http://www.thearc.org While she doesn't technically have an Intellectual Disability since she's borderline and so close to 70 you could very well access a lot of the same services and groups I think. I mean, it doesn't seem like 2 points should make that big a difference, know what I mean? Especially if you have reasonable evidence that her functioning level is more than 2 years behind I think you could easily get permission for her to participate. It is hard for these kids in the middle though. They're not quite at the level of Down Syndrome even in terms of difficulty with life skills but can't keep up with average kids their age either. Ah, I just found this which helps answer your question! http://www.specialolympics.org/Sections/Who_We_Are/What_Is_Intellectual_Disability.aspx

I'm glad her hearing is good, that's always one of those things it's good to rule out :) Stevenson seems like a good curriculum for struggling learners but given her working memory and such I really think Orton Gillingham would help since it explicitly remediates phonemic awareness and working memory. For example you start off OG by manipulating colored blocks or tiles. You pull down one for each sound and the child has to remember which sound each block represented and blend them and switch them and such. Then you also use dictation of words which is good practice for memory. Those are the activities that increased my daughter's working memory from severely impaired to almost average. It seems your daughter has more struggles in math than mine does. I think your gut instinct that she won't be able to get to high school level math may very well be correct. You've done very well to get her mastering her addition facts and such, I wouldn't feel bad about her forgetting them, that's not surprising. My daughter forgets stuff she's learned all.the.time. Like you I worry all the time about pushing too much. I'm sure that I do push her too much on a daily basis :( It's hard to find that sweet spot of challenging but not overwhelming when it's a moving target. I think continuing what you're doing and keeping review in the day is good. Have you seen the morning calendar time notebooks some homeschoolers and teachers do? We use that and it's been a great way to get in that review. http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2013/06/preschool-daily-learning-notebook-2013-2014.html (this is the one we started with. She has an elementary one as well and a cursive one.) You could also make your own daily learning notebook to work on skills she needs the most help with remembering. It should be stuff she already can do independently but that you don't want her to forget. My kids do their notebooks right after breakfast usually. As for friends....ugh...that is a continuous problem. My daughter makes friends easily but on a superficial basis and always thinks they like her more than they do. Like to her they're her 'best' friend and they've only hung out once outside of youth group. Anyway, so her outgoing nature helps her. It seems your daughter is more shy or reserved? You could try looking into ARC membership to get into their activities and events, and Special Olympics are good places too. We're trying to get plugged into both those events locally. Otherwise I just try to keep coaching her in friendship skills and keep social stuff to one-on-one get togethers and small groups where it's less overwhelming. Even youth group can be too much if the preteen boys get to wild and silly and overwhelm DD.

I used to nanny for a family in Falcon Heights, 1 block from the shooting. They have an adopted black son who is about 10 now. My heart is just broken for everyone involved. I had to have very difficult conversations with my own Black/Hispanic daughter tonight about race and injustice. That video was haunting. I could not get over how the cop kept the gun on both of them even as the man was dying, moaning and gasping for breath. How could the man have been a threat then? Why keep a gun trained on an innocent woman as her boyfriend dies beside her so she cannot do anything except stay still, recording the horror as she remains frozen and helpless in her seat? I cannot understand standing there doing NOTHING while a man dies in front of you?!?!?! A tourniquet on his arm made from any dang thing around could have slowed the bleeding enough to give a good chance at saving his life. And that poor poor little child :( Her new reality breaks my heart.

