Stories Of Dyslexia Hope

I am working hard to give my son role models that he can look up to.  One of the older boys in our county has struggled with dyslexia.  My little man really looks up to him, because he knows that if J can get through school so can he.  I don't think J knows it, but I can see that he has taken a special interest in my little guy which makes him beam with pride that someone older notices him at a livestock show.  We never know where their special talent will take them, but what I do know is that we need to give them a wide range of experiences to help them find where they fit.  That goes for all kids, not just ones with dyslexia.

PB shared this when one of our mutual friends linked to one of my first dyslexia posts.   I think it is safe to say that someone took an interest in her son as well.

"My youngest son Jim was and still is dyslexic. It caused him to develop a phenomenal memory and he is very analytical. Those traits made college hard but achievable. 

He never took notes but sat in the front and listened intently. And he made it getting a BS in Ag Econ with a minor in Animal Science. 

Now he has a great job in Garden City as a Risk Manager at Cattle Empire. He buys feed grains and is starting to trade other commodities. He still can't spell or write a decent paragraph but his ability to read the market is uncanny. So the message is 'don't despair' . Your son will find a path.

 Oh and I forget to tell you. J was in special ed for reading and he thought he was not smart, but in middle school Sandy Fraser took him to the state horse expo at Rock Springs. He watched the horse quiz bowl. He came home and wanted to try it the next year.

A special thank you to my friend Laurie over at Country Linked for this photo.

We practiced all winter and the rest is history. He discovered he was very smart. The last year he was in Horse Quiz Bowl he dominated the competition at state.  It gave J belief in himself and his intellect. School was still hard but it was manageable."

My little guy knows that feeling of not feeling smart, because he was in what they now call Title I reading.  He was so frustrated with being pulled out of class.  I am happy to say that after our summer of tutoring, he is not attending Title I reading this fall!  :)

There are so many great leaders and inventors that struggled with dyslexia, but overcame and did great things.  People like:  Alexander Graham Bell, Steve Jobs, Jay Leno, John Lennon, Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Cruise, and even Walt Disney.  Follow the Center for Research, Evaluation and Awareness of Dyslexia to see a different person everyday this month.  You might be surprised at what they can accomplish with the right encouragement.

-A Kansas Farm Mom

A California Farm Mom Shares Her Son's Dyslexia Story (Part 2)

 Part 2 of a Guest Post from A California Farm Mom.  See what their experience was with testing and tutoring.  Part 1 can be found here.

Toby was tested, which is about a 3 hour process, the day after we arrived & was diagnosed w/dyslexia.  He was also given a score from the TOVA test which grades the ADHD, which we never had a grade for to know the severity of it just a diagnosis.  Immediately after the testing, we began tutoring.  We tutored for 4 hours per day for 7 days.  I had planned our trip so the tutoring would start on a Wednesday & he would be tutored for a few days then have the weekend in the middle of the 7 day stretch to give his brain a break.  After all he was not quite 7 years old at the time & was on Summer break & nearly 2000 miles away from home wondering what the heck am I doing here.

Immediately after the first day of tutoring I could already see changes in our son.  We had gone to a museum after tutoring that first day & he saw a sign that said, "Do Not Enter."  He stood there & was actually trying to sound out the words and read what it said.  He had never done this before & was not interested.  I could see his confidence building in himself as he succeeded in sounding out those words & reading what the sign said.  I was so proud of him.  I had given him one of the biggest hugs ever as the tears began to form in the corner of my eyes.  What an accomplishment!

As the week went on I could see him becoming a happier kid & getting along with his brother better and so forth.  His outlook on life was changing in a more positive way because he was aware of more.  After the first few days, the Department head, Dr. Hurford, and I sat down & had a few words.  He informed me that our son's dyslexia is worse than what he had expected from our visits over the phone, but on a good note he is improving faster than what they thought.  It was a blessing.  This is where I strongly believe in early intervention. He also told me that ideally they would like to have him for a year.  With that said, my heart sunk.  That really told me how severe his dyslexia was/is.  A whole year.  How could this be possible?

