've succeeded in opening your eyes a bit to the complicated world of dyslexia.

In Which I Am the Parent of a Boy Scout, a Cub Scout, and a Girl Scout (Despite Only Having Two Kids)

Scouting has been a wonderful experience for our family. In this post I've included a picture that Squirrelboy managed to take of himself at sunset, while backpacking across Isle Royale National Park (it's in Lake Superior and it's the least visited national park in the continental U.S., look it up) this past summer with his Boy Scout troop.

Mr. Engineer is an Eagle Scout. My scouting experience was not nearly so monumental. I participated in Indian Princesses (apparently the equivalent now is Adventure Princesses) through the YMCA with my Dad through most (maybe all, I honestly don't remember) of elementary school, which was scout-like. I was also a member of a Brownie troop at my school for at least one school year (maybe two), but I didn't actually continue in the troop after crossing the bridge to Juniors. Scouting just wasn't my thing, especially the outdoor parts of scouting. Mind you, I enjoy the occasional hike through a beautiful natural area, even a long hike that takes a large portion of the day. However, my ideal outdoor activity is to lie outside in a hammock and read a good book. I also really like my bed, and it's too big to fit into a tent.

It's a good thing I wasn't totally set on my kids having the same view of the outdoors that I do, because otherwise married the wrong man. He got Squirrelboy involved with Cub Scouts as a Tiger in first grade, the first year he was eligible. Squirrelboy went all the way through and earned his Arrow of Light, the highest honor in Cub Scouts. He then dove right into a Boy Scout troop in the spring of 5th grade. In addition to providing him with lots of great campouts and backpacking opportunities, scouting has grown Squirrelboy as a person and as a leader. He has spent quite awhile now in the position of troop quartermaster. That puts him in charge of making sure the right supplies make it to every outing. For an ADHD kid who struggles with details you might think this job would be a nightmare, but he thrives in it. When it comes to on the ground experiences, Squirrelboy's learning and attention differences don't hold him back one bit in scouts. In fact, according to Mr. Engineer (I have to take his word for it since I've never been on a Boy Scout campout), Squirrelboy is the best version of himself on campouts. Somehow his brain focuses in just the right way in that environment. Badges that require a lot of writing are a whole different story, but I like to think they're teaching him to persevere and pursue what he wants even if it involves some things he doesn't like.

Kittygirl, having watched her scout brother from babyhood, knew she wanted to be a scout as soon as possible. When she was in kindergarten there were two choices: Girl Scouts or American Heritage Girls. We visited an American  Heritage Girl troop that met at the local Catholic cathedral. They did some cool stuff and we enjoyed the meeting, but it was just a little too Catholic for us. Though they were very welcoming to us as protestants, I decided scouting didn't also need to include regular lessons in Catholic prayers and theology. We then attended an interest meeting for Girl Scouts, where we learned that a new Daisy troop was being started at Maxwell. A girl from her class and her mom were at the meeting as well, and we both decided to sign up our girls. Kittygirl is still in this troop, now in her second year as a Brownie. The troop doesn't do a lot of outdoor activities, but they do all kinds of other amazing things, including service projects, coding, and more. All the girls in the troop are from her school and they've all become friends. None of them bat an eye when Kittygirl has to get insulin for snack at meetings or treat a low blood sugar. Originally Kittygirl attended Girl Scouts on her own, but, after her T1D diagnosis, I started attending meetings with her to take care of any diabetes needs during the meeting. At this point, I spend very little time one Kittygirl's needs and my role has morphed into more of an assistant leader, though all the planning is done by the amazing troop leader and all I have to do is show up. I've really enjoyed getting to know some of Kittygirl's classmates in a different environment.

Before I experienced Kittygirl's awesome Girl Scout troop, I often lamented that Cub Scouts wasn't open to girls, because I thought that Kittygirl would really enjoy it and I was sure the program was better than the Girl Scout program (turns out it's not better, just different). Well, lo and behold, as Kittygirl's second grade year began Cub Scouts was opened up to girls. She wanted to join, but didn't want to leave her amazing Girl Scout troop behind. I originally told her that she could do both for one year and then she had to choose. Not surprisingly, she adored Cub Scouts. She and the one other girl in her den (dens are officially divided by gender) became fast friends. She loved all the activities and especially the campouts. Interestingly, campouts are a great thing for her disability as well. Due to all the activity, her blood sugar is the best version of itself at campouts. It's usually in range over 80% of the time on campout weekends no matter what she eats with very little work on our part, except for giving her food without insulin when she starts to go low. Keeping her blood sugar in range 80% of the time on a normal day is possible, but a whole lot more work than it is on a campout day. Mr. Engineer is Kittygirl's den leader, and all the events are aimed at the whole family, so it's not weird that, for instance, one of us needs to be with her on overnight events for diabetes care, because all the other kids are with at least one parent for overnight events as well.

