I never expected.....

I always meant for this blog to be more helpful, to tell more detail about our stories and other stories I had heard.  I don't think I'm quite achieving what I had originally set out to do but then things have not gone the way I expected them to go either. 

I thought we would make personal breakthroughs (sort of like reinventing the wheel) rather than find that the tools we needed are already out there but expensive to afford.

I never expected that after getting a diagnosis the next hit would come when my daughter (and then later my son) totally had their rights trampled on by school professionals who had the agenda of protecting the school district's time energy and money by trying to deny my children the IEP's they are legally entitled to have based on their diagnosis.

On a positive day I see small changes in the world and think that maybe they are starting to add up.  I think of all the celebrities who keep telling everyone that they have dyslexia and I think to myself every time the world heard the word dyslexia we get a tiny bit closer to taking care of the millions of children (and adults) who suffer because the wrong teaching method is being applied to them. 

Last night I was thinking about this and about smart people I have known through life and how I was always a bit surprised that they didn't do better in school, that they didn't seem to have the academic success I would have expected considering how intelligent they all are. I wonder if it is dyslexia and if they have just compensated in various ways to get through life since no one every really helped them the way my daughter has been helped.  What a loss to society that by not being taught to read by a good method they want nothing more to do with academics. 

Then I thought about my daughter, who could pass a spelling test with A's in first grade but then wouldn't recognize the same word on a page.  (Remember dyslexia is a fingerprint and every person's is different).

Then I was thinking about her in terms of her memory (excellent).  That gave me hope for the future too.

And I was thinking about now, how she can read and all we are doing is maintaining where she is and hopefully improving her reading speed/rate (we will see I'm not holding my breath but then again I've been surprised before at the changes can be made when one is in the right hands).

So the next huge hurdle for her will come when we transition her back into Catholic school.  I hope that wont be until fourth grade.

My teacher friend says up until fourth grade children are learning to read, in fourth grade they begin reading to learn.  I believe that.