My daughter is very similar ((hugs)) I know it can feel like groundhog's day teaching the same 1st-2nd grade math skills over and over. And mine also loves babies and struggles to relate to kids her own age sometimes. Other times my daughter is able to 'pass' and nobody thinks anything is out of the ordinary, but if you ask her any direct questions it becomes apparent that while she is smiling and nodding she has zero clue what her friends are talking about half the time. Your daughter's IQ seems genuinely low but might be a tad higher than 71, or at least could be. The Working Memory and Processing and Verbal Comprehension seem to be lower than the others. The low Working Memory (72) paired with high Visual Spatial scores (97) looks like classic dyslexia. I found that Orton-Gillingham remediation of my daughter's dyslexia brought her working memory up significantly with regards to letters/numbers. It went from something like 60 to 83 in one year's time. So good Orton Gillingham remediation could help the dyslexia AND I think is good for mild/borderline low IQ kids anyway because it's so hands-on and systematic and includes tons of practice and review. Has she had an audiology exam to make sure she doesn't have hearing loss? I assume so since she was diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder, right? I wonder if there's anything you could continue to work on with her to help the APD after Ear-Robics (spell check keeps changing that, ugh). I see your daughter struggles with days of the week and money and time.....how is she on straight calculations? Such as: 1 + 9 = 10 and 5 x 5 = 25. Rounding with small numbers? Such as: 6 rounds up to 10. 14 rounds down to 10. For what it's worth my daughter definitely won't do high school math anytime soon and she's 14.5. She's finally making progress but it's slow and the progress does not include improvement in her time/money skills because those are so abstract. I think she'll manage Algebra I by 11th grade and then we'll see if she can do a modified Geometry but mostly high school for us will be Pre-Algebra and Consumer Math skills. Perhaps your psychologist was not considering the current math requirements of Algebra in 8th/9th grade and thinking along the lines of how Vocational Tech high school tracks were a couple generations ago? Because it used to be that Algebra I and Geometry and Consumer Math would be considered perfectly acceptable for a high school student who was not advanced. And they could often even eliminate Geometry for those not planning on college. Anyway, I hope my experience helps a bit. Feel free to ask more questions, this group is wonderful with support and practical ideas. You'll get a good variety of tips and ideas to choose from and it'll broaden your idea of the possibilities for your homeschool.

I'm using Barton with a daughter who has ID, dyslexia, and hearing impairment (an IQ of 69 so very similar to your sons). She's halfway through Level 5 and it's going well. It's slow, each level takes almost twice as long as it does for other non-ID students, but that's okay because she';s making real progress after making no progress between 1st and 5th grades. I say lower the % spelling accuracy required to move on to 85 or 90%. And/or help him out by separating out syllables as you say them. Like "MAG - NET" instead of pronouncing it "magnet". As long as his reading is 95% or better then I think it's okay if the spelling lags a bit. Also, as you move on to Level 5 just buy some of those Spelling Success card games or make some games and keep practicing the previous skills as a fun review before/after the regular lesson. This way he doesn't get discouraged by holding him back but you give him the review he needs, swim?

This happened to me when my friend was driving and we were 18 or so? She was coming off the interstate exit, went to slow, and the brakes were out completely. It was terrifying. This was coming into downtown ATL, the exit near Georgia Tech....very busy. She basically swerved to avoid the stopped cars, jumped the curb and turned sharp to land going right on the cross street. Then she pulled the emergency brake and thankfully that worked. The curb had slowed us down considerably though. That was an awful moment and we were both sure we were going to die. Never once would we have thought to jump out of a moving vehicle though, that's crazy! I mean, seatbelt + airbag + metal car seems safer than bare skin on the pavement and metal of the car at 45+ miles an hour, sheesh!

I DIYed LiPS and it worked out pretty well. It's a bit confusing to sort out at first but if you give yourself a few weeks with it and then just dive in and start you'll be surprised how much you and your son learn. There's some really neat speech therapy stuff in there in addition to phonemic processing and dyslexia stuff. Super interesting! I'm doing LiPS now with my 5.5 year old because he's obviously dyslexic and bombed the Barton Pretest too. So LiPS it is. it's tedious, and tough with a squirmy 5 year old but I know it'll help tremendously. AND, I know that by doing it now he'll never have to struggle with reading or think he's stupid like all of the older kids I've tutored. These are bright, good kids who are struggling with anxiety and poor self-esteem all because the core part of school---reading is so unbelievably difficult for them. Anyway, I'm excited to start from scratch with him and make sure he learns the right way and never has to have negative associations with reading. Your son is the same age and so you have the same benefit of time. Time is a beautiful thing to have with a child who learns differently.