As you probably figured out, in the end we have let Kittygirl continue with both scout organizations for a second year. It makes her schedule even more insane (I'll write a post about her insane schedule some other time), but she has gained so much and learned so much through both her troop and he pack that it makes the insanity worth it.

I can't swear that scouting is right for your kid, of course, but, whatever brand of scouting fits your family best, it's absolutely worth trying.

In Which I Unabashedly Praise My Children's Schools

Yesterday I wrote about the many things I didn't like about Squirrelboy's early public school experience, so it's only fair that I also take some time to write about what I love about the schools my kids are currently attending. Since both of them have/had special events going on today, it's the perfect day to praise them.

Kittygirl attend a Spanish Immersion elementary school. The students have two main teachers, one of whom teaches language arts and social studies in English, and one of whom teachers math, science, and a little Spanish language arts in Spanish. They also three of their specials classes in Spanish: music, art, and library/technology. I was excited about Kittygirl learning Spanish, since that's what the two degrees I don't really use are in, but somehow I didn't realize that, in addition to being immersed in a second language, she'd be immersed in a culturally rich environment.

The majority of the Spanish speaking teachers at her school hail from somewhere in the Spanish speaking world, and they pass on their cultures to their students. In addition to this informal transmission of culture, the whole school studies different cultures of the Spanish speaking world throughout the school year. Last year, each grade gave a presentation about a different Spanish speaking country every month at the monthly assembly. The second graders presented on Equatorial Guinea, the only country in Africa in which Spanish is one of the official languages. Many people don't even know that there IS a country in Africa in which Spanish is spoken.

The school doesn't stop there, however. During Hispanic Heritage month (September 15 - October 15), the school hosts a Parade of Nations, which highlights the many nations of the world with which the students and staff of the school have a connection. Students can sign up to represent a country of their heritage, whether it's a country that they or one or both parents were born in, or a country from which their ancestors emigrated generations ago. In our case, our ancestors hailed from a variety of European nations, but we know what they all are and feel some kind of connection to them. The first year  of the parade, in first grade, Kittygirl represented Lithuania. That's the heritage with which I identify most strongly because it's the origin of my maiden name. In second grade Kittygirl really wanted to represent Sweden because her first name is Swedish, but we don't actually have any ancestors from Sweden. However, Mr. Engineer came to the rescue when he told her about his ancestors from right next door in Norway. This year's parade was today, and Kittygirl proudly represented Poland, which is the land from which our family  name originates. I always get a little teary eyed watching countries from all over the world (all continents except Antarctica and Australia were represented this year) being represented by these students and staff. There's a lot of division in our nation right now, and many people are suspicious of those who are different from them in some way. Watching this celebration of the diversity within a united, loving school community is a rare and precious thing.

Even outside of special events, I've been pleased so often with Kittygirl's school. As I mentioned yesterday, the school staff stepped up after her T1D diagnosis. I'm never nervous about sending her to school or worried that the staff will encounter something they can't handle. I have encountered so many parents who have experienced pushback when they asked that their child's medical needs be accommodated in school, I know that this kind of relationship with a school is not something to take for granted. In addition, every teacher I have encountered at her school seems to really love what they're doing and care about the kids and the mission of the school. Teachers are underpaid and underappreciated. This can at times lead to teachers who are just putting in their time until they retire or find another job. Thankfully, there are no teachers like that at Kittygirl's school.

Squirrelboy has only been at his new high school for 9 weeks so far, but I'm also incredibly pleased with it. He has commented that all of his teachers seem to love their jobs. We have also had personal experience, thanks to a stressful incident of mistaken identity last week, with how much the administrators care about the students and the effort they put into getting to know them. Squirrelboy's English teacher alone, however, might make sending him back to school worth it. As you might imagine, English has never been a favorite subject of Squirrelboys, what with the combination of his dyslexia and his ADHD. It was like pulling teeth to get him to write and to read literature when I was homeschooling him. However, his teacher has gotten him excited about learning how to communicate well, even though that includes writing. If I could have personally created an English teacher to help Squirrelboy thrive I would have created someone almost exactly like this man. He share Squirrelboy's passion of mountain biking, he does web design on the side, and he's also very interested in photography and videography, which are Squirrelboy's two main passions aside from biking at the moment. The first day of school, he told the students the story of how he left a corporate job and took a 60% pay cut to become a teacher. He's clearly passionate about his job and about helping students succeed.

Said amazing English teacher invited Squirrelboy to join the radio and journalism club, of which he is the adviser. Through that, Squirrelboy was given the opportunity to be the producer for the school news show. Since he's interested in pursuing such a job professionally, it's a perfect way for him to experience some of the things such a job entails before he makes any serious choices about his future.

