Changing Course

I’ve decided to throw in the towel and publicly declare that I can’t teach my 7 year old to read. Here goes…ahem….”I am the Mom. I homeschool my children, but I give up. I can’t teach #3 to read. Can someone help me, please?”

Thanks. I feel better. 2 years. 7 reading programs. 4 phonics programs. He still can’t read C-A-T. He can spell it, and he can write it, but he can’t read it.

I took him to a tutoring center for evaluation. The test was $169. We waited 4 days for results. Then, yesterday they handed me a check for $169 and said, “Here’s your money back. We can’t help you. We can’t teach your child to read.”

I appreciate their honesty and business ethics. I will recommend them to anyone who needs a little help, but now where do I go? If I can’t do it, and the teachers can’t do it….the kid has to read. This is one of those non-negotiables.

It turns out that according to the test I didn’t end up having to pay for that he can only process about 9% of what’s written on the page. He’s wicked smart, has a high IQ, but can’t process those funny squiggles to mean anything other than funny squiggles. His brain refuses to accept them as words. It’s kind of hard to read when the writing doesn’t look like anything meaningful.

He understands the concept of reading, obviously, or he wouldn’t be able to write. It just hits a road block on its way to his brain. So how do I teach that? How do I retrain his brain to accept information that it won’t accept? I can’t. Not yet.

Now we bring in the big guns. Like the Educational Psychology Counseling Clinic at the University of Oklahoma (Boomer Sooner ) or the eye doctor we found who specializes in visual processing disorders. Fortunately, they both can see him later this month. Unfortunately, they don’t take insurance which is okay because my insurance doesn’t cover the work they do anyway. If he had had an accident and suddenly couldn’t read they would, but be born this way and it sucks to be you.

He will read. It’s not up for discussion. I am his teacher and I don’t permit my students to fail. Ever. He will learn to do this. I just have to learn how to teach him first.