Well in life I take everything with a grain of salt.  I wasn't going to commit to a year nor walk away.  I could possibly see a month at a time in the Summer, but a year would be tough.  In my mind I knew that we needed to try to continue & I saw the results that we were getting but where could I get such results back at home, 1950 miles away?  Dr. Hurford's son, Thomas, whom is a college graduate & following in his Dad's footsteps, was doing the tutoring with our son & had already created a bond.  I thought to myself how could we do this.  I'd go back to the hotel room in the evenings & continue researching dyslexia & try to learn all that I could while there & thinking how can we continue this....

Then the idea came to me a few days before we left.  Why not try tutoring via Skype?  We could only try.  They were willing to give it a shot & I knew it would be a very good shot if I could get our son to stay focused at the computer screen with his tutor, Thomas.  Well upon arriving home, we took a week off then went right back to it.  We made a commitment to tutor 2 hours per week, 1 hour on Tuesday & 1 hour on Thursdays.  The first time our son "Skyped" with Thomas, Toby was sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by his Legos with the iPad right in front of him with his tutor there.  Our son was actually staying focused & working with Thomas through "Skype" on the ipad!!!  Here he was surrounded by the Legos that he loved & without even touching them, Thomas had his complete attention.

I was absolutely amazed & was trying not to jump for joy & break the focusing.  It was a joyful moment for sure.  We continued the tutoring until school started & now we tutor weekly since that really does make for a long day for a young 7 year old, attending school all day then coming home & sitting for another hour being tutored.  So Wednesdays, our son has a shorter day at school & we tutor those days.

I constantly see improvement in our son in working with Thomas.  Not only in his reading & sounding out words, but his self confidence & self esteem.  Some things are still a struggle, but he is improving.  I remind myself that Rome wasn't built in a day, as much as I would like it to be sometimes.

By taking our son to Kansas, for the testing, I was able to get a diagnosis there for him & the help that he needed.  We have returned home with a 8 page report that explains his testing & diagnosis, in which I was able to present to his IEP (Individualized  Educational Plan) of teachers & staff that we meet with at school.  It was a eye opener.  Before when I would mention dyslexia it was like it went through one ear & out the other.  They did not know how to test for it nor how to teach students with it should there be a diagnosis.  I have several teacher friends that I questioned before coming home from Kansas.  "If you had a student that was dyslexic, would you know how to teach them or help them?"  They had no idea.  And not to take away from these teachers because they are good teachers, but the education system is not recognizing this yet.  Not at a level in which it should be & have the support for it.  Remember, 1 in every 5, is possibly is dyslexic.  That's 20%!

With that said, I haven't made any plans yet, but perhaps hoping to go out again this next Summer back to PSU & get some more one on one help and continue the tutoring services of their program.  I can't imagine the struggles that these people go through in life that haven't gotten this help & can't read & don't understand things such as others do.  We all learn things differently and sometimes some just learn even more differently than others.  It might be more time consuming, but in the end it is all worth it.  Our son continues to amaze us at some of the things that he does out on the farm or even in the house playing with Legos and so forth.  He has a very high IQ, but he has just not been able to completely unleash it yet.  We can foresee him possibly being a engineer in the future based upon how he uses his mind to build things & structurally think ahead.  Time will tell.  His speech has been improving since our intervention & his positive outlook on life has drastically increased which is a huge factor in anything that you do in life.  We could not be happier with the results that we are seeing from our participation in the CARRD program, at Pittsburg State University.  We still have a long road ahead but we are also so thankful for the help that we have found.  You know your child best.  My best advice is use your own judgement & follow what your heart tells you.

Sandy vB

Thank you so much for sharing Sandy!  Each child's experience is different and we all do what we think is best for their child at the time. -KFM

For more information check out the post How Do I Sort Through all of this Information of Dyslexia and ADHD? 

A California Farm Mom Shares Her Son's Dyslexia Story (Part 1)

I have shared some about our Dyslexia story.  In the coming weeks, I hope to share many more.  Up today is my friend from college, Sandy.-KFM
Well life can have it's challenges but in the end I strongly believe God only gives us what we can handle.  After our second son, Toby, was born we noticed some things were different from our first child.