Today, Squirrelboy is on the videography team covering his school's participation in the climate strike. Though most climate strikes were held a week ago, apparently this whole week has been designated at Climate Strike Week, and Squirrelboy's school decided to offer the students a chance to participate today. They aren't forcing the students to participate, of course. Those who don't choose to participate will have a supervised study hall at school, but the majority of both staff and students have chosen to participate. As I write this, they're out on a major road near their school holding signs about climate change and doing their part to raise awareness of the urgency of this issue.

I could go on about either school, but this is already getting long. Both of my children attend magnet schools, but I know it's not only specialized schools that contain caring, competent, and innovative teachers and staff. My overall experience with the public school system has been mixed, but I'm very thankful I currently have the opportunity to partner with two amazing schools in the education of my children.

In Which I Have a Complicated Relationship with the Public School System

When I was young, idealistic, and childless, I was certain that I would never consider having my children educated anywhere other than the public schools. In principle, I believe very strongly in the American public school system.  Historically speaking, it's a provocative and amazing thing that a nation would provide, free of charge, an education for all the children (both boys and girls) residing within its borders. This even applies to non-citizen children and those without legal residency. It is a revolutionary idea, looking at history, and even many parts of the world today, that, by law, even children with special needs are guaranteed a free and appropriate public education.

Sure, I knew that the system was not problem free. I knew there was a focus on testing that I didn't like. I knew that not all schools were high achieving like the affluent suburban school system from which I graduated.  However, I figured that any minor problems we might encounter could be overcome by good parents who were committed to being involved in their childrens' education. I figured, if my hypothetical children had any problems at all, they would be social, not academic, because I figured my children would be like me - bright but not particularly socially adept.

My rosy view of the public school system was not tested at all by Squirrelboy's first encounter with our local public school. He was behind in speech and qualified first for state provided early intervention and then (starting on his third birthday) public preschool at our local elementary school. He loved every minute of it. His teacher and his speech therapist were both amazing, and I was confident that he would continue to thrive there in kindergarten and beyond.

Then Squirrelboy started kindergarten and it all went downhill. Despite the fact that we had done everything we were supposed to do to build "prereading" skills, he wasn't learning letters at the rate he was expected to, let alone associating them with sounds. I looked up the signs of dyslexia, and he had every single one. I shared my suspicions wit his teacher, but she assured me that he was too young to be diagnosed with dyslexia. She said that for some kids, especially boys, iti just takes a little while for reading to click. She assured me that, after Christmas, a key would turn in his brain and he'd suddenly take off in reading. Even when it didn't happen right after Christmas, his teacher continued to dismiss our concerns. This happened consistently right up until the spring conference, at which she told us that reading just wasn't clicking for Squirrelboy and she thought he would benefit from "an extra year of primary" (eduspeak for repeating kindergarten). It was at that point that we sought and outside evaluation for dyslexia and then started tutoring after school two days a week. We insisted that Squirrelboy be moved on to first grade, not believing that another year of the methods that failed to teach him to read the first time around would miraculously have a different effect the second time.

About a third of the way into first grade I first started looking into homeschooling. Squirrelboy was miserable. Every Sunday at bedtime he would cry because he had to endure another week of school. In addition to not reading at the level he was expected to (despite making steady progress with the tutor), he had a very difficult time living up to the behavior expectations. He was constantly being told to "move his bee down to yellow" for various minor infractions, and it broke his heart that he never got to participate in the special experiences given to students who were easily able to meet the behavior expectations. We brought up with his teacher that we thought he might have ADHD, but, just like with his kindergarten teacher, our concerns were dismissed out of hand. He wasn't excessively disruptive, so surely he couldn't have ADHD. Some kids, especially boys, we were told, just take a little longer to mature. Just give him time, he'll learn to manage his behavior.

Had it been up to me, I would have pulled Squirrelboy out of school to homeschool during, or, at the latest, after first grade, but Mr. Engineer was not on board at the time. He made a reasonable point that it would be difficult to concentrate on homeschool with a toddler underfoot (Kittygirl was one at the time). He is the son of two public school teachers, and his commitment to the public school system was even stronger than mine. So we continued. After first grade, things in improved a bit. Squirrelboy was reading on grade level by third grade and finished the tutoring program by the end of fourth grade. He still had problems focusing and struggled with any subject that involved lots of details, especially math, but his teachers consistently dismissed us when we brought up ADHD as a possibility.

