Ah, Doodler, you give me HOPE!! At this moment my dd is on day three of a writing project that started three days ago with teeth-pulling, but has become the focus of her week. She is writing her own American Girl Catalog; it is a typed mix of copywork and her own writing, complete with lots of fun fonts, colors, and other editing tricks. I have repeated to myself over and over and over this week: she is writing...this counts... You have beautifully reminded me what I believe about writing, and what I hope will be true for my dd as she matures. Thanks for your thoughtful response!!

Bump :tongue_smilie:

PLEASE let it be true!!! I am using the Bravewriter approach, which starts with a VERY relaxed approach to writing. Anything that she writes down on paper counts (lists, instructions, etc.) Then we do one free-write per week for 8 weeks. That's the part that's tricky...as I said it's like pulling teeth. BUT, I'm not ready to give up on it yet, as we need as few battles as possible at our house. Also, I really like the BW approach to writing (from my own perspective as a writer it makes a ton of sense). And to my great surprise, today dd got right onto the computer to continue what she started yesterday, and she has been willing to tweak the exercise to include more of her "own" ideas (rather than copying from a source). So, back to the title of my post, I just have to be patient. I need more chocolate.

:lol: Brilliant!!

Can you remind us of his age? Wondering if this would be appropriate for a 13 (going on 10) year old.

I've tried fun, no-fun, interests, non-interests, one sentence, five sentences, outlines, you name it. She just DOES NOT want to write. Boo.

Excellent! Adding them to my list as we speak. ;)

Hugs to you hsbaby, and to all of us as we deal with the daily challenges and heartbreak of parenting children with special needs.

Thanks everyone! :)

It took two hours and 40 minutes of encouragement (and arguing :glare:), but the keys on the computer are finally clicking for today's free writing assignment. It is unbelievable how much anxiety dd has about writing. And I just read the "college" thread and feel like we'll never get the amount of output we need to even come close. I've been VERY relaxed about writing...there is absolutely NO pressure. In fact, she hasn't done any free writing in at least a month. So today I came to her with a FUN assignment, based on her latest obsession, American Girl dolls. Of course she found a way to throw it in my face. :angry: I stayed cool and waited it out, and she's finally doing it. Homeschooling may kill me. Anyone else??

One of my college roommates writes a blog about special needs ministries. You might browse through her stuff and see if you find some ideas. http://theinclusivechurch.wordpress.com/ Now that my dd is in the youth group we haven't been active. She LOVED our children's ministry, which was VERY hands-on. Youth activities have unfortunately been much more "adult", mostly due to our youth minister. He has just resigned, though, so I'm hopeful we might get someone doing more "fun" things again. We need to be at church, I just can't get there.

I just finished reading Coloring Outside the Lines by Roger Schank. This is one of the books that One l Michele has recommended often in her responses. I found this book to be extremely encouraging. The author describes 6 traits of a "smart" kid. 5/6 of these are attributes my special needs dd already has in spades (like gumption ;)). They were all "outside the box"-type traits; ones that I find commonly described on this board. He spends much of the book discussing how to discover and develop these traits in your kids. He is also a big proponent of "experience" as a learning tool, which made me feel better since our homeschool days never look as "schoolish" as I think they should. Anyhoo, kudos to Michele for your recommendation. Thanks!! :)

I'm really using it just to benchmark where she is at the end of this semester. She will be completing her 7th grade year academically, although she is significantly delayed socially/emotionally. Thanks for the ideas!

What standardized tests have you found useful for your middle schoolers?

:bigear: