Empowering Women, Not So Much

When people ask me what I "do", they are obviously curious as to what my career is.  By our society's definition, because I homeschool my children and don't dump them in daycare or public schools, I don't "do" anything.  I find that funny, considering that what I do now is often more tiring and requires more mental effort than any job I have held in my life.  I have a college degree and have worked in the mental health field as a counselor.

If I had a career as a childcare worker or a school teacher, people would consider me part of the working world, a person who is contributing to society.  People were always interested when I explained my previous jobs.  When I point out that my job now is raising and educating my children, people say with an undeniable lack of respect, "Oh, so you're a stay-at-home mom."

Of course, there is the other side of the coin; some women think they are better than everyone else because they stay at home, dubbing themselves "domestic engineers".  I find this highly abrasive, as does my husband, who is an actual engineer.  My issue with the term "domestic engineer" has a lot more to do with the fact that people find it necessary to somehow artificially increase the perceived importance of a mother who chooses to parent her child(ren) instead of having someone else do it.  For the record, here's the definition of an engineer from Wikipedia:

An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics, and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety, and cost.

Why is it more respectable to leave my children in a school or daycare center to go care for or teach someone else's children than it is to be present in my own children's lives and care for and teach them?  There has been a huge movement for a long time to empower women and push for equality, and yet, even women look down upon mothers who choose to raise their children instead of letting someone else do it.  There are endless reasons in the media and the world on a daily basis for mothers to be the ones who are their children's caregivers, including but not limited to the daycare worker who posted pictures of children on Instagram with humiliating comments and comparison photos.  Fortunately, both women were fired, but it doesn't change the fact that things like this are happening far more than we care to think about.

The pendulum always swings.  It took a while for women to be accepted in the workforce, and they're still fighting for equal salaries.  At the same time, women who choose to raise their own children instead of having someone else do it are fighting for respect.  Women who contribute to society outside of the workforce have pretty much never been given any respect, and we like to think this is some sort of move toward equality and the empowerment of women?  For anyone who believes that, I have some beachfront property in the desert to sell you.

Recommended reading
Cruel Daycare Workers Posy Pictures Mocking Children Online:
http://thestir.cafemom.com/toddler/159914/cruel_daycare_workers_post_online

Stuff People Say to Speech Parents

When my son was just 2 years old, he was referred for a speech evaluation by the doctors who diagnosed him with autism. At age 2, Little G had the speech of a 12-15 month-old. Speech therapy was unavailable for various reasons, and we were expected to play the waiting game. Thing is, I wasn't having any of it. I started researching various options and found Baby Signing Time. I cannot even begin to express what an asset those DVDs were. We bought a few and borrowed many through the inter-library loan program, which brings materials from libraries throughout the county to those who request them. It prepared Little G well for speech therapy when we eventually did obtain services for him; prior to learning sign language, he had resorted to massive meltdowns any time he wanted or needed something because the stress of what it took for him to communicate was utterly overwhelming.

Now, as his 7th birthday approaches, he still struggles with speech but has come a very long way. His official diagnosis is "expressive-receptive speech disorder", which basically means that he has two-way communication deficits; there is difficulty processing what goes into his brain and what his brain can do in terms of speech production. It is a disorder, not a delay, and it will likely be lifelong.

Early on, when I shared with others that my son had a speech disorder and was in therapy for it, I heard a lot of trite statements regurgitated almost verbatim. I never realized that just about everyone, for example, has a family member who didn't say a word until age 4, at which point they spoke a complete and very witty sentence and never stopped talking for more than five minutes in the 40 years since. Also abundant are younger siblings who just never bothered to speak because their older sibling(s) did it for them. Another standard response was, "He'll talk when he's ready/when he wants to."

None of these things are helpful or reassuring, unless your point is to reassure me that you are completely clueless about my son's diagnosis. These all imply also that I need some sort of coddling or reassurance that my son will someday be "normal" by your definition, or that we have something to feel bad about. He's already normal by my definition and always has been, and frankly, I don't really care about your definition. Everyone has their challenges, this is one of his, and it's not a big deal. It is frustrating for him, and sometimes for us, due to the nature of the challenges posed by a two-way communication disorder. But it can be dealt with, just like people deal with any other challenge in life.