During his 5th grade year we had to make a decision about middle school. We knew we didn't want to send him to our local middle school. It consistently has one of the lowest sets of test scores in the district. While I am among the first  to say that tests don't mean everything, it does mean something if the large majority of the students at a school can't achieve even basic competence on them. The school also has a lot of behavior problems and some of the students are even involved in gangs. Though it would have horrified the young, idealistic version of me who wanted to teach in an inner city school, I knew I could not put my child in that environment. He got a spot at a magnet school. It was better and he might have done okay there, but the strict dress code and strict discipline would have been stifling to him. Mr. Engineer, to my surprise, agreed with my point of view and told me to move forward with plans to homeschool him for middle school.

Homeschool as not all butterflies and roses all the time. After an initial honeymoon period in which Squirrelboy was ready to do anything I said because he was so happy not to be in public middle school we started to butt heads fairly often and there were moments when I seriously wondered if putting him in that school I had so wanted to avoid would really be any worse than the daily torture we were enduring. Things started to improve when we finally decided to have him formally evaluated for ADHD. When he was constantly distracted while sitting in a quiet house at the kitchen table with just me in the room I realized that it had been silly of me to let his teachers push off my suspicions for so many years. To the surprise of no one who knew him well, he was diagnosed with moderate ADHD, combined type. It was quite a journey finding the right medication and the right dosage for him, but, once we did, it was a revelation. I could actually read a page to him without him interrupting me every other sentence. He could read and answer questions in his history book without forgetting the question halfway through his answer. It was amazing.

Homeschool continued to get better in 7th grade when Mr. Engineer took over as math teacher. It turns out that I'm a really pathetic math teacher. The one thing that bothered me about homeschool, in fact, was other homeschoolers. I endured so many conversations about how horrible our local public schools (or just public schools in general) were. Some were from parents who had pulled their children out of school after bad experiences, but other parents had never sent their children to public school. They were just certain that no child could every possibly be decently educated in a public school. Or, at the very least, they MIGHT get an acceptable education, but they would certainly be subject to evil influences and grow up to be horrible people. This was from people from all over the religious spectrum - conservative Christians all the way to avowed Atheists.

I normally kept my mouth shut about the fact that, all the time I was happily homeschooling Squirrelboy, I was also having a great experience as a public school parent. Kittygirl started kindergarten the year Squirrelboy started middle school. Even though she's a very different child and might actually have had a good experience there, I was adamantly opposed to sending her to the elementary school that Squirrelboy attended. After all of his struggles there, the idea of sending another child left a bad taste in my mouth. Happily,  Mr. Engineer was sensitive to my feelings and didn't insist that we send her there. We gave serious consideration to a fairly new private school that was affordable and followed the same education philosophy as her preschool, which we adored. But then we got notice that she had won ah highly coveted lottery spot at the Spanish immersion elementary school.  We didn't immediately  decide to accept it, but, after reflection and (a little bit of) prayer, we decided it couldn't hurt to try kindergarten at the free school that so many people wanted their kids to get into. After all, the private school wasn't going to turn away our money if the Spanish immersion school was a bad fit for Kittygirl and we sought to enroll her there for first grade.

Kittygirl thrived, and continues to thrive, at that school. I was terrified of sending her back after she was diagnosed with T1D during presidents' day weekend of her kindergarten year, but the school stepped up and has provided great care. It's not always the same care I would provide, but she's safe and healthy and doesn't miss out on anything due to her diabetes.

If Squirrelboy had been my only child I might have eventually become one of those homeschooling parents who denigrate the public school system, but the fact is that public school has been nothing but a good experience for my second child.

That catches us up to today, when I've recently laid my homeschooling parent identity aside and Squirrelboy has started high school at another magnet school. He did not want to go back to public school. He grudgingly agreed that the small magnet school would be better than our gigantic local high school if he HAD to go back to school, but he really didn't want to go back. The monday before school started (for some odd reason our school year always starts on a Wednesday) he asked me if we could go shopping - for homeschool curriculum. I was expecting he would have a bumpy transition and his grades might be less than ideal for awhile as he got used to working for someone other than mom and dad. I expected that he would say the first day was tolerable, at best. To my great surprise, he declared the first day "great," and his school experience has remained almost entirely positive. He complains about some assignments and he says Civics class is boring, but overall he's amazingly positive about school. The school was also amazingly receptive to setting up a 504 plan for his ADHD and gave him every single accommodation I asked for.

For the moment, I have a mostly positive feeling about public school. Both kids are in schools that are good places for them, with teachers and staff who love their jobs and do their best to help the kids succeed. However, I'm no longer that idealist 20-something who thought public school was the only acceptable choice for socially conscious parents. Even the best school isn't a good fit for every kid, and, for some kids and families, homeschool or private school is simply a better choice. The American public school system is flawed, yes, but, in the right circumstances, it has a lot of things going for it.