Schooling kids w/ long term illness

[Soror]

Dd2/10yo/4th hasn't felt well since the beginning of the year. We've been hobbling along doing what she can when she feels better and cutting back on days she don't. But she keeps feeling worse. We're working on and hopeful for a diagnosis but realistically it could be another couple months before she feels well. I've been operating under the assumption to limp along until she's better but it has hit me that isn't coming soon or easily. I don't want her to fall any more behind than she has to but she has enough stress I don't want school to add to it. Math is not her strong area and I switched her to CLE this year but the lessons are a bit long- maybe we could do half pace? Some easier online program to just keep things fresh but not try to add new things? She's been doing Treasured Conversations but it isn't her favorite (she doesn't care much for writing either!). She likes reading and science (most especially animals). Maybe just let her check out books and write about animals? She was a year ahead in spelling we could drop that and pick it up next year if we had to. For social studies we've been studying cultures/countries, she can just listen to read alouds and play map games(she does well with maps)??

So, tell me what you did in this situation. How did you flex for those bad days/appointments? Did you make plans or just wing it due to the unpredictability???

TIA

[8filltheheart]

So sorry she's dealing with this. When my daughter was really sick, we took the one beast a day approach. During the day when she felt like she had the most energy she would tackle one subject that was difficult. Some days that meant none. But on her good days she would try to do concentrated effort on at least one subject. 

Audiobooks, documentaries were a huge part of her fallback plan. But even then, some days sh ed couldn't even do that. We learned to be flexible. If Saturday or Sunday was a good day, she would do work the. She worked through the summer, etc.

For our dd it was slightly different bc she was in high school. For a 10 yr old, I would probably take a different approach and do a lot orally or ascribing even on good days.

[....]

I posted about this before, but it's been awhile.  When dd12 was 8, she was jumping around on her bed (yeah, just like the song), fell, hit the wall with the top of her head and knocked herself unconscious.  She missed almost an entire YEAR of school.  For the first month, she wasn't allowed to read, watch TV, do sports/physical activity or anything.  I tried reading books to her and she would start crying, because it would cause headaches.  For basically the entire year, she would start getting headaches right after lunch and have to take a nap.  She had post-concussive syndrome.  At one point, I just packed up and put all of her school books away.  ☹️

Anyway, yes, I was in a panic for several months.  I was also thankful that we homeschooled, because there was no way she would be able to get through a long day at school.  She would've been miserable.  The headaches eventually did go away and she was able to enjoy working on school again.  When we started school again, we were able to pick up right where we left off.  In fact, I was surprised by how much she had learned that year just through everyday life.  She caught up and she ended up just fine.  Several years later and she isn't behind at all (and no headaches).     

[Homebody2]

I'm so sorry you're experiencing this. It's very stressful to have a chronically ill child, and I imagine it's even more stressful as you don't have a diagnosis yet. 

Our son, now 13, was chronically ill from ages 2-10 (each cycle of illness and treatment lasted about 3 years). I knew we were in it for the long haul, so I tried to approach it by thinking that this is just our new normal, not something to get through. This process was going to take years, and I didn't want my son's childhood to be missed. I didn't want years to go by with illness being our focus. So we lived life (it sure didn't look like a normal life, but it was to us).

My best piece of advice is to have a routine and stick with it. Not a time of day routine, but just a rhythm of things that happen every day. That helped me, our son, and our whole family feel normal. Every day we got up, ate breakfast, got dressed and I read aloud. Then we did some lessons. What lessons looked like each day depended on many factors, but we did them every day. Then lunch, a read aloud, rest time (usually watching shows for an hour), and free time. We even stuck with this routine during our frequent hospital stays!

We stuck with math, spelling, and grammar. Writing seemed to be the biggest challenge on days my son felt bad, so we did writing mostly as oral narrations. He narrated and I wrote. Grammar was mostly oral as well. I used FLL as our guide and incorporated copywork a couple days a week.

Much of our time was spent reading. Our favorite subject has always been history, so I read aloud from Story of the World twice a week and read lots of books about whatever time period we were studying. Science was just reading as well.

On days we had appointments, lessons were canceled. To account for days missed, we schooled year round, taking days off for breaks and holidays.

Once we had a rhythm to our days, it was easy to incorporate more during the days and weeks when my son felt well.

It can be hard to balance, I know. On the one hand, you want your child to rest and be stress-free, but on the other hand you know that this isn't a short illness that will last just a few days at which point you can get back to things as normal. There won't be normal for months, years, or ever for some families, so you have to find a new normal. Figure out that normal for your family and just live. Incorporate the illness into your world instead of looking at it as something to get through. That's what helped us. I hope it maybe helps you.

[ktgrok]

I'd maybe try Khan academy for math - there are missions and it adapts based on how well you are doing. So if she is doing fairly well she can progress farther faster - DS missed a lot of school last year while we sorted out his medical issues and same - CLE took so long and there was no real way to accelerate to make up time missed. With Khan he finished up the year and much of the next grade level. 

then let her read, watch documentaries, listen to read alouds, and maybe write in a journal. The end. 

[Soror]

I want to say thank you ladies for thoughts. We are taking Christmas break for 2 weeks so I'll be using that time to look and see how I can change things up. I appreciate you ladies sharing and giving ideas. I need to think on all these wonderful ideas a bit.