So Amy Schumar's husband made me realize that my 13 y/o should get a diagnosis. 🙃 During her new docu-series about her pregnancy and Netflix special, her husband is diagnosed with ASD and they are both relieved to know why his brain is different. I guess in a perfect world we'd all live with our own way of thinking and it wouldn't matter, but it was the first time it occurred to me that an explanation helps. DS is "mild" ASD according to my observations and mother's intuition. (I think he'd be Apergers if that was still a diagnosis.) Could be NVLD? He's profoundly gifted and quirky, and for the most part I've chalked it up to the giftedness. I've asked SEVERAL professionals, therapists & doctors alike if I should take him for an eval and they have all told me no. I did have a pediatrician recommend a socialization class that DS took at age 7. It was weekly for 8 weeks and at the end the therapist told me "he knows how to make friends, he just doesn't want to." At that point I just started making him do different activities. He always got along with other kids well in sports and other things but never made any connections to where he wanted to hang out with any of them outside of the group. He played with his siblings when he was younger, but there is an almost 4 year age gap between them so they aren't really into the same things anymore. He functions well enough but has no friends and doesn't care. He can't read some cues and has a very hard time filtering negative comments, because in his mind truth trumps everything. He has ticks that come and go, throat clearing things, or weird inhale/exhales. He is happy without friends, and gets along with adults best. He has bouts of intense anxiety, not so much lately, but when he was younger. He's going through puberty too so who knows which way is up right now. This isn't a great time to make this realization, I'm not sure how to go about hours and days long testing during a pandemic, but we are going to call tomorrow and start getting some info and on a waiting list. Anyways, I got Neurotribes on my kindle from the library. I read The Mislabled Child a long time ago when we first did IQ testing and my son was having a difficult time at preschool. Any other book recommendations? Or podcasts? I've been running through the Tilt Parenting pods for parenting "differently wired" kids, but that's the only one I know of. TIA for reading this far.

Yes! This is why I like it. I love Pinterest but my brain can't process it once I actually need to make plans. It's overly stimulating. I haven't done this yet, but my plan is to transfer pins onto each of my unit study lists.

You would love trello! There's a FB group for homeschoolers that use it and lots of videos on YouTube. I just use the free version, I think most homeschoolers do as well. This is my new favorite video and sort of how I decided to do my boards this year.

We are secular homeschoolers. It does look lovely!

Bummer about your wrist! Hopefully it heals soon. This is timely. I just ordered a ridiculously expensive planner and matching notebook to use as a scrapbook from Plum Paper. It was a gift to myself for being thrown back into homeschooling all three kids. I've been fiddling with my trello boards, I do big picture planning on trello and then weekly planning in a planner. I decided we will do math and language arts daily and then unit studies for the rest, I like planning the unit studies in trello so I can save all the links on my cards. I'm a planner geek

Hi! How was dyslexia and dysgraphia diagnosed? So I have 3 kids with low processing speed. My oldest actually has a much wider spread than your son, and I didn't get a good answer either. I'm not sure there is one? Maybe. Tilt parenting has a good podcast on this subject, the author of the book "Bright Kids who Can't Keep Up" was on. She kind of said processing speed is processing speed and you just teach your kids how to function. Ok, on to the dyslexia, my daughter is dysgraphic and "remediated" dyslexic whatever that means. Her processing speed was similar to your son's. I don't ever notice it, I think because she has a really high working memory. Anyways, I don't know 1. that it's even possible to raise it and 2. I doubt it would matter for dyslexia. It's a different WAY of processing that doesn't have to do with speed. I'm no expert and there are plenty of parents on this board that know way more than me, and I'm sure they will chime in soon. I've heard of people diagnosing dyslexia with IQ which is absolutely not the way to do it. So assuming there was language testing, I'd work on the dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADD and not worry too much about the processing speed. I think it's worthwhile to try to understand it, but I'd focus on getting supports with the other stuff. Is Kaufmann achievement? My kids did WJ so I'm more familiar with that, but if it noted decoding and comprehension levels that would help with recommendations. Was he given language testing? RAN. RAS, CTOPP, etc? ETA: Nessy is for dyslexics, Reading Eggs I'm not sure but I don't think so. I wouldn't use reading eggs with a 9 year old, but I'm not knee deep in the dyslexia curricula so I'll let other people answer this one. You will probably need something like Barton or Wilson. ETAA: His vocab is really high. I'm guessing his comprehension is good, but the decoding is lagging? Etaaa: my phone autocorrected CTOPP in a crazy way lol

I've been thinking about doing the free trial of teacher file box just to check out some things.

No SLD in math. less writing is the goal. I know I can scribe for her but she does like being in charge of herself. Lol

I have been randomly googling for dysgraphia friendly curriculum and I came across a blog post about using tech for dysgraphia that mentioned Redbird. https://techiehomeschoolmom.com/using-technology-homeschool-child-with-dysgraphia/ I hadn't heard of it so I clicked the link and I have to say, at 6 am, the video really sold me. 🤣 https://www.mheducation.com/prek-12/explore/redbird/redbird-mathematics.html I tried to buy it for 9.99 from them but it turns out you have to be an educator. It is available on HSBC for $40. I'll probably end up trying it, but I'm curious if anyone has heard of it, tried it, hated it, loved it, etc.