Okay, so the way I did it was to buy the flat magnets that go on the back of business cards. (you can buy these on amazon). Simply cut them to fit on the back of the tile and glue it on with Gorilla Glue so it doesn't fall off. I have a moderate sized magnetic whiteboard that I keep them on in a certain order. Two rows of the consonants (doubles of each). Then below those are the digraphs. To the left are four rows of suffixes divided into 2 rows of vowel suffixes and 2 rows of vowel suffixes. Below that are the vowel teams arranged as Susan Barton recommends in a long- A, E, I, O, U pattern. Below those are the units in 5 rows. This keeps things tidy and even works for traveling to tutoring students. It also leaves me with the bottom right hand of the board for writing words or moving tiles to spell with. For a student that particularly struggles with executive functioning or ADHD you can even section off a large part or individual boxes to slide the tiles into. I did that with one student who was extremely ADHD and it really helped her to have the 3-4 boxes already marked out so she knew where to slide the tiles to so they were close enough to one another and in a line to make an easy-to-read word. I have a picture that shows a bit of how I have my main Barton board set up here: http://readingtherightway.blogspot.com/2016/01/barton-level-4-practice-and-review.html

I put magnets on mine ages ago and am so glad I did! I'll post more info when I can get to my laptop

We're in the same boat with DD14. She's really not in need of spending hours learning to cook or buy basic items at a store, but she does need explicit instruction in anything and cannot handle a high school curriculum. Especially with the new requirements for Algebra in 8th grade....which is absurd imo to require. Anyway, we just had a long interview with the public school about their programs and basically here is what we were told. As a mild ID (her IQ is 69, so very mild) she'd go into the Special Needs class. They keep a small class size (10-15) and have alternative curriculums for the kids to follow in math & language arts. As a high functioning she'd be allowed to do classes in the mainstream if/when she wanted and could handle it. So for example if she was pretty decent in math but not language arts she could take mainstream math and SPED language arts. Because of her functioning skills she'd definitely have the option to do normal electives like PE, Chorus, Art, etc. She would not be required to do a foreign language, just either a focus on art or technology or some other specific focus. In the SPED class she could eat lunch separately or go to the cafeteria. They would spend part of the day focusing on life skills like cooking in their model kitchen, field trips to local businesses, and practicing other life skills stuff. It seems like that would take the place of SS and Science maybe or be an extension of it. BUT, in our state (Virginia) she could not get a diploma if she cannot pass the SOL (Standards of Learning) graduation tests (DH and I are now joking that the SOL stands for Shit Out of Luck, haha!) So even if she took regular mainstream classes all through with accommodations and got passing grades if she could not pass the SOL test she'd get a "certificate of completion" and not a high school diploma. That was super frustrating to me. And if she takes the SPED classes and all then she almost certainly would not get a diploma. So I wish I had more personal experience to share but that is what we were told at our high school so maybe it helps give an idea of how some are run. After learning all that we are leaning towards homeschooling with a modified curriculum for high school and awarding her a homeschool diploma so she can put on job applications that she did graduate high school.

I switched from synthroid to armour and it made an amazing difference. Even through a pregnancy my levels stayed decent with no med increase. Now I'm having a relapse and am scheduling an appt but for 2 years things were fantastic with no dosage adjustments needed.

There are some great units on grocery shopping or other real life skills on TeachersPayTeachers. People have already made pretend fliers, coupons, sales scenarios. Etc with engaging pictures. You could find some of those to work ok these skills as school time but with a real world application. Then maybe do online shopping challenges (real or pretend) by assigning a budget and certain clothing items to purchase. Talk through the sales percentages and have her write down the math problem or do it in her head. Retailmenot always lists coupon codes for different stores and there's always something online. This can be a good transition to using the skills in real life scenarios before doing it on the spot in the store.