You may be wondering how, then, to respond to a friend or family member whose child has just been diagnosed with a speech disorder. First, don't go repeating some tripe you've heard regurgitated ad nauseum by others. You don't know the child's projected trajectory, and you may not have ever personally encountered a child with the same disorder, so you end up coming across as offensive and sounding like an ass. Personally, I am open to questions. When people ask questions, it tells me they are interested in understanding rather than just pretending they understand. If you have experience with a speech success story, feel free to share it. If you have experience with any speech disorder, feel free to share it. We probably just need you to listen, and if you feel the need to offer something but don't know what, simply letting us know that you have confidence in how we're handling it is nice to hear.

Our Tuesday

Day 6 of the new school year, and 6 year-old Little G has completed 23% of 2nd grade math. He keeps me busy. The great thing about this is that getting to the math portion of his studies is an incentive to get through the less desirable portions of his day. And speaking of less desirable...


The changes to the curriculum aren't, in my opinion, positive ones. I'm as stunned as anyone could be that I have anything less than glowing to say about K12, but this splitting of the language arts into multiple categories is confusing, time-consuming, and annoying. It makes it appear like a lot more work when it really isn't. It doesn't streamline anything; the new format is kind of like a jar of marbles being dropped on a hard floor - it's all over the place and it's an effort to go looking for everything.

They also took a very my-kid-friendly version of language arts (i.e. lots of books and lessons about comprehension) and replaced it with a bunch of rote memory tasks, far fewer books, and these lessons where my speech-impaired son has to record himself reading passages. Even with the mic turned all the way up, and my little guy practically yelling, the recordings still need to be redone five times because they are deemed "too quiet" by the system. After language arts today, Little G was exhausted and didn't want to speak at all. He also decided to forego his typical reading time, which he usually does while Reezle is doing the portions of her lessons which require me to be present. I don't like this trajectory. At this rate, his love of reading and language arts is going to be kaput by the end of the month.

On a more positive note, Reezle loves Spanish. This language course seems to be to her what math is to Little G; I can get her to complete just about any school task without complaint as long as she gets to do extra Spanish. Win! A few of our current words are:

so/bear, rata/rat, tigre/tiger, amigos/friends, uno/one, dos/two, hueco/hole, pelota/ball, zapatos/shoes, ropa/clothing, sucia/dirty, jardin/garden, con/with (con mis amigos - with my friends), roca/rock.


This isn't a complete list, it's just what I recall off the top of my head. I've been practicing them repeatedly with the kiddos, in addition to some various words they already know, and trying to build from there. I really like how the course is set up, from what we've done thus far.

Like the English language arts courses, Reezle also has recordable portions. She likes them, though, and they are neither challenging nor the lengthy passages G is required to read aloud. And on that note, it is time to get back at it.

Happy homeschooling!

Aimsweb and A Boy With Speech Disorders

At the beginning of the year, my children both participated in an Aimsweb assessment. At the time, I felt it was accurate; it assessed them both as "Well Above Average". They are. No problem.

I'm not one of those parents who demands that my children attain some specific standard, or who believes my children are somehow exceptionally gifted just because they're mine. However, they are academically advanced beyond grade level, and would like for testing to reflect that.

Mid-year, Little G's scores dipped somewhat. He was annoyed with the testing; he remembered he had been assessed using these same measures in the past and he is not one who likes to repeat. Getting him to cooperate was a feat of monumental proportions. So when he had to do it for a third time this spring, he just wasn't having it. Typically, before we sit down for our assessments, I have some time to briefly discuss what we will be doing and why. This time, I was experiencing technical issues with my computer (a Dell N5110, another topic; don't buy a Dell), and I didn't have the time to talk with Little G because I was busy trying to evoke some signs of life from my computer. The test is timed, and he spent the majority of that time shooting me dirty, disgruntled looks and throwing his head back to stare at the ceiling in silent protest. His autism and his enormous ego are sometimes a bit of a challenge.

At the conclusion of the testing, Little G scored Below Average. I was extremely annoyed, and having difficulty pretending I wasn't. I told the teacher assessing him as much, and said I should probably discuss the results at another time. She was extremely understanding and offered me some phone numbers of some people I could contact regarding my feelings on the matter and what I felt ought to be done differently. After all, I said in protest, they were assessing a child taking 1st grade curriculum as a Kindergartner. He certainly would have been less frustrated and the picture would have been more accurate had they assessed him based on where he was actually working. I realized I was launching into an epic rant once again, which I was trying to avoid since the issues I was facing were not the teacher's fault and she didn't deserve to be on the receiving end of my dissatisfaction. I accepted her offer of the contact info, and I decided to focus on anything other than Aimsweb.

