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imagine.more

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Posts posted by imagine.more

  1. Ah.  I was wondering if it was something like that, or child endangerment, or something unrelated. 

     

    Yeah I wish they did child endangerment charges for parents whose kids have to be taken into state custody and for whom things are substantiated of course. I can't believe DD's birth mom never got charged with any of the like 5 things she could have knowing the conditions the kids were in and the suspected issues going on. It kinda makes me mad she got away with no financial or personal ramifications and never bothered to visit the kids or anything. Luckily she broke the law later for something fairly minor and got arrested but of course someone bailed her out. Sometimes these things just don't make sense to me, but really as a foster parent I never heard of any birth parent being charged with anything criminal even though the criminal activities were what caused the kids to be removed permanently. I guess they figure taking the kids away is consequence enough? I dunno, I'd love to know the reasoning behind how that stuff is handled. 

    • Like 1
  2. Yay!

     

    How have you found Barton for a child with hearing loss? I like the idea of something super-easy to implement and with a lot of handholding for me, but then I see certain other O-G based programs specifically designed for D/HoH kids like SMiLE and DuBard and I wonder if one of those might be more appropriate.

     

    I have found it to be just fine with a moderate hearing loss (50% unaided, 80% aided and she lip reads a bit). I haven't checked out SMiLE and DuBard because I hadn't heard of them so I can't compare apples to apples with them but I think Barton is working so well I actually don't feel the need to jump ship to the shiny different curriculum, which is telling in and of itself, lol! I do think in an ideal world with more time and money I would have done LiPS for maybe 2-6 months first and then started Barton Level 1 with that good background, incorporating some of the LiPS elements all along the way. Just because I've found the insurance-covered speech therapists to be largely useless and I think LiPS would have been more comprehensive to do, even just at home with me as a layperson teaching it, to address the underlying speech issues. 

     

    To use Barton with a hearing impaired kid I think the important things are:

     

    1. Sit across from them so they can read your lips

     

    2. Teach them how to self-advocate "Can you please repeat that" and repeat the word whenever necessary. 

     

    3. Discuss speaking/hearing discrepancies as they come up, ideally keep a handheld mirror nearby to show them how their mouth looks when saying "e" vs "i" and "sh" vs "th" and any other issues that come up. Barton becomes speech therapy and reading therapy for us, and that means we move slower sometimes but it's worth it to develop good speech and reading habits and accuracy.I LOVE that Barton always has her repeat the word back to me because I'm able to catch problems in hearing/understanding and differentiate them from problems in truly just figuring out the correct letter for the sound. If she says the word back to me incorrectly I know she heard it wrong so we try again. If she makes the same mistake twice I know it's a phonological issue and we need to talk about it and break out the handheld mirror. 

     

    4. Go at their pace. Ana has other issues so I'm not sure if this is a universal deaf/hoh thing but the fact is we just need to take time with lessons sometimes. Because not only is she rewiring her brain for dyslexia, she's also rewiring it for poorly developed language and hearing areas. It's exhausting mentally. 

    • Like 5
  3. I have to brag and you guys will *get* this better than anyone else :) 

     

    Ana just did her Level 3 Posttest and we'll be starting Level 4 next week. I have her take the post-test as a pretest as well as evidence in case our draconian homeschool district (we're in PA) ever questions why a 13 year old is going through basic phonics for her language arts. These are her compared results on a couple parts:

     

    Actual Phrase: crush the gift

    Before: crash the gift

    After: crush the gift

     

    Actual phrase: a swift clam

    Before: a crist clam

    After: a swift clam

     

    Actual phrase: crisp shrimp

    Before: sift shwip

    After: crisp shrimp

     

    Spelling theft

    Before: thef

    After: theft

     

    Spelling french

    Before: froch

    After: french

     

    Spelling clock

    Before: colck

    After: clock

     

    Spelling belch

    Before: blick

    After: belch

     

    And it went on like this for every single section. Huge, glaring errors, big messy handwriting, and nonsensical spellings or wild reading guesses before and now she knows how to neatly number her page, skipping lines, writes in the lines, and reads and spells 95% or better correctly on every single section! We still have a little work to do on phrasing and punctuation but overall there is a huge improvement!