I'm dealing with an identical child. Like you might have my daughter's long lost brother over there ;) The argumentativeness, especially picking fights with much-younger siblings. I say "Why are you fighting with the 5 year old?!" several times a week easily. Anger and frustration....check Deliberately working slow.....check. My daughter's one big chore was to do the dishes each evening. For 2 years she did it badly. Broke tons of plates, always "by accident", and spent 2 hours every single evening loading the dishwasher and hand washing a few items. Complaints the whole time, multiple bathroom breaks during what should have been a 30 minute chore. And she never extended her task to anything else. So the counter would be a mess, the floor would have water drops and crumbs on it, the stove would be greasy, etc. At 12 I was solely responsible for our kitchen and did the whole "wash dishes, wipe down counters and stovetop and microwave, rinse the sink, hang up hand towel to dry, make sure the chairs were pushed in at the table and lights turned out ready for the next day. She at 14 still didn't do half of that and the half she did was done poorly. I'm 99% sure it's on purpose but hard to tell. I will say that ADHD meds (focalin in our case) were tremendously helpful. I didn't realize it would reduce the irritability and tantrums! I had just wanted her to improve concentration during school and not fall up the stairs every day because of hyperactivity. But apparently she had been so frustrated and down on herself because everyday tasks all felt so overwhelming and hard that she was feeling like a bad kid, which resulted in irritability, being frustrated, and then throwing fits in reaction. Now, meds didn't eliminate tantrums entirely, but they did reduce the frequency. Basically they removed the frustration tantrums so we're just dealing with occasional bad-attitude teen tantrums. Oh, and my DD does have a low IQ so I'm sure that affects things too. Even if your son's IQ is 90 I wonder if that's significantly below your family average IQ if that might be affecting his performance compared to his siblings and your own experience and so causing frustration similar to a genuinely low IQ? Like for us we have a mess of gifted IQ's for better or worse, so we struggle even more and I actually feel bad and wish sometimes we were more average and able to relate to DD more. Anyway, no big magical fix-it advice here, just lots of commiseration. We have 5 kids so far and with DD being the oldest it can be very tough. I can imagine how much you have on your plate with 11 and your more difficult child being one of your older kids. I have a 5 year old bright-but-dyslexic boy coming up who I still haven't taught to read because I am just so burnt out on remediating DD14's reading and everything else. The thought of adding another 30-60 minutes a day to teach my son to read in the same way makes me want to cry.

My DD14 has an Intellectual Disability, Hearing Impairment, and Dyslexia. The schools tried Read180 and the usual methods for teaching reading with the result that she was reading at a 1st grade level at 12 years old. That includes repeating one grade. What did work for her is intensive Orton Gillingham tutoring (Barton Reading) with me. Now she's been making good, steady progress for 2 years.

Too funny! A few months ago I was prepping my little kids for first communion since DH was coming into the Byzantine Rite and they commune all ages. My 3 year old at mass pointed to the crucifix and startes jabbering about Jesus. Seizing the moment I said, "yes! You know, soon you're going to take communion and then you'll have God's life in you and you can be more like Jesus. Do you want to be like Jesus?" Her eyes brighten up and she enthusiastically replies, "Yes! I a be a wike Jesus!" As I mentally pat myself on the back she proceeds to start taking her shirt and shoes off. In alarm I'm all, "what are you doing?! Stop!" And she says, unperturbed, "I a be a wike a Jesus! I a take a my shirt off!" And points to the crucifix where in fact Jesus has no shirt or shoes on :D haha!

Unfortunately she is worse in the evenings. She gets tired easily and so morning or early afternoon is her best time. She does not do creative personal work at all. She is "bored" by everything except television and since we limit television to a reasonable 1 hour per day or so she spends the rest of the day sulking and complaining of boredom. I think it's a combo of her personality, disabilities, and time in the public school system where she was entertained all day by teachers and her entire day was planned out for her. I expected her to be a night owl by now but she's still asleep by 10pm or earlier most nights and up at 7-8am. Not like myself as a teen, haha!

ABA does sound like it might be a good fit. How does one go about finding one and is there any chance medicaid would cover all or part? And yes to the several issues and shooting in the dark. We're still waiting for an FASD evaluation. Her last pediatrician sent her to a geneticist who could not even assess her for FASD, they just did a blood test for chromosome disorders, ugh. So we've moved now and are back to square one with needing to make a ped. appointment, explain the symptoms we see and why we'd like her assessed for it, and then hope they send us to the right specialist this time. She's already been sent to a Neuropsychologist and a Geneticist, both of whom told us in our appointment that they did not and could not diagnose FASD. Oy vey! Anyway, we're just trying to figure out what's going on and why she's so all over the place with abilities. In the meantime I still have to parent and teach her.