But I couldn't. A few days passed. The teacher (she's awesome, I'm pretty sure I have mentioned this) agreed to allow Little G to take the assessment again on a day when we were not experiencing massive technical issues and he could truly focus. As it turned out, we still had some technical issues (did I mention Dell sucks?) but she came up with ways to work around it. And when all was said and done, Little G scored in the Average to Above Average categories across the board. I felt better. Little G felt better.



But during the testing, something occurred to me. My son is not typical. My son is autistic and has a speech disorder which affects his expressive and receptive communication. Even if he had truly scored in the below average range for letter sounds, would it have been because of a lack of understanding or learning? No! His speech disorder complicates matters extensively, and the fact that he is able to compensate as well as he does is highly impressive. Here I was spending all of my time focused on the fact that this standardized test failed in an epic way at assessing my son's actual abilities and progress, to the point that I forgot an extremely important variable: my son's language disability.

Little G knew his alphabet and numbers 1-10 by his second birthday, despite his inability to speak (ah, the wonders of computers). He is anything but below average. I bristled at the scores on the latest assessment, an assessment of the boy who has been tutoring his similarly gifted sister since he was just a preschooler. How could he be able to correct Reezle's spelling and grammar errors and he is scoring Below Average on Aimsweb!? Actually, for nonsense word reading, he scored Well Above Average; it was only the things directly related to how he processes speech sounds which became an issue. Duh. Sometimes I fail to think. And yet, standard tests fail to really assess his knowledge and ability because they do not take his disability into account.

Standardized tests are just a part of the story.

Oral Fluency and Speech

I finally located the online oral fluency assessment I used previously with the kids, and it was extremely close to the school's assessment results. Since Little G is technically in Kindergarten, he does not do an oral fluency assessment through K12 yet. At the beginning of the year, he was reading about 40 words per minute, hampered somewhat by his speech disorder. His comprehension was perfect, though. He is now reading at 62 words per minute, also with perfect comprehension. This is a late 1st grade to early 2nd grade reading level, and if his speech disorder wasn't holding him back I believe he would have done even better.

Because his speech is not "bad enough" to hold him back beyond his actual grade level, he does not qualify for services any longer. People assess him and tell me that he's actually doing more than most children his age. But I believe in helping him achieve his true, fullest potential, not just "passable" on some one-size-fits-all assessment. So, I am working at finding as much information as I can to help him compensate for his disorder and bring his speech capabilities more in line with his intellectual ability. I take a video of him every 8 weeks to determine what is progressing and what isn't, and what we need to focus on most. His progress from last year at this time until now is nothing short of amazing! Words are extremely important to my son, and he has an incredible desire to communicate. I believe that is his greatest asset in terms of stomping his challenges.

Aimsweb is the benchmark assessment used to evaluate K12 students. I think in general it is probably a decent evaluation tool. However, in evaluating children with special needs (like my son's speech), or gifted children, it probably falls short. It's frustrating. Teacher friends of mine have said the same. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who feels this way, yet I don't have any better ideas so perhaps I ought to just keep my Aimsweb opinions to myself.

Meanwhile, I am very proud of how well both of my little students are doing. Even at this age, homeschool requires some self-discipline to do as well as they are doing. They are hard workers who really want to achieve their best, and I am blessed to be a part of the process.

Potentials

My son taught me how to quickly calculate larger numbers in my head.

He was 5 when he taught me this trick.

It was 38 + 42 that brought us to this epiphany. He spat the answer out in seconds. I asked, G, how did you do that so fast? The answer was 80. He said, "Moooom, it's easy. You break apart the numbers. Give the 2 to the 38 and make it 40, so then it's just 40 + 40, and that is super easy...80!."

Uh, woah.

And he was right. When he put it in those terms, it was super easy. That's now his mind works naturally. He's a problem solver by nature. I'm not built that way. I can learn, but it isn't built into my make-up like it is for Little G.

