When I made the decision to homeschool my children, I had many visions in my mind of what it would be like. I envisioned sitting at the table with them, helping them learn math. I imagined us making cookies together and talking about fractions as we measured. I could see us taking time to read the Bible and pray every day, and reinforcing geography by praying for other countries and finding them on the map. I pictured us getting together, and as a family writing letters to a child we sponsored in some other country. I imagined lots of messy art projects and many, many science experiments. One thing I envisioned most of all was me sitting on the couch reading to my children, relaxed, unhurried, and them being interested and engaged in what I was reading to them. Yes, I planned to instill in each of them a love of reading and literature that would surely stay with them for the rest of their lives.
I read about many different styles of homeschooling and found things I liked and disliked about all of them. Unschooling had such a promise of freedom and developing a love of learning, but so little structure didn't fit with my "make a list and check it off" personality; the traditional school-at-home out of textbooks sounded safe, but restrictive, and I could never find one publisher who published all subjects in such a way that I liked, I would like their science book, but think the Language Arts series was too boring, or I would like their math, but find their History mind-numbing; the classical method sounded great, but also very difficult for both parent and child; the Charlotte Mason method sounded beautiful and just like the classical method had so much literature, and reading, and copywork, dictation, and narration, but I cringed at the level of perfectionism expected of students. The idea of making my child erase an entire line, or sometimes even an entire page of written work because of one mistake just didn't sit well with me.
So, since none of the methods I researched seemed to fit us perfectly, I freely blended what I liked about each one and came up with my own plan. We would do History chronologically, as in the classical method, and would pair it up with lots of literature either from or about the time period we were studying. We would do science in an orderly fashion, as in the classical method, focusing on one discipline at a time, rather than randomly jumping around from topic to topic. Focusing on Biology, Earth and Space, Chemistry, and Physical Science one at time giving a whole year to each, and then starting over with the disciplines, but going more in depth the second and third time around, this idea also came from the classical method. From the Charlotte Mason method I gleaned lots of reading aloud to the child, doing picture studies for Art appreciation, and using copywork and dictation to teach grammar, penmanship, punctuation, and other skills. In some subjects, such as math, I preferred a more structured, textbook like approach. I planned that if my children became interested in a specific topic, we could borrow from the unschoolers and allow them to study it freely, and that whenever what we were doing seemed to get old, we could take time off from our usual routine and do Unit Studies.
Yes, I had a definite plan in mind, and the best way to describe it would be "eclectic and flexible", knowing that if we tried something and it didn't work, we'd just try something else.
My vision held mostly true for my oldest child. We spent a lot of time sitting on the couch reading together, a lot of time praying together. She was named after the Bolivian child we sponsored, and while there was too big of an age difference for her to really be into writing the child, we did read the child's letters to her, and get her input when we wrote the child. We tried to do the chronological History study, but the series we were using wasn't finished yet, and we got to the point where the next book hadn't been published, so we settled on Textbooks for that subject, my daughter did not have any interest in History anyway, no matter how we studied it, and really struggled to retain any of that information, but she did so well in all her other subjects that I decided not to worry too much about the one weak area. We covered it, we did the work, but I didn't stress over the fact that the next week after the test she remembered nothing. For the most part though, with my oldest we were homeschooling as I pictured. Happy, relaxed, spending time together enjoying learning, and having lots of time left afterward for time together as a family. It was as close to picture perfect homeschooling as any family could hope to have.
However, with my second child it was different. He came along six years after my first, and by the time he was two it was clear that something was a little different about him. He didn't speak, or at least not with real words. He would point at things and say, "high" or "bee". That was his vocabulary, we usually could figure out by context what he meant. "High" could mean "outside" or "shoe", "bee" could mean anything else. The doctor did a very basic hearing screen, and told us to wait and see if he caught up. Six months later, he had added one more "word" to his vocabulary, he now said "he-he" for any two syllable word he wanted to say. Once again we headed to the doctor, and this time, the doctor was a little more concerned, and sent us to an audiologist for a more thorough hearing check. We came away from that appointment with the news that his hearing was fine, and that he also seemed to understand spoken language pretty well, he just couldn't talk. We were told to wait a little longer.