DD14 is usually very sweet and helpful and compliant. But, when asked to do anything remotely difficult or challenging or whenever she gets in trouble for breaking a rule she shuts down, glares at us, and then cries, yells, says hurtful things, and slams her door and pouts in her room for several hours, usually falling asleep. It wastes the entire day. Some triggers include: - asking her to try a math problem by herself before asking me for help. - telling her she needs to apologize to her brother for bossing him around. - telling her she made a bad choice and needs to do better. She reacts badly even when I am calm and matter-of-fact, she reacts badly if I'm stern and bad-cop-ish, she reacts badly if I'm very gentle and compassionate. Anything short of completely retracting my request (whether it's to do something she doesn't want to or to apologize for something she did that she shouldn't have) can result in a teen-tantrum if she's in a certain mood. Some days she's fine and it doesn't happen. Other times it happens daily for weeks. You just never know. At public school crying and throwing a fit got her out of work and tests. Going silent and refusing to say anything got people to leave her alone and not ask her to do things because they assumed she was too dumb to do it. I know many of you have kids with similar or more challenging behavior problems and are trying to educate them through those. How do you deal with these kinds of meltdowns when it happens during school time? With my neurotypical kids (who wouldn't do this anyway but if they did...) I would give a logical consequence of making them finish the same amount of work later once the tantrum was over and it would just cut into their playtime, inconveniencing them and me for a day but they'd learn and no big deal. Ana does not work like that. For example we'll start school stuff at 9am. At 10am we start a history lesson where she has to copy down 3 interesting facts about a state from a textbook during/after me reading aloud the textbook to her. Some days she'll do the assignment. But maybe this day she freaks and doesn't know what fact to do right away so she starts complaining, whining, arguing. Then if I hold my ground on making her do the assignment (and often I will give her hints or something like, "why don't you try looking in the second paragraph") then she starts crying and saying I am mean or how could she possibly know this or whatever. Sometimes she'll insert some blame for her public school not teaching her this or her birth mom being at fault or me being at fault for her being unable to do it. Then she yells something hurtful, stomps off, throws things, slams her door, and cries in her room. After an hour or two she falls asleep. If I go in during this time her tantrum re-starts at the beginning. At 2pm she'll come out of her room and give a puppy dog face and say sorry but be unable to say what she did wrong. She'll sit at her desk again to re-start the history assignment and stare at the wall for a long time and pout. If I insist she do it on her own she'll throw another fit 9/10 of the time. 1/10 of the time she'll actually do the assignment. Maybe at 3pm she finishes. But now we still have math, science, and language arts to cover that she missed earlier when I was doing school with the others. I have to help her with every subject. If I make her do it alone the tantrums re-start and will continue until bedtime whereupon she falls asleep and sleeps until the next morning. I've tried removing privileges like her iPod but that doesn't seem to change her tantrum behavior, just gives her more mean things to yell at me about. So yeah, you can see how this really eats into our educational time. I don't know how to fix it. She truly was allowed to learn nothing in school. If she cried or said she didn't know the teachers (according to her IEP) gave her a new and easier assignment or helped her with it. So there was a lot of learned helplessness. But how do I properly structure our day and help her learn to work independently? Right now she even gets overwhelmed when coloring a postcard for her friend because the outlined picture had a seahorse and she didn't know what color a seahorse was. I told her she could be creative and use any color. She still wouldn't. Finally I made her so she purposely colored all sloppy, ignoring the lines even though she's an excellent colorer and often enjoys doing adult coloring pages. :/ (btw, sorry this became so long! I'm just so overwhelmed with it right now and have nobody locally to talk to who can relate or give good advice)

I totally agree with everyone else's observations that 1) it's kinda normal to go crazy from the neverending parenting of littles and 2) you find little strategies that work and it's okay if it's not perfect. But, on a practical note if it were me I'd either move lunch earlier to allow naptime to be like an hour later and after lunchtime. Sometimes a bit of food can keep a toddler awake longer. The miracles of blood sugar boosts :) Or, you could take your quiet time in the morning. I do this currently because I have thyroid issues, just moved, and a nursing 10 month old so I'm more tired than nighttime sleep can fix. So, I get up at 7am with the kids and set a few important tasks for myself. Then when the baby goes down for a 9-11am nap I lay down too and either read or browse the internet or more often nap a bit :) I let the kids watch one movie during this time so they leave me alone then I restrict screens until at least after dinner...because otherwise they might not be enthralled enough by the glowing tv to be quiet during the morning show/movie, haha!