     

    It took us so long to get through level 3 and I was feeling kinda discouraged that maybe with her intellectual disability she'd never quite get to a 9th grade decoding level but now I feel like she definitely will, it'll just take time. It helps to remember where we started to really understand the difference in where she is now. :)

    • Like 11
  4. Everything OhElizabeth suggested and described is genius, go with what she says :)

     

    I just wanted to add that between LiPS and Barton Level 1 you will likely see an increase in his working memory. We were told that working memory can't really be improved in any systematic or significant way but after Barton Levels 1 and 2 DD moved from a very low working memory to average. I can't even remember her percentiles but it went up from something like 10th to 87th in one year, no joke. And I can see how that happened, Barton is very gradual and systematic in exercising the working memory on specific activities. DD's working memory for other things didn't increase as much but there was overall improvement and in letters/numbers her working memory made that huge leap. 

     

    Also, we didn't start ADHD meds until this year (DD is 13) and wow, there's  a big difference in her accuracy while working in Barton on or off the meds. I can tell if she forgot her meds that morning just after her trying to read a few words. Barton worked fine without the meds but I see better and more consistent improvement with the medication. So it might be worth a one month trial to see if that enables him to block out the external stimuli long enough to exercise his working memory. If not you can always stop, the nice thing about adhd meds is there's no adjustment to get on or off of them, he can even just take them Mon-Fri if you want and skip weekends without it affecting the effectiveness. 

    • Like 3
  5. I know! What will I do with the rest of my day??? Plus where will I find my motivation to clean the house? This story is like watching Hoarders... :)

     

    Three cheers for the go fund me page closing down!!!

    • Like 15
  6. As soon as I feel a migraine coming on I take two Excedrin migraine tablets. It's the only thing that works for me and it only works if I take it before the pain gets too bad.

    Same here. I used to struggle to identify the start of a migraine too because they almost never start with head pain for me.

     

    I'd familiarize yourself and your daughter with the common signs of migraines. I usually feel irritable, confused, and fuzzy headed and my neck gets tight/sore THEN the aura starts, then the head pain and nausea and inability to do anything but lie in the dark complaining, lol! Search out every list of migraine symptoms and start tracking any she shows to find out what her particular progression is like. Then she can take meds when they'll still be effective.

    • Like 1
  7. Thanks again for all the helpful replies. Everyone has said something supportive and helpful and I really appreciate it!

     

    Dh came home with an rx for celexa and a refill on the ativan. He is supposed to only use the ativan as a last resort, so hopefully he can hold out and see if the celexa has any initial positive results but I realize that it normally takes a while. We are going to do a couples session with his therapist next week and I am feeling much more hopeful about things at the moment. Thank you for your support and if you pray, please remember us in your prayers.

     

    Thank you!

    I've taken celexa for PPD that included severe anxiety and a decent bit of insomnia and it was wonderful, worked like a charm! My sleep slowly became much more natural and regular. Given your descriptions it sounds like anxiety is the root cause of his insomnia and so treating that underlying issue should be much more effective. Just a heads up, Celexa is difficult to transition onto but since he's so bad off as it is I bet it won't seem too bad to you guys. If he can hold on through the side effects for 1 month he should see a huge benefit then. I highly recommend working through a psychiatrist or a very thorough pcp to manage dosage. It's common for them to start out with the smallest dose possible and then increase as needed until you get to a good point where it's helping lots but doesn't give a zombie-like feeling.

     

    And if Celexa isn't right for him try something else, each SSRI is different and some work for some people and others for different people. I've tried Zoloft and it did very little good and Nortryptiline which cured my migraines but did not affect depression and gave me too many side effects. Taking Celexa was a totally different thing, I joke to my DH that maybe I just had a celexa deficiency all along ;) So if one med doesn't work after a proper 2 month trial try something else. This sounds terribly stressful for both you and him and I'd be frustrated if I were you too! It's hard to know someone needs medical help but also know that in the end they need to get it themselves and there's not much you can do to force the issue. I'm glad it sounds like with some prodding he is seeking out solutions. Many just stay in denial forever and refuse to try to fix it.

     

    **note: it's 2:50am and I'm awake and killing time here... because I'm off celexa for pregnancy, lol! This almost never happened when I was on it.

    • Like 2
  8. We replaced all the brass in our house to an oil rubbed bronze look and it really looks great!

     

    I think when your house style and decor style clash you need to find an example of something similar to your house style that you actually like and aim for that. Our house is builder-beige but we realized it had some similarities to craftsman style houses on the outside and scandinavian houses on the inside so we changed what we could (flooring, fixtures, paint) and embraced the rest. I normally hate bare wood trim but once I realized the cream walls + wood trim was quite scandinavian I stopped trying to fight it, left the main living area painted as it was, and slowly changed my decor to match. It doesn't all have to be done at once and in fact I'll bet once you put all your stuff in there more of it will look good than you realize, especially with the wood floors you're putting in.