When Little G was just 23 months old, we learned that he is autistic. Just a short time later, we were told that he has hypotonia (low muscle tone) and a speech disorder (not just delay). And at the same time, we were also told that he might have a genetic condition (Beckwith-Wiedemann) that sometimes causes childhood cancer. Yes, I kinda freaked out. After leaving the geneticist's office that day, I smiled at my baby son, walked him in his stroller over to the gift shop where they had toy kitties (his fave), and hugged him to me as I choked back tears that I believe to this day could have flooded the building. But I never let on.

There was no speech therapist available through Early Intervention, so I just learned ASL (American Sign Language) and taught it to the kids and my husband. Because that's what had to be done. He started to communicate. I had great hopes for him, and yet, he still managed to surpass my wildest expectations.

I didn't expect my son to be skipping grade levels in school. I didn't expect him to be speaking so clearly and meaningfully at age 6 like he is, much less using that speech to teach me things about math. The kid is brilliant. And I want to tell all of you, with children who are diagnosed with autism and global developmental delays like my son was, that this IS NOT the end of the road. It is not a prediction. It is not a set-in-stone Way Things Will Be. Trust. Hope. Keep your minds open. And you will be surprised at what your child can do. Do not let anyone place limitations on your child. He or she holds more potential than anyone can see, think, feel, or predict. It will rock your world, if you let it.

Learning and Language

Teaching my son is ridiculously easy most of the time. He loves to learn, absorbs information like a little sponge, and is advanced enough in his math and language arts skills to help his sister when she gets stuck on something. Only rarely do we encounter any difficulties, and when we do it is always in language arts.

Little G's challenges in language arts are not due to the fact that the material is beyond him, or that he has any difficulty with comprehension; he is a year ahead of his peers. The challenge we face is directly related to his communication disorder. Our sticking points have been with getting him to understand when a sentence is a command, a question, an exclamation, or a telling sentence. More recently, he has difficulty with the positions of letters in certain spelling words. Based on these two challenges, I have realized that (a) my son does not rely on the sound of a person's voice for his information, but instead interprets what he hears as-is using logical cues, and (b) the way his brain processes the sounds he hears when a word is spoken to him (dictation for spelling words) sometimes results in him having the correct letters but putting them in the incorrect order. Since his earliest expressions of spoken language came out flipped in an almost identical manner, this is not a surprise at all.

Visually, Little G does great with spelling words. If it is something he has read in the past, he can spell it almost without fail. Similarly, if he is skilled at sounding out words - not in the phonics sense, but the actual correct spellings based on the rules of English and grammar he is familiar with from experience. Because of his speech disorder and his inability to make the thoughts in his brain form coherent speech on demand, especially when he is experiencing negative emotions (sadness, frustration), I spent a great deal of time teaching him sign language and handwriting so he had other communication options. We have been working on non-speech communication since we was 2 years old, and he has picked up an incredible amount in the past 4 years. He's gifted, no doubt, but I think his need to communicate helped.

We haven't seen his speech therapist in about a year, but she was absolutely wonderful. Her understanding of the various things which can affect speech acquisition and language went, in my opinion, far above and beyond what would be expected of any therapist. It was clear that her work was not simply a paycheck, but something she was called to do in life. Several times since our school year began, I have wished I could ask her questions about these language aspects of G's learning. I hesitated, knowing how much she already has on her plate, especially since my son is no longer part of that center. But finally this afternoon I thought, what the heck, why not? The worst she could do is refuse to talk to me, though I didn't think she would. So I waited until the end of the day, when I knew there would be no more appointments, and I called. She was just as kind and helpful as ever, and gave me a few great ideas to try with Little G. I will be starting them tomorrow. I got everything together after the kids went to bed tonight and I'm looking forward to finding out how this works (I will explain in a later post). She told me I could give her a call again if I had other questions, and I thanked her sincerely.

It was so nice that someone who owed us nothing at this point still cared enough to offer a few minutes of her time and some helpful suggestions. I've become used to the type of people who wash their hands and don't offer so much as a backwards glance the moment their necessary involvement is done.

In other Little G academic news, he knocked out about a full unit's worth of math in the past two days, and my Kindergartner is now just about where first graders (who started this course material in August) are, despite beginning 5-6 weeks after them. I am super proud of him!

My little Reezle girl has been up to some very cool things recently as well, and I will be sharing soon.