When he was three years old, he had added the word "Hammy" to his vocabulary, that was his way of saying his name, "Samuel". It was both amusing and heartbreaking at the same time. We went back to the doctor. This time the doctor recommended a speech and language pathologist, and a full work-up by a special education team at our local public school.
The private speech and language pathologist started working with Samuel weekly, doing speech therapy. The school started their testing. The school gave us the results in a short time. Samuel was severely delayed in expressive language skills, and was mildly
dyspraxic , which means that he had difficulty with muscle control and coordination. The school told us that this
dyspraxia was probably the cause of his speech delay, since speech requires a lot of coordination of fine muscles in the tongue and lips, and coordinating those movements with the correct movement of the vocal chords, at the correct time. It was also, they said, probably the reason he was still not potty trained at all at three years old, again, a certain amount of muscle control is needed for that. The school also had good news though. My three year old son had the receptive language skills (ability to understand language) of a child between 7 and 8 years old, his impairment was not related to his level of intelligence, if anything, his intelligence was a little above average. Not only that, he had a very keen ability to notice small visual details of objects. For example, part of the testing they did was to ask him to draw a face. Now the purpose of the test was because it is a basic developmental measure, a child of a certain age should be able to draw a face with the eyes, nose, and mouth in approximately the correct position. A child a little older than that should probably include hair and possibly ears. It is just a test to see where they are on that scale. Well, my son drew the head with hair and ears, the nose and mouth, just like most kids... but what was different was how he drew the eyes. He leaned in to his paper and worked very carefully, he drew the eye, complete with a pupil and an iris, even the little lines radiating through the iris, he drew an eyelid, eyelashes, and brow. They told me that for a child his age, noticing and drawing that kind of detail was extremely unusual.
My son attended special needs preschool at the public school for two years, getting occupational, physical, and speech therapy. He also continued private speech therapy. This was what he needed at the time. He improved immensely, and by the time he was five years old, at his last IEP, they declared that he was developmentally right on track, no more delays. He no longer even qualified for special educational services, and could either be sent to regular kindergarten or be homeschooled, whichever I chose.
Now, in the meantime, while all of this was happening with my son, the homeschooling continued as before with my oldest child, and I had another baby girl, who was as of yet, still to young for formal schooling. I still believed strongly in homeschooling, and had from the start seen my son's time in the public school as a temporary thing to meet a very specific need, I never planned on it continuing past preschool. This conviction was confirmed during the last month of his last year when I saw a bulletin board display in his classroom. The display was about all of the different types of families there are, and without going into details, I will just say that it did not line up with my family's beliefs and values. It was with relief that I finally brought him home again to homeschool him, and I thought we could finally get to doing with him what had worked so well for his older sister.
Well, he did wonderfully through homeschool kindergarten, he didn't pick up the reading quite as easily as his older sister had, but I didn't worry about it, after all, boys mature more slowly than girls, I figured he just wasn't ready yet.
By the time his kindergarten year was done, he had made no progress on reading, even though I did the same things with him that had helped his older sister learn to read before she was three. So I got more structured with the first grade, I prayed about what to use, and based on a definite leading from the Holy Spirit, I started Orton Gillingham phonics instruction (Saxon Phonics), it worked. It took almost all of our school time, but it worked. At the end of first grade my boy was able to sound out words like "
antidisestablishmentarianism" (no joke, this was one of the words on his final assessment, and he sounded it out correctly!) Now, words like that were difficult, but he could sound them out, however, he could also read with a fair degree of fluency things written more to his level, such as the little phonics readers that came with the curriculum.
We took our summer break. I had planned on having him continue to read over the break, but we got busy and he didn't practice as he should. When September rolled around I handed my son a book, and he couldn't read a single word. NOT-ONE-WORD. I pointed at individual letters, he could only name about half of them, and he remembered the sounds of less than half. So we started over. We tried several other methods of phonics, trying to find something that didn't require so much time, but in the end we realized that none of those methods was helping and he was only falling further and further behind. So we went back to Orton Gillingham phonics, and once again my son began to make slow, steady progress.