@8FillTheHeart This is refreshing. I've been a little bummed out about the prospect of HS becoming less personalized due to the AP/DE slog (DE would obviously lend to more interest led than AP does). It's comforting to see there are other viable paths to higher learning.

Yes, in southern ohio there are more pop up sites. I'm in a hotspot in OH with not pop up sites.

Looks cool!

It's not easy to get tests in OH any more. We had a couple of weeks of it being easier, but it's more difficult again.

I think it’s going to have to be way more casual and spur of the moment this year. Things change so fast. I was among those who for most june thought “hey maybe we can do some things again.” Nope. we mostly stay home aside from biweekly grocery trips and medical stuff. We aren’t making any in person plans until the virus is more controlled.

I'm probably going to have to see how far the tutor takes her this summer. I might even try to get 2 days a week although I know her availability it limited. I get what you are saying, it's trial and error. (Mostly error in my case) I did buy a level of AAR at one point but returned it. I can't remember why, this was two years ago. I'll go back and see if I have my order email. I'll look again. I remember loving the books, but I just didn't feel like it was what she needed. I'm going to look at the placement tests.

Thank you for all of your help! I really appreciate it. I'm going to obsess over math in the mean time! 🤣

Oldest only used level one, didn't need anything that involved, so I got rid of it thinking no kids need anything that involved. Stupid! Then rebought when DD was showing issues, did 1-3 with her but then dysgraphia, read AAS isn't enough, sent her to school, sold them again. 🤦‍♀️ I will say I do think AAS helped her, I just read a bunch of times it wasn't enough and she does still have holes. Whether they would have been plugged with higher levels, I don't know. That's why I have been looking at other things. I try not to hold on to things but I'll probably be a legit hoarder now. I will look!

Oh something like Daily editor? Crosswords and word searches is a great idea. Yes I have them printed out! I've made my husband read them too. That's the you know I'm serious.

I don't have any of the Wilson teaching materials, just stuff from the training. I could order some pieces if I need to, or even some of those TPT worksheets, but maybe I need the actual Wilson stuff for those to make sense. She's so very visual. I'm convinced she just memorized words and then figured out the phonics that way. This also takes a lot of pressure off! Lexia is new I'm going to google that. Apples & Pears is recommended a lot, anyone have any insight on that one? The sad fact is I would be buying those flipping AAS tiles for the third time and I will, all the while KICKING myself. hahahahah. Cheaper than a tutor, cheaper than a tutor....

yes. lol Seriously, all of those. I have story grammar in my cart. Writing and tech, that's easy got it. Spelling, I know this is the last piece to come together.

Ok, Update from her tutor, "We ended last summer early in Book 4: multi-syllabic words with v-e I started her in Book 5: syllable division and that's where we've stayed. Because she's a strong reader, she can read the wordlists easily. So I moved ahead to expose her to more challenging words. I also really want her to understand the rules for syllable division so that when she's reading and writing on her own, she has strategies for where to divide (and thus decode or encode) the word. Understanding syllable division also gives clues for spelling."

Ok, this is my hangup with all of these. I don't think she needs a ton of remediation. My main concerns are spelling and writing. Her reading is actually really good. It's just I know there are holes and I want to nip them now. I did consider just running through AAS to get the phonograms but worried that it was not deep enough. I really want to help her be able to write. I do understand aaaalllll of this rests on the nuts and bolts of phonograms, morphology, orthography, etc. It just all seems like overkill and I'm still not addressing the writing. So I'm trying to balance all of it and figure out how to best use out time. In theory she's going back to school in 6th grade, now I don't know in reality how that will even work but I want to make sure it's academically an option if I can. (She's my only social child and I'm trying to balance that as well regarding school) IMO it's probably best if I keep her home until high school. We will see how it all works out. This is a tangent now. 🤦‍♀️ ETA: In my nonprofessional opinion what I really need is a beefed up AAS and something for writing. That's why I originally started looking at LoE, but now im down a whole rabbit hole of curricula. 🤣

I came across these last night and have them bookmarked! I need to look more closely at them. I found all of my materials and notes from the Wilson training that I started going over this morning.

Yes she did fine with the vowels surprisingly! The one she missed was s/sh/s because she missed it on the repeat where you point to the colors. this is interesting! Yes, this is starting to make sense to me from what I've read and comparing curricula. It's a totally different way of learning to read than I am used to but I get it. Plus, pirates, Zorro, I'm sensing a theme she might enjoy 🤣 I will email her and see what she says. I also emailed her tutor to find out what she thinks DD needs and where she even is. I don't know if they started where she left off, or backtracked, which I'm assuming happened after 9 months of no tutoring.