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 Post subject: **Help**
PostPosted: Sun Mar 20, 2016 5:21 pm 
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My son is 12 years old and has dyslexia and ADD. Ive been homeschooling for the past five years. We took him out of public school because of terrible treatment of him by his teachers for not being able to complete his work. I can answer any questions about that, however my problem is what's going on currently. I did a lot of research about homeschooling when we pulled him out of school, and at the time, we felt like the best thing for him would be to Unschool him, which is what we did until this past year. However, last year we realized that we may have made a mistake and gone too far in that direction because while he's been happy and we've had a wonderful, amazing time together, he cannot write, spell, or do basic math. I have been struggling last year and the first half of this year to try and get him up to speed but it's been a real struggle. He's an amazimg young man, however he just is not used to sitting down and doing just plain school work. My biggest struggle is trying to discern when a learning hurdle in a given subject is due to his ADD, dyslexia, or just laziness. I'm also very bad about not wanting to overwhelm him so I sometimes don't expect enough of him. I guesss what I want are some solid guidelines about how much time every day is reasonable for working on his lessons. As it stands I'd say we spend maybe an hour and a half per day and I know that's not near enough. The final hurdle we struggle with is that the only medication that he's able to tolerate for the ADD is in a patch which irritates his skin. So if we spend too much time on school, he gets very angry red welts from them. I don't know if anyone here has gone from unschooling to real homeschooling but I would sure love to hear that it's possible.


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 Post subject: Re: **Help**
PostPosted: Sun Mar 20, 2016 6:36 pm 
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Welcome!

What state do you live in?

We're in Ohio - and here the law requires homeschool children to spend 900 hours/year. If you do a standard 180 day year, that's 5 hours a day active instructional time. If you go year-round, it's a little less.

In our house, we keep track of hours in a log, and make sure we're meeting the legal requirements for hours - and then some. But, we don't do the same amount every day. We DO go through the summer. Some days we take off, some days we do 2-3 hours, some days we do 9 or 10 hours. But we average a little over 100 hours a month most months.

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 Post subject: Re: **Help**
PostPosted: Sun Mar 20, 2016 9:10 pm 
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Posts: 6
I should have clarified what I meant by the time spent. I spend an hour and a half of instruction, depending on which day and what subject we're working on. He spends probably up to three or four hours completing his work and we do go year round. My concern is that he struggles to stay focused for long periods of time. He works in spurts thrpughout the day, so instead of starting at 9:00 am and finishing by 12:00 or 1:00 he works in 15-20 minute intervals, finishing up at the end of the day. He also goes to occupational therapy, we go on field trips, and we have a few fun elective classes: art, music, phys. ed. and then Bible study when we can work it in. I'm concerned mainly that due to the unschooling, he has poor study habits and at his age having started puberty with all that entails, it doesn't lend itself to being the best time to try and retrain him. If he wants to go to college at some point, I worry that he won't have the tools to succeed.


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 Post subject: Re: **Help**
PostPosted: Sun Mar 20, 2016 9:30 pm 
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Posts: 8115
I'd encourage you to log every minute that he spends for a few weeks and chart how much work he's actually doing and when.

And, log your own time teaching him, too, gradually working toward having him do more self-teaching as he gets older.

Perhaps a program like one of these would help (I haven't tried any of them, there might be others that are better. I log ours by hand the old-fashioned way)
http://workawesome.com/software/web-bas ... -software/

Rather like those of us who eat to much can benefit by logging our eating - it can help you clearly see where your and his time are spent most effectively.

It is true that things will have to change a lot between now and when he starts college, if he currently has trouble with math, spelling, writing & time management.

But, as they say, the journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step - if you get started now and work the direction that you and he want to go, with God's help, you can make it : )

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 Post subject: Re: **Help**
PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 12:26 am 
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Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2012 5:22 pm
Posts: 8837
HSmom1125 wrote:
My son is 12 years old and has dyslexia and ADD. Ive been homeschooling for the past five years. We took him out of public school because of terrible treatment of him by his teachers for not being able to complete his work. I can answer any questions about that, however my problem is what's going on currently. I did a lot of research about homeschooling when we pulled him out of school, and at the time, we felt like the best thing for him would be to Unschool him, which is what we did until this past year. However, last year we realized that we may have made a mistake and gone too far in that direction because while he's been happy and we've had a wonderful, amazing time together, he cannot write, spell, or do basic math. I have been struggling last year and the first half of this year to try and get him up to speed but it's been a real struggle. He's an amazimg young man, however he just is not used to sitting down and doing just plain school work. My biggest struggle is trying to discern when a learning hurdle in a given subject is due to his ADD, dyslexia, or just laziness. I'm also very bad about not wanting to overwhelm him so I sometimes don't expect enough of him. I guesss what I want are some solid guidelines about how much time every day is reasonable for working on his lessons. As it stands I'd say we spend maybe an hour and a half per day and I know that's not near enough. The final hurdle we struggle with is that the only medication that he's able to tolerate for the ADD is in a patch which irritates his skin. So if we spend too much time on school, he gets very angry red welts from them. I don't know if anyone here has gone from unschooling to real homeschooling but I would sure love to hear that it's possible.



