{Begin HERE if you haven’t been following how we became loco homeschoolers.}

The first two years formally homeschooling Micah (and Evan, 18 months younger) made it obvious we were right where we should be. It was like spring after a grey winter. It rained hard sometimes as it does in springtime, but I took seasoned school teachers and home educators at their word, “You will find a rhythm and you will get better at it as the years pass.”

And they were right.

Even though I’ve changed many things over the years and sometimes our rhythm gasps for a defibrillator, as the seasons have slipped by we are more and at home being at home. What we didn’t anticipate were the massive benefits to our second son beyond what we’d discovered initially with the first.

Evan was a boisterous preschooler, full of rhythm and recreation. A lover of all things mammal, musical or mechanical. Around age 3 1/2, even though he could easily build rudimentary Lego construction trucks on the fly and flawlessly beat box the entire Oompa Lompa theme song, I realized he didn’t know any letter sounds.

How had I missed this? (Yes, you can laugh at my unnecessary panic.)

Micah was fascinated by language his whole early life and I took that for granted. He mastered letters and sounds by the time he was one. Remember how I told you I was completely clueless when it came to regular milestones? Yeah, so I thought all kids did that. Just like I thought all two year olds could ride a two-wheeler and jump ramps when my friend’s kid did just that. (Seriously, why are there no good instruction manuals for this parenting thing?!)

Evan, on the other hand, had absolutely no interest in letters.

Their sounds lacked the grit and guts of a motor grader or an amphibious assault vehicle. He could easily recall the name of any construction or military vehicle as well as those of regular cars and trucks. He would rattle them off from his baby seat as he saw them around town. He even recognized many at night simply by their head or tail lights- a man-trick I’ve always been fascinated by. But letters? Nope. Nada.

So I did what any overly-hyper-scholastic parent would do: I sat down to teach him.

It would go something like this: I’d hold up a large-print card of a letter surrounded by sickeningly cute pictures of phonetically related items, “Ev, this is A. A says /ă/. You say /ă/.” And he would. Easy, right? Then I would immediately show him the same card again and ask, “Buddy, what letter is this?” To which he would scrunch his fat cheeks around his button nose and exasperatedly reply, “I. DON’T. KNOW.”

Le sigh…

No matter how many times we did the drill, he gave the same frustrated reply. Eventually I gave up and decided he would somehow survive not knowing any ABCs in preschool and possibly kindergarten and maybe high school. If it got really bad I could put my tail between my legs and enroll him in our neighborhood school.

Since letters were a wash, I got to know the names of every vehicle in our county as he happily pointed them out with his soft, fat finger. And you know what? By the time kindergarten rolled around he’d learned all 26 letters and most of their sounds.

I didn’t teach him a thing. Honest.

Even with this surprisingly effortless milestone achieved, over the next few years he revealed a pattern of mismatched decoding. After first grade came and went and we had both shed a fair amount of tears, we reformatted. Using suggestions from teachers and reading tutors (who seemed to pop up right when I was desperate, like flowers among weeds) we slowed it down and went at a snail’s pace, keeping it light and fun- something that would have thrown him far behind his peers in a typical setting.

Reevaluating his skill and abilities it became very obvious he was under the umbrella of dyslexia.

I stopped having him sound out directions in math or other subjects. I read them to him. He was a brilliant mathematician, but couldn’t process the written instructions. It was so much mental work to decode one word correctly that by the time he came to the end of a sentence he had no idea what he’d read. WIth our new approach, he made huge strides his second and third grade years, but by the end still could not read simple books designed for 1st and 2nd graders. And that was ok.

He had no idea he was so far behind.

We told him he was an excellent reader for his level- and he was. Considering what he had to do to get the letters in each word to stay in order, he was doing a fabulous job. This in itself was a huge gift.

He was a shy and very self-conscious youngster. Without question he’d have had an IEP (for serious learning disabilities) from early on. This is a wonderful resource in public school, giving personal assistants to children that need something of an interpreter for academics. But this child would have melted into a sea of embarrassment as he struggled through all of his subjects.

The standard system is heavily based on the ability to read and  comprehend written language, something he simply couldn’t do for many years.

This year we jumped back to remedial reading again and went very, very slowly. We went way back. Like to advanced kindergarten. From simple three to five letter words to many-syllabled words and short story paragraphs. He read out loud simple stories to me, Dad, and grandparents.

Most often he read to the dog.

I felt very strongly that he needed another restart to solidify the decoding. It was a difficult decision to do this. He already begged to be assigned the thick books his brother was reading, so I wondered if he would feel patronized. But still that soft inner voice said, “Do it and don’t look back!”

Now? The kid can read! And he finished fourth grade with flying colors. He’s slow and steady, but confident and understands what he’s reading. It’s practically a miracle and it took some very consistent work.

He has no idea his path to grade level chapter books was a mountain trail full of sharp switchbacks (shhh- don’t tell him yet). All he has ever known is he’s a great reader for his level. Now he is growing firmly into that title.

We are so thankful for home education even if it’s just for this one thing.

Evan, I feel, is a hidden reason why we were so convicted to homeschool. His disability was caught early and he was set on the right path. He did not have to fail or fall behind in multiple subjects before the problem revealed itself.

True, trials build character, but his character building will have to come from a different fire.

{Why else do we school at home? Next post is HERE.}