  9. It is not a new thing. When I was young my parents did foster care, on one of the home visits the social worker was over joyed to see books in the house. Apparently, it was the first time he had encountered books in the home of a foster family.

     

     

    I like to think he was new and my parents were, at most the second visit he made. It saddens me to think of houses without books.

    Yeah, our daughter's previous foster family only had a small handful of crappy books. Good, nice family who had fostered forever but not readers. My daughter was baffled at how much we read. Her birth home had zero books with 3 kids (ages 5-12). Many of my students when I taught had no books or crayons at home, so sad :(

     

    And looking over this Naugler family's blog and facebook page...wow! I've never seen such appalling living conditions, that is not homesteading, it's squatting on land that happens to be yours. Hoping they eventually cooperate with CPS and get things together with a real house (the old cabin they had looked fine, if they could scrounge enough money to get that back and add a few things like insulation and flooring), a well for water, and a proper outhouse built. Not to mention some sort of education plan cause wow, I've never heard of an unschooler without a billion books and basic supplies (paper, crayons, pencils, math manipulatives) around!

     

    In fact I'm kinda mad they're calling themselves homeschoolers. If they're not registered as such, have no kids books, and no curriculum or plan then they're just truant. I'm all for homeschooling looking very different from public school but they're not teaching anything except maybe not to use gasoline to start a campfire (her son burned his hands doing that!). Oy! This whole situation is cuh-ra-zy!

    • Like 9
  10. Gawd NO! I hate it with a fiery passion of ten thousand suns. :cursing: To say I despise it would not begin to cover mt disdain. It was the first of many hateful things with which my mother burdened me. And, sadly, it has stuck around the longest.

    Yep, this is about how I feel about my name...Amanda, blech! Guess which decade I was born in? I wish I'd changed it ages ago but it's too late. I tried to go by my middle name, Dawn, in middle school but my family refused to oblige. Even that isn't my favorite name but way better than Amanda so I was willing to make the switch. And the nickname options are even worse...Mandy? No thank you, only slutty girls got called that in high school so I couldn't shake that association even if I wanted to.

     

    Sigh, i think long and hard before choosing a name for my kids.

    • Like 1
  11. Ok, hopefully this can be filed under the "no dumb question" file:

     

    I took care of a bird once (conure) for my friend while she was on vacation. It bit me really hard (drew blood) and after that I have to admit I was nervous to pick it up. Additionally, a really good friend of our family's was raised on a farm and had "chicken duty." He still remembers one really mean chicken that would try to bite him. These couple of items have kept me from moving forward with chickens. I don't want animals we're scared to handle.

     

    Do chickens bite much? If so, do they just nip, or bite hard? Any experiences with anything like this?

     

    I've been chased by roosters so this is why we don't have a rooster, I'm scared of them, lol! Overall I'm not scared of birds though, I raised cockatiels. A Conure can bite harder than a Cockatiel for sure and is going to bite more, um, aggressively? than a chicken. Not that Conures are aggressive, I love them and they're very good birds but they are smart so they can get feisty if not handled enough. Chickens are just too dumb to be vindictive. They'll nip, nothing awful. My 13 year old was nipped once on the hand and it drew a spot of blood, she was trying to grab the chicken from behind because the hen wouldn't go in the coop. That is our one mean hen, she's scary looking and quite frankly I don't handle her much though my DH insists she's fine. I will pet her but only pick her up if necessary. We got her as an adult though and she's a Maran hen, which is a breed I honestly don't know much about and while fine I wouldn't recommend as the best.

     

    If you're concerned about temperament I'd get a friendly breed (Rhode Island Reds are usually touted as one of the most kid-friendly and for good reason), get them young, handle them often, and you will never have a problem. I've never been bitten/pecked and I cuddle our Leghorns often, they are super friendly and my 2 year old also chases and pets them. The 4 year old picks them up and carries them around the yard like it's no big deal. 

    • Like 2
  12. MotherGoose, that's so true! And even aside from the accidental deaths cause chickens are cute but stupid, we have to move unexpectedly now and you don't just bring 5 chickens 500 miles on a moving trip so they're going to another family. We repeat the "they are livestock" refrain to ourselves and the kids all the time.

    • Like 1
  13. I believe that living indoors is non-negotiable, as are access to medical care, clean water, sufficient food, spoken and written language, and the basic paperwork for identification as a citizen.