>>> he's been happy and we've had a wonderful, amazing time together, he cannot write, spell, or do basic math.
<<< What a wonderful childhood he's had! It is probably time to begin teaching him learning skills.


>>> he's just is not used to sitting down and doing just plain school work. My biggest struggle is trying to discern when a learning hurdle in a given subject is due to his ADD, dyslexia, or just laziness.
<<< Laziness is as big a problem as the rest. Learning to do tasks that are distasteful to us is a big part of life. Does he clean his room and do other chores?

>>> solid guidelines about how much time every day is reasonable for working on his lessons. As it stands I'd say we spend maybe an hour and a half per day and I know that's not near enough.
>>> There was once a mother that sat in on the public school's classes and tracked just how much time was spent in lecture and seatwork. She also tracked discipline time and repeating instructions, etc. With snack time, recesses, lunch, etc, as I recall, about 1 1/2 hours was spent in actual learning time.


I would suggest introducing a class on "study skills". Perhaps show him how to break down a week's work into daily tasks and practice sitting at a task longer each week, each day, until the prescribed work is done on time. Work towards allowing him to set the goals for a week and turning in the work at the end of the week.

Maybe he could practice times tables while shooting hoops and spelling words while dribbling, or clapping, or whatever.

I would also like to point out that field trips, PE, recess, choir practice/music, practice for plays, classroom parties and classroom movies are also counted towards public school "education" hours. :)


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 Post subject: Re: **Help**
PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:08 am 
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Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2012 3:05 pm
Posts: 3524
Location: Central TX
I can relate. My kids have Dyslexia and ADD. They are opposites in many ways, though. My 11 yr old ds, even ON medication, still doesn't like anything having to do with school (never has) and does his school in small incriments throughout the day, like your ds. The medication does help, but he sees no use for reading, writing, math, etc and would rather spend all day in his room doing Legos. He's already told me he will never go to College, either. I think this attitude has a lot to do with his Dyslexia/Dysgraphia and all the struggles it creates for him. But I also think a lot of it is just his personality, because my daughter has always loved school and never needed motivation from me. She will just go do all her schoolwork and be done with it (She's also the hyperactive one and her Dyslexia shows up in her spelling, not her reading).

They are not lazy, though. Both ADD and Dyslexia affects your executive function, so if you have both, it's a double whammy. And people with ADD and Dyslexia, have to work at least twice as hard as "normal" people, to produce the same results. They work VERY hard, even if it doesn't look like it from the outside. I have ADD myself, so I can definitely relate to my kids in that area. Things that are very easy for others, are very difficult and exhausting for me.

Do you visit the blog, Homeschooling With Dyslexia? She has 8 kids with Dyslexia/ADD and has a wealth of info/advice. She has a blog post on how to motivate your kids and another one on how she homeschools her kids once they reach 7th grade, to be more independent.

I haven't gone from unschooling to homeschooling, but we do need to catch up because we've had to spend so much time just in the basics. I plan on using Institute for Excellence in writing, either this coming year or the next year, for writing. I hear it works great for Dyslexics and they have something called "fix it" for grammar and writing, to get caught up to where they should be.

I don't time how long school takes, we just go until done. Some days, we don't get to the extras. I spend no more than an hour a day with reading/spelling instruction because they will get overwhelmed. They each do one math sheet and do some math facts drill on the computer. I read from the science or history book. They each read a chapter (dd reads in a book and ds uses audio books from Learning Ally). They do a little typing. And that's mostly it right now, definitely doesn't take several hours. You want to challenge your kid some, but not to the point of them being in tears and overwhelmed. You can use accomidations, like he narrates and you write it out for him or he narrates into a speech to text program. I think for our older Dyslexic kids, learning to use technology to their advantage is very important (speech to text, text to speech, audio books, spell check, etc).

In the end, they do need to learn the basics (reading, writing, math), but the best thing you can do, is give them plenty of time to explore their interests. That's even more important for Dyslexics, because that's usually where they thrive, in areas outside academics. It sounds like you've done a good job in that area and he's had a good childhood so far. Much better than he would have had in the school system.

_________________
Mom to Christian (13), Saphira (10), Xavier (5), and Adrian (2).


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 Post subject: Re: **Help**
PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:24 am 
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Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2012 5:22 pm
Posts: 8837
"Rather like those of us who eat to much can benefit by logging our eating - it can help you clearly see where your and his time are spent most effectively."

I'm pretty sure I should be offended here! :mrgreen:


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 Post subject: Re: **Help**
PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:25 am 
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Posts: 8837
"It sounds like you've done a good job in that area and he's had a good childhood so far. Much better than he would have had in the school system."

AMEN! :)


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 Post subject: Re: **Help**
PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:31 am 
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Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2012 5:22 pm
Posts: 8837
I have a friend whose son has issues. He found Times Tales worked for him to learn his multiplication table.

http://www.timestales.com/

(Might be a good time to mention the affiliate page here but I don't see Times Tales on it.)


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 Post subject: Re: **Help**
PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 11:01 am 
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Posts: 8837
Regarding Institute for Excellence in writing - I got to borrow this for a short time and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately it was during the VHS tape era and the tapes were wonky. I wish it weren't so expensive. Our homeschool library had it! 8-)


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