Honestly Erin Condren has terrible customer service. I have ordered from them and had the order messed up and they did not fix it. Super annoying. I adore Plum Paper Planners.....same type of planner, better quality paper, much better customer service, and more customization offered...and a slightly cheaper price. They really listen to their customers. I emailed asking if they would be offering a Homeschool tab to replace the My Class tab for the Teacher Planner and they said they had it in the works for the future *and* asked for suggestions. Someone else I know wanted to sort of bullet journal in her Plum Paper Planner and asked if they could make all the notes pages (she added extras too) be gridded instead of lines, and they did it. You get to choose the custom colors on your covers, any color you can name or send as a hex code. If you google you can often find Plum Paper coupon codes. Or follow them on Instagram/Facebook....about once a month or so they have a special of some sort where you can get 10% off or something. I highly recommend the hourly section option like you are planning. I have been doing that for 2+ years now in the Catholic Planner that I make, and it fits perfectly with my busy life. I can *see* exactly where I have free chunks of time or not and it helps me not to double-book myself accidentally and I can see when DH will be home or at work so I know when I'm available to leave the house alone for errands or tutoring. The visual aspect of being able to see my time over the week in the hourly vertical planner pages really helps me.

I agree with every part of this post OneStep! :) We're part way through Level 5 and even though it's slow going because of my daughter being HOH it's still less overwhelming than 4 and so very worth it. As for the Levels 9 and 10 I'm planning to go through them because I think they'll be very useful *but* I think that as long as a kid got through Level 8 they'd be fine and be literate high schoolers.

As big fans of his old band, Nickelcreek, we were super happy when Chris Thile was named as the replacement for GK! It is a bit different and will take some getting used to. I'm glad to hear that the homeschooling stuff truly was just a joke. I have a feeling that'd be the kind of thing my 7 year old son will say when asked about his homeschool experience someday. Not because it's true, but because he really does spend an inordinate amount of time reading and goofing off outside compared to kids at brick and mortar schools. He learns fast so he breezes through actual assignments in a couple hours. Chris Thile definitely has a sense of humor, I wouldn't take his jokes as a negative on homeschooling or anything :)

Yes! I can identify a colic cry from a mile away, it's not a normal cry. I had PTSD from my son's colic for sure, and I would 'hear' him crying when he wasn't for months afterwards. And there's another element besides the volume/pitch, with a normal infant cry you know what to *do*. There's the hungry cry and the tired cry and the wet cry and the "I miss mommy" cry. Each has an easy fix, even if it takes a bit to figure out the details of how they like to be fed, burped, put down for naps, etc. A colicky cry has no cure. You just hold your baby while he screams and screams and nothing you do can comfort him. My son went one spell where he went 8 hours without nursing or sleeping in the middle of the night. He just screamed, wouldn't latch on no matter how hard I tried, wouldn't fall asleep, etc. So my husband and I took turns walking in circles with him, bouncing him and offering to nurse and trying different holds, etc.

I had one colicky baby out of four. He came out screaming and just sort of kept screaming for about 3 months, then remained touchy/spirited for many months after that. He was EBF and had intolerances to milk, soy, bananas, and avocados so I breastfed while on that elimination diet. I later added rice cereal under direction of the doctor to stop his aspiration as he was refluxing so badly while sleeping as to turn purple. Because my brother died of SIDS we all took that seriously and so I thickened my breastmilk, we upped his reflux meds, and he was on an apnea monitor whenever asleep for 2 months. Anyway, so no, formula had nothing to do with it since he was EBF when he had colic. I later switched him to formula at 10.5 months just because I was tired of pumping exclusively to thicken and he no longer accepted the breast. He was actually much happier on hypoallergenic formula, though I'm glad he got the breastfeeding antibodies early on. Having been on two different forums for parents of infants, including one I moderate, most colic is actually reflux and most reflux is caused by intolerances to different foods. One mom I know had 4 out of 4 babies with severe reflux and intolerances....blood in the diapers, low weight gain, etc. With her 4th she went top-8 free before giving birth and breastfed and the baby had no reflux. She gradually added back in foods to her diet and discovered that her babies are allergic to something like 6 of the top 8 foods.

I need paper and pencil planners and I've found that Plum Paper Large Teacher Planners are the best for space and they customize the subject headings for you. Cute customizable covers too!