Hi! New to list
Mark & Kelly Chandler
Hi!
My name is Kelly. Mark and I have a wonderful daughter , Caroline, who is
16. We are all de-schooling having finally taken Caroline out of PS in
February. Yes, I know... but we DID'NT know until now. The best thing that
we ever did was remove her from that poisonous environment. We only wish we
had done it before and also with her older sister ( now 21).
I have been following the ADD thread with great interest and could not keep
out of it. Caroline is dyslexic, add, dyscalculic(?), etcetcetc. Also has a
very high IQ. You'd never know to meet her that she had any difficulties
with traditional schoolwork. Except for a few years of elementary school
when she was with wonderful caring teachers working on the dyslexia, school
has been a form of torture for all of us - parents, sister, grandparents ,
you name it. The district , becasue of the obvious difference in
intelligence and testing abilites, suggested special ed classes - which as I
said were great in lower grades. Middle school and high school she was not
taught much if anything . Mostly learned stuff at home ;-)We should have
caught on, right?
Now to the point: these learning differences are very real. They do not have
to become excuses or labels to exist. The strengths and weaknesses occur in
any setting. Caroline simply cannot add, subtract, multiple or divide
without the use of a calculator and then she may or may not write the answer
down correctly: ex. 46 rather than 64. She is,on the other hand, perfectly
capable of doing geometry and algrbra if allowed the use of the calculator.
She reads any thing she lays hold of, pretty easily and with great
comprehension. However, she doesn't spell well and when she writes ( rather
than types) her writing is nearly incomprehensible. Allowances do have to be
made. She handles the stickier situations gracefully now, but when she was
younger she would become very frustrated and behave quite badly. This was
true whether she was playing on the weekends or in a classroom setting.
If we hadn't had this information, she would have thought she was stupid,
instead of just learning in a different way. We would not have know how to
help her and may have done her serious harm emotionally.
We do see a big change in her behavior and happiness since February. She is
looking forward to real life - college and beyond. She tells everyone that
she homeschools and is on the " accelerated program" so she can go on to
college in the fall of next year. So far she hasn't looked a textbook, but
has read up a storm on her own- worked a zillion hours on the computer on a
website a friend has- watched a bunch of neat movies. Personally, I think
she can go on tomorrow. But then there's the pesky SAT. That's a whole
nother thread ;-)
Kelly
_________________________________________________________________
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My name is Kelly. Mark and I have a wonderful daughter , Caroline, who is
16. We are all de-schooling having finally taken Caroline out of PS in
February. Yes, I know... but we DID'NT know until now. The best thing that
we ever did was remove her from that poisonous environment. We only wish we
had done it before and also with her older sister ( now 21).
I have been following the ADD thread with great interest and could not keep
out of it. Caroline is dyslexic, add, dyscalculic(?), etcetcetc. Also has a
very high IQ. You'd never know to meet her that she had any difficulties
with traditional schoolwork. Except for a few years of elementary school
when she was with wonderful caring teachers working on the dyslexia, school
has been a form of torture for all of us - parents, sister, grandparents ,
you name it. The district , becasue of the obvious difference in
intelligence and testing abilites, suggested special ed classes - which as I
said were great in lower grades. Middle school and high school she was not
taught much if anything . Mostly learned stuff at home ;-)We should have
caught on, right?
Now to the point: these learning differences are very real. They do not have
to become excuses or labels to exist. The strengths and weaknesses occur in
any setting. Caroline simply cannot add, subtract, multiple or divide
without the use of a calculator and then she may or may not write the answer
down correctly: ex. 46 rather than 64. She is,on the other hand, perfectly
capable of doing geometry and algrbra if allowed the use of the calculator.
She reads any thing she lays hold of, pretty easily and with great
comprehension. However, she doesn't spell well and when she writes ( rather
than types) her writing is nearly incomprehensible. Allowances do have to be
made. She handles the stickier situations gracefully now, but when she was
younger she would become very frustrated and behave quite badly. This was
true whether she was playing on the weekends or in a classroom setting.
If we hadn't had this information, she would have thought she was stupid,
instead of just learning in a different way. We would not have know how to
help her and may have done her serious harm emotionally.
We do see a big change in her behavior and happiness since February. She is
looking forward to real life - college and beyond. She tells everyone that
she homeschools and is on the " accelerated program" so she can go on to
college in the fall of next year. So far she hasn't looked a textbook, but
has read up a storm on her own- worked a zillion hours on the computer on a
website a friend has- watched a bunch of neat movies. Personally, I think
she can go on tomorrow. But then there's the pesky SAT. That's a whole
nother thread ;-)
Kelly
_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com