We closely observed & made mental notes along the way.  Before the age of 3, he was tested at the UC Davis Mind Institute, in Northern California, to see if he was autistic.  They ruled autism out.  But did suspect ADHD.  From there it still became a guessing game as to what was/is going on.  As we left the mind institute that day with our heads hanging low & our self esteem just as low with no answers, I told my husband, that our son is very smart.  While Toby was in being tested he was telling the psychologist all about tractors & balers & combines, etc. and she was looking at us asking what is he talking about.  I told my husband, if we had turned the tables on her that day & tested her on farm equipment compared to Toby, she would have failed & Toby would have been the genius.  He just isn't into his ABC's & 1-2-3's right now.  He was so advanced in so many ways & his level of intelligence you could see was very high.

After all, we had built a pool in the Fall of 2011 and that next Spring when we took the cover off of it & our youngest son insisted, at not quite 4 years of age, that we needed to put hot water in the pool so we could swim in it.  Well he knew that when you first turn the water on, on the garden hose that had been sitting in the sunshine, that hot water would come out for a bit.  So he would go out to the pool 3-4 times a day & put the hot water in the pool from the garden hose trying to warm up the pool.  Yeah & this is at not even age of 4!

As time moved on, he attended a preschool for a few months where he would be dismissed after a couple of months for being too active.  Although while there, a speech delay was noticed, so he was referred for speech therapy.  From there we were able to get him into a head start program, which was wonderful.  Kindergarten was interesting to say the least and seemed like a waste of a year.

Upon ending his Kindergarten year I still wasn't happy with the educational results that we were seeing.  I was starting to see signs that Toby could possibly be dyslexic part way through his first year in head start & into kindergarten.  I had a local friend, whom is a daughter of a Doctor, whom I had visited with who had a daughter that is now in her mid 20's that had all the same symptoms & was dyslexic.  So she had given me clues as to what to look for.  Her daughter was not diagnosed until 5th grade but all the signs & symptoms were there.   She had more of a struggle getting the staff to believe her & the IEP team than anything.  Our son was stimulated by the numbers, excessive students his Kindergarten year. The school he attended was at about 500 kids, grades K-5 & 30 per classroom with no aides.  It was time for a change.

We looked into the local charter school which would be on it's 4th year from being founded, beginning the following Fall.  There were 25 kids max per class & the school system also requires volunteering by parents.  So when we toured the school every class had at least 1 parent helper & several of them had 2 parent helpers in class.  This really brought the teacher to student ratio down.  This is what he needed.

He had a wonderful 1st grade teacher & an aide & half way through his 1st grade year I was really starting to question myself more & more if our son was Dyslexic.  He was not yet able to rehearse his ABC's completely & to me that is almost something that should be known by the age 3-4.  He would get 1/3 of the way through them & start skipping around w/ the rest of the alphabet.  I saw other signs as well too.  Often he would write numbers & letters backwards & sometimes completely spell out his whole first name backwards.  Spelling was near impossible for him & reading, well it wasn't even possible where as his classmates at the end of their first grade year were already reading.  It was so frustrating.  Then I got a phone call driving home from our county fair one day from my good friend, Nicole Small, in Kansas.

She knew my struggles with our youngest son & had observed him as well, a few times when we were out visiting one another.  She proceeded to tell me about their youngest son.  Their son was struggling with some of the same issues but not quite as bad as our son & she had just taken him to Pittsburg State University, in Pittsburg, Kansas to have him tested for dyslexia.  She had told me that her son was exiting 2nd grade & still hated to do homework & still wasn't reading & after 1 full week at Pittsburg State University & the Carrd Center, her son was now doing his homework & loved reading!!!  What an amazing accomplishment.  She was calling to tell me to try to get me to take our youngest son there when we were out next time.

Well when you go through these struggles & your kids mean the world to you, you try to do what is best for them any way that you can.  When Nicole told me about this program, her word to me as a friend, was good enough advice for me to look into it.  I called back to PSU & talked to the staff about their program and our son & his situation & what struggles he was having, what testing we had been through & so forth.  Immediately yes he said he was a strong candidate for this program.  So then of course, us being from Northern California, I researched local places that I could go for the same kind of service.  The closest place I found was about 1 hour 45 min away & had a pretty hefty price tag & required 2 weeks of schooling for both Toby & I, in addition upon completion of the testing, if Toby would have been found dyslexic.  So instead, I made plans to travel back to Kansas with our boys & proceed with the testing. 

 

Stay tuned for tomorrow, when we see how Toby did at Pittsburg State. -KFM

 For more information check out the post How Do I Sort Through all of this Information of Dyslexia and ADHD?