He is now eleven years old. He would be in fifth grade if we considered just his age and when he started first grade, but we call him a fourth grader. He reads at a mid-second grade level if he is timed, but if there is no time pressure he can eventually, with much difficulty, figure out and comprehend material written at a fourth or fifth grade level. He still reverses letters when he writes. He has never quite regained the ability to sound out long words like he could at the end of first grade. He still reads "saw" for "was", and still has great difficulty with little high frequency words like "where" and "of". He is able to read such words in isolation on a flash card, but then misreads the same word when it is part of a passage of text. I am sure that he is dyslexic. He had all the signs, the delayed speech, the dyspraxia, the difficulty retaining the ability to read even after he seemed to learn it. Even his amazing ability to notice visual detail is so common in dyslexic children. He has gone through three years of Orton Gillingham, which I found out later is the most highly recommended method to use with dyslexic children. He has made a lot of progress, but struggling for that progress has consumed the rest of our homeschooling, and as a result my younger children didn't often have me sitting down reading leisurely to them, they didn't often get to make cookies with me as part of our schoolwork, they haven't had the experience with writing to learn like their older sister had.
On top of his learning difficulties, finances have forced me to work outside the home in addition to homeschooling. This means that whatever time we would have left after covering the basics, is now taken up by mom's job.
We have had to make compromises. The classical and Charlotte Mason methods, with their huge emphasis on reading literature and on writing from dictation, are just a nightmare for a dyslexic child. Not to mention that the reading instruction itself takes so long that there is not a whole lot of time left for that kind of thing. So my son does a computer based curriculum that allows him to use Text-to-Speech technology to cover content based subjects, it would be better if I could read to him, but we just don't have time for me to read everything to him while I am also working. My youngest daughter has receives very little direct instruction in anything. However, she has learned much through osmosis, just being around while my son was taught how to read, and was taught the same information over and over in different ways to utilize all of his senses, has taught her how to read very well, in fact she reads far better than he does.
Having me work has forced us to accept less than the ideal when it comes to homeschooling.
Yesterday, after a particularly exhausting day at work, I was driving home and feeling very down. It was a beautiful day, as I passed the beach on my way home I thought about how pretty everything was, and I thought about stopping to take pictures... but I was too tired, and besides, I had to go to the bank and cash my check, and I wanted to get home to my kids. As I drove by I noticed another photographer getting her camera and tripod out of her trunk. I sighed and continued on.
After stopping at the bank, I drove home. I pulled up in the driveway and saw my husband and kids outside by our burn pile, it was almost 4:00 in the afternoon, so I figured that since they were outside, all of the schoolwork must be done. I wanted to join them out there, but my feet and back were so tired I just couldn't stand around the fire. So I went inside and lay down.
After a time I discovered that the homeschool wasn't finished, we finished up after dinner, when it was almost time for bed. I felt so discouraged. This was not what I pictured when I decided to homeschool. I spent a lot of time today and yesterday thinking about this.
Do I think my son is getting as high quality of an education as he would get if I could be here every day, all through the day, working with him and reading to him from both his textbooks and from great literature?
No.
Do I believe that the largely multiple choice and fill in the blank work he does on the computer is as effective as it would be to sit down with him and his books and have him tell me his answers in his own words?
No.
Do I feel like my younger children are being shortchanged compared to their older sister, who had a stay at home mom through all of her younger years?
Yes.
Do I wish I could stay home with them and devote all my time to their schooling?
Yes, without a doubt.
Do I think that they would be better off in Public School?
Absolutely NOT.
Even though what we are doing now may not be the best that homeschooling can be, even though it falls so far short of what I'd like to see us doing, it is so much better than what they would get in the public school system. I know there is no way the public school would go to such lengths to spend extra time on my son's reading, it is unlikely they would let him use speech to text to continue learning about content when he can't read the material. He would either be put in special education classes where not much would be expected of him or he would be left to flounder and struggle in mainstream classes. Surely his view of himself would be much affected by constantly being compared to his peers, and he would start to doubt his intelligence.
Not only that, but my children would be bombarded by worldly values and ideas for six hours a day. They would not be getting an education centered around God and His word, but would instead be learning what is politically correct and popular in today's society. Their faith would be attacked and undermined on a daily basis.
So, while this is not what I envisioned, while it is not what I really want to see in our homeschool, I am far more content with what we have than I would be with Public School. I am still so thankful to be able to homeschool these kids.