    Whether people two hundred years ago had them or not is less relevant than whether it's necessary to have them (which is why Americans' life expectancy in the Ingalls' day was perhaps 40).

    .

    Actually Pa Ingalls lived to 66 and Ma Ingalls lived to 84. Laura and Almonzo both lived to 90 or 91 I think. They died of pretty typical modern day diseases too, like Pa died of heart disease. I think sometimes we over or under-estimate the health of previous lifestyles. It's interesting looking back through real family trees and realizing that people lived from 65-90 years for centuries back without modern medicine and that family sizes also averaged at like 4 kids, not the 19 everyone assumes I'll have to have when they learn I don't avail myself of modern contraception, lol! On the other hand some over idealize and assume a Little House lifestyle will prevent all 'modern' diseases like heart disease, which obviously didn't work for Pa Ingalls.

     

    This is an interesting question overall! We talked about this a bit when we lived in WV, where we knew families who actually didn't bother switching to indoor plumbing or didn't keep a refrigerator.

     

    I do know CPS here required that we have heat for each room in the home and running water not over a certain temperature. I'm not sure we could have gotten foster care approval if we'd been living a completely off the grid lifestyle. But we are in Mennonite country so many great foster parents here do live more rustic than us and they love Mennonite foster parents, they send babies and runaway teens because a SAHM who lives 3 miles from a road is a good fit for those demographics :) The teens get tired of walking before they even reach anywhere to run away to, lol!

     

    Personally I think off grid living can be just as healthy as modern living assuming there's access and use of doctors when needed and the home is clean and has sufficient food. I also don't think poverty should be criminalized. Some off gridders live that way out of ideals and some out of necessity and i'd say many are a mixture. I think the important thing isn't how basic needs for cleanliness, food, and shelter are met but that they're met.

    • Like 5
  14. Mine was #4 the year I was born and stayed in the top 10 for awhile afterwards. I HATE my name, my husband knows he is not to ever call me by my name if he wants me in a good mood. Unfortunately the nicknames for my name are even worse. I once had 3 girls with my name in 2nd grade, it was so annoying. My mom was young and stupid, she didn't even know what my name meant or have a good reason for choosing it except that she thought it sounded nice.

     

    None of my kids has a name above 200 on the popular name lists for their birth years. Our last name is super common too so I never wanted to saddle them with a common first and last name.

  15. Wow, I didn't even think about the night housing to protect against predators! Thanks for that!

     

    So if we build a chicken yard in front of our coop, do we just bury the chicken wire a few feet under ground? Is that what is being said?  We are planning to clean up the old wooden shed in our backyard. It needs some repairs and to be cleaned out, plus we are going to cut the ventilation window in back to be bigger and add a small chicken-sized door to the side...does that need like a cover over it of some sort? What? Doggie door? Something else?

     

    Yes we were prepared for neighbor dogs or raccoons but hadn't realized that everything thinks chicken is yummy! Oops! Basically you want to think about cats, dogs, foxes, raccoons, skunks, hawks/falcons/eagles, and larger snakes. 

     

    You don't have to bury the chicken wire under the ground but it's best to go down 1-2ft on the sides and/or border it with paving stones to prevent digging. We were traumatized by the coop break-in so we just went all the way under and covered it with the sand. Any openings you will want to cover with chicken wire, that way there's plenty of ventilation but also protection. 

     

    For doors our coop and run are 100% enclosed to each other so we didn't feel the need to add a door to the coop too but if the run is open in any way you will want a door. Check BackyardChickens.com and Pinterest for coop design ideas, I've seen lots of great door ideas. The most common is one that slides up and down and latches and often is attached to a string and pulley system so you can open it from outside the run more easily. 

     

    Here is our coop: http://www.planningonit.com/moving-day-for-the-chickens/  If you look at the pic of my son sitting in the grassy run you will see a slight crack under the boards....that's where the skunk got in. Otherwise the rest of it is completely secure and we only changed it by adding wire along the ground and no more predators have gotten in. 

     

    Keep in mind birds of prey when free ranging or if your run has an open top. We let our hens free range in the yard only when we're out there with them, they're pretty easy to catch and shoo back into the coop when we need to go back inside. But I've heard lots of people dealing with hawks snatching hens out of the yard. A rooster will protect the hens from hawks but we don't have a rooster. Our hens always have access to their run so even in winter when they never free range they still are contented and have a little room to roam about and forage. 

