Just waking up here in Japan and you ladies are phenomenal!!! I can not thank you enough for all of your advice, suggestions, and wisdom! We are diving into our homeschool day now, but I will write back as soon as I get a chance. Thank you all so much!

We tried to go that route when we lived in Virginia and no one would give us an approval for it or even lead us to a specific therapist. Back then, if I had even a phone number for a VT, I would have been blowing their phone up. She is now able to read for an hour at a time without any eye watering, but still feels exhausted if she has read a lot during the day. We are currently stationed overseas and do not have access to any specialist.

Thank you for all the resources! I have never seen anything like the Inspiration software! That looks like something she could really benefit from. Is the Voice Dream app connected with Bookshare or something separate? We often will buy the paperback book and the add audible to it for her to listen and read along together. But I looked up the Voice Dream and I love how it highlights the words as you are hearing them. How can I find a list of books that are offered through Voice Dream?

I have not heard of Learning Ally or Bookshare, but I will look them up. We have been using Audible and pairing it with some of her text. I also have allowed her to just listen to some of the history literature suggestions on Audible without reading along on the text. Reading is exhausting for her is the best way to describe it. Which I am sure why she is doesn't enjoy it. When she was in elementary school, reading for 20 minutes would make her eyes water so bad she would have to stop.

My 16 year old daughter has dyslexia. The magic program for us has been http://www.spellingpower.com. I don't think it is presented as one for dyslexia, but it has been working for us for almost two years now. I only bought the book, none of the extra stuff, and she studies the word list each day and then I give the quiz. The process of calling out one word at a time and correcting a word immediately if she misspelled it has helped a lot. There is also a page in the book that gives a step by step process on how to study the words you miss. It involves visualizing the word, tracing it with your fingers on the table or carpet, writing it from memory, ect... She hated this at first because it feels so childish, but she later admitted it really works. Now she is able to rewrite a word she has misspelled a few times over and over and it sticks. I love that each day's word list has a spelling rule with it, so you are not jumping all over the place. And lots and lots of review is built into the system. It literally takes about 5-10 minutes each day for Spelling and we have seen the most improvement with this program. None of my kids complain about having to do spelling every day.

Let me start this out by saying, please be kind in your comments. I want to hear your opinions, but this is a super sensitive topic for me right now. I am going to to be very vulnerable and share kind of the "whole big picture". We adopted our daughter when she was eight years old through the foster care system. She was born premature ( does that play into learning disabilities?), she was severely neglected the first 5 years of her life, also head trauma at the age of 3 (car accident with no seat belt), tossed around in foster care for 3 years, diagnosed with a speech disorder while in foster care ( went through 2 years of speech therapy), and failed Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade in the public school system. We adopted her at the end of her 2nd grade year. I urged for them to hold her back because she could not even add 2+2=4, but they refused because of her height. (Crazy, right?) That is where our homeschool journey began. She is now 16 years old and we have been homeschooling the past 7.5 years. We had further testing done over the years and she has diagnosis of Dyslexia, Auditory Processing Disorder, and a general Processing Disorder along with Anxiety and ADD. She also had a low IQ score when she was first placed in foster care and her report says she would never read above a 2nd grade level. Thankfully, I didn't have time to read that report when we first adopted her, because I had also just had a baby. So while those papers sat in a box in the closet, I embarked on a mission to homeschool her. Her vocabulary is not up to high school standards but her ability to read is, so she lacks in comprehension of some high school text even though she can pronounce the words. Teaching Textbooks Math has been the best math program for her, she is passing Algebra 1 with a B right now. She loves Guest Hollow Biology because it is very visual and the lady has a good sense of humor in her text. I am at a loss on what to expect from her for Language Arts and History. For language arts she is currently doing Fix It Grammar from IEW, SWB Writing with Skill ( I know this is considered logic level, but it is where she is at), Spelling Power, and reading from a book of her choice for 1 hour a day. For History she listens in on her younger brothers SOTW and we have been trying to match it as closely as possible with HOTW for her. She does NOT do well on the comprehension questions or essays that go along with HOTW. We also tried Notgrass History, which she didn't mind, but also scored poorly on the comprehension questions. She actually does do well if I ask her to just write a paper on what she read that week in History. Would you suggest switching curriculums, allowing her to just read HOTW and write a weekly paper, or beef us SOTW for her in some way? And back to language arts....what else should I be expecting out of her for high school level English? I am a literature lover and she is NOT! I still feel like there should be a high school level book assigned once a month and discussed. Is this expecting too much of her? Do I cut out the 1 hour of free reading to accommodate for the required high school level reading? Will that kill any love for reading she has? I will be the first to admit I have pushed her hard over the years. Not in a mean way, but wanting her to realize she is capable of more than what she thinks she is because of her learning disabilities. She has no desire to go to college at this point, even though she has briefly brought it up in the past. She also has no idea what she wants to do with her life after graduating. Is that normal? Like not a clue. My boys are 8 and 14 and are always dreaming of future careers of being an engineer, zoologist/marine biologist. She does have a natural talent for writing fiction. I have tried so many times to harness that and help her grow in that area. Despite her dyslexia causing spelling and grammar errors, her story telling is phenomenal. However, when I try to key in on that and offer one of her high school electives to be a Creative Writing class....she shuts down and all of the sudden hates writing. If I make it a part of school, she no longer finds joy in it. I am stumped by this, because the boys love for me to incorporate their passions in with their school assignments. Sorry for the long book, but I really need help in knowing how much I should be expecting of her and where I need to just let it go. Thank you ladies so much for your time and wisdom.

Thank you <3 I am struggling with having to put school on hold a few days, but I am loving all the reading I am getting in! The older two kids are thankfully, obediently, plugging along with their school work.

You ladies are reading much more sophisticated literature than I am right now. I have been in the bed for the past few days with pneumonia and my kindle. In my search for a light read, I discovered a free ebook about Grimm's Fairy Tales titled UnEnchanted by Chanda Hahn. I got sucked into the freebie book ( even though it had major grammar errors) and downloaded the rest of the series on my Kindle. I finished all five of them and really loved the series. I would recommend this series to girls as young as 6th grade and up. The series is full of adventure, magic, and light romance (kissing). Thankfully, the other four books in the series have been well edited before being published.

Thank you all for your advice. I will let the free reading time be whatever she wants to make of it and not push her to finish what she starts.

She truly has a problem with finishing ANYTHING she starts unless it is required of her. And if something is out of sight, it is completely out of mind, like totally forgotten about. Which is why I am assuming it doesn't bother her at all if she finishes the end of a book or even the end of a tv series she is watching.

We are currently living in Japan so I am excited to look up these books mentioned. I am very interested in reading A Tale for the Time Being. It breaks my heart how many Japanese students commit suicide because of the bullying and pressures placed upon them.

I like that idea!

Glad I am not the only one! I like to read from different genres so I can pick up a book based on what I am in the mood for at the moment :)

I consider myself an ADD reader as well. I am typically reading several books at one time from different genres. I understand being forced to finish a book would kill the love of reading. I am just really concerned with her inability to follow through and finish anything she starts.

Yes, she said she just gets bored with the book. But I find this so confusing because of her initial excitement in picking out the book on her own. I know that reading isn't a passion for her like it is for me, she prefers movies. We have tried audiobooks as well, she doesn't mind listening to them while doing chores or going for a walk, but prefers music. Basically, if it is not assigned reading, she is not going to choose to read on her own.