    • Like 2
  16. The kiddie pool is not good because they grow super fast and will be jumping out of the pool in a week or two.  Also, predators at night unless it's enclosed.  I kept mine in a watermelon box I got at the grocery store.  We rigged up the heat lamp on stand over it.  They need to be able to get away from the light too to cool down if needed.  You have to make sure they don't drown in the water so keep it shallow.  They will poop and ruin the water so clean it multiple times a day...this is for babies. 

     

    We like the Barred Rocks the best.  Great egg layers and friendlier than Rhode Island Reds. 

     

    Go to Backyardchickens.com for advice and to learn.  I got Storey's Guide to chickens and it has not failed us.  Make sure your coop is predator proof.  That means hardware cloth to cover windows and the pen.  You have to bury it underground so predators can't get in.  They will try.  My aunt lost her whole flock and she bought a beautiful coop from one of those shed makers.  The raccoon got right in through the black mesh they had over the windows.  You need good ventilation all year.  Just get that book I referenced.  It has a lot of info that you need to know.  There is quite a bit to learn and to think about before you do it. 

     

    Yes, predators are the worst! We had a skunk get into our coop through the smallest crack by the ground and it killed 3 hens before we were woken by a neighbor (apparently chickens can scream) and went out and I chased the evil thing off with the hose. We're pretty sure it was rabid because it wasn't afraid of us until I sprayed it in the face with the hose. It was traumatic for us, just awful. So no I wouldn't leave any on the porch, I'd wait until they can go straight into the secure coop like ManagerMom suggested. We blocked up our coop afterwards with buried wire under the sand so that it is 100% predator proof even if they dig. Of course then a bear came through our CITY, oy, lol! But he apparently didn't smell the chickens, I doubt our coop is quite bear-proof :)

    • Like 3
  17. These were very helpful posts, thank you!

     

    Now that I know we can have them, I can tell you that our neighbor across the street has chickens and actually offered to incubate some eggs for us! :) I think it'd be awesome to get his chicken's children over here. Lol. The only issue would be that I really don't want the hassle of a rooster. I think one neighborhood rooster is enough.

     

    So for the chicks, did you do the whole red light thing? Could we put them in a kiddie pool in our enclosed back porch while they grow? Would that work?

     

    And our area does get cold winters. We're in PA.

    Yes we didn't want a rooster either, though our neighbors said we should, haha! We are in PA too and our leghorns and Marans wintered just fine. We battened up the coop a bit more and they'd stay inside if it was very windy but overall they didn't mind the weather and started laying again in early march.

    • Like 1
  18. We are leaning toward getting some backyard chickens now that we've moved to a place that we can actually have space for them. I am 99% sure that we are perfectly allowed to have them here (I have a call into a township guy to make 100% sure). We like the idea of having fresh eggs and the kids really enjoy animals (we only have two guinea pigs as pets at this point)...

     

    My questions at this point:

     

    1. What do you feed them? How often?

     

    2. Is it better to just get pullets and be done with it or should go from chick (I believe our neighbor would give us chicks, honestly)?

     

    3. If we buy chickens, what kind should we get?

     

    4. Do they smell?

     

    5. How often do we need to clean their space?

     

    Thanks for humoring me here. I seriously know nothing and am not getting a ton of great hits on google. ;)

    We got backyard chickens last year and LOVE them! Seriously, same amount of work as a cat but much more useful :)

     

    We buy chicken feed from Tractor Supply once a month and also let them range in the yard a bit and toss them kitchen veggie scraps and yard clippings.

     

    We got day old chicks and that has been nice, ours are friendly because we've had them from so young and our 4 year old can carry them around the yard even. You just keep them inside in a warm area until they have real feathers then they can go out to the coop. A plastic kiddie pool and a little fence work well.

     

    There are lots of great breeds. We like our Leghorns but when we get more we'll likely get Rhode Island Reds or Orpingtons too. If you live in a cold climate check that they are a cold hardy breed.

     

    The chickens themselves don't smell, the coop can if not cleaned often enough especially in the summer. We clean ours every 2 weeks and also hose down and rake the run, which we filled with sand after they ate all the grass. I like the sand in the run, super easy to keep clean and the hens seem happy though they hated it the first 2 days and acted like we'd filled the run with hot lava, lol!

     

    We have 5 hens on a double city lot and it's been great. Our neighbors like them and we get 2-3 dozen eggs a week. The 6 and 4 year olds know how to feed them and collect eggs and enjoy that. We do the bigger tasks. They're very kid-friendly i think, even for small children.

    • Like 1
  19. Yep we've stopped all other reading. Now that DD13 (6th grade) is on Level 3 I can't stop her from trying to read a few things but I always tell her to ask me and I will ALWAYS step in and read any words she cannot sound out easily using the Barton lessons. I read her math word problems aloud to her generally too. Like someone else said it usually only takes 2 years on average to get all the way through 4-5 levels of Barton. My DD has other learning issues and yet she's starting level 4 after 14 months using Barton, so not too bad really. We do literature read-alouds and such and we focused on Geography this year to avoid tons of history read-alouds :) Science is mostly hands-on, picture books read aloud, and lap booking. 

     

    OneStep, I love your analogy about the swimming and muscle memory. It's so so true!

    • Like 3
  20. I know what you mean about accuracy of tests. My ds took the woodcock Johnson and I was there to hear his answers...in one section, he had to think of a wrod to fill in the blank.  He kept saying "actually I think that is fine the way it is".  I had to just start reading my book bc the tester said " you mean you pass?" and he said "I mean the sentence makes perfect sense without adding anything" 

     

    This totally cracks me up, love it :)

    • Like 2
  21. ((Hugs)) I've been there as a charter school K/1 teacher. I had obscenities screamed at me, rocks and shoes thrown, and the class fish threatened. I also had to deal with one female student peeking on other girls in the bathrooms and a male student pooping on the bathroom floor. I also had to keep a girl with lice in my class for 2+ months straight while her mom didn't bother treating her and the other students and I kept catching lice from her. I warned the administration about the rock thrower/obscenities user multiple times and they refused to do anything about it. In the end he tried to pummel another kid over the head with a large rock (bigger than a man's fist) on the playground and was dragged spitting, kicking, and screaming to the director, he called her an f***ing b**** and she expelled him. He had called me and another teacher that and she had dismissed it.

     

    That teaching year happened while I was pregnant with my first and my bio kids have never gone to school as a result. I'd dismiss it as isolated but my own high school experience involved girls trying to o/d in the bathroom, a male student successfully shooting himself in math class, a student dying after a school bus fight and the boy who did it in jail at 15, regular bomb threats, elimination of backpacks for safety, and students sleeping with coaches. This was in a wealthy, beautiful, safe suburb of atlanta. At least none of us attacked the teachers though, sheesh!

    • Like 1
  22. Yes, this plus the low food motivation = not eating.

     

    That's kind of ridiculous though, isn't it? Too lazy to eat?

    I think it could be normal. I know for me I can't be bothered to make myself food. I lost 10lbs one summer because I was living all on my own in college and was broke. Food is just not motivating enough to me to prioritize beyond the minimum. I eat when I start feeling dizzy which could be 2 hours or 10 hours depending on the time of day, what I'm doing, and mostly my blood sugar levels I think.

     

    I'm 30 and I'd happily live on sandwiches and lipton noodles with occasional chicken or beef added. I know that's not exactly nutritious for the kids so I meal plan and make the grocery list and my husband cooks and so we all eat :)

     

    I think as long as you're sure she's getting a good dinner with the family I wouldn't worry. Maybe keep easy breakfast options around like carnation instant breakfast or oatmeal.

    • Like 2
  23. Even if she was in school for 2 years they might not have actually tired to teach her to read. As in start at the beginning and move forward from that point.

     

    When I went to school I moved from a system that started French late, into one that had it since kindergarten. I was then not in French for a couple of years due to speech theapy and other things at that time. The way they 'tired' to teach me French was just to throw me in a grade 6 class with people who had French for 7 years. When I had no clue what was going on they would speak French to me loudly and slowly. Ocassionally I would be offered tutoring for 30 minutes once a month to catch me up. Well guess what - it didn't work. :glare:

    Absolutely, this was our experience with our foster daughter. And middle schools just aren't equipped to teach phonics, it's not part of teacher training for middle school teachers to learn how to teach phonics. They're focused on comprehension and vocabulary and motivation at that age. Nobody expects a child 5+ years behind honestly.

     

    I agree with others that I would recommend a neuropsych test because schools often miss things on their shorter tests. And i'd focus on a good phonics program (opgtr, wrtr, anything that moves fast really) during the 2 days together. I'd try to have her listen to audiobooks on the days off and/or send her home with "homework" of simple worksheets to reinforce the skills. Teachers Pay Teachers has tons of cheap/free homework or morning work packs that review basic skills. Start with a 2nd grade one since that's where she's at.

    • Like 3
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