Reading, Learning, Letting Go

I'd have to say my favorite part of this day just happened a few minutes ago as my daughter willingly read out loud to me for 20 minutes from Stuart Little 2 - The Movie Storybook. Fluency, word attack for longer words, excitement for exclamation marks! Such a simple time but such joy it gave me, as we have been struggling for so many years. What's different? I'm sure she has dyslexia, so I'm helping her break things down to break up the syllables and see the connections in figuring out "weird words." She's trying, she's really trying. I think she knows that I'm trying to help her too so that things come a little bit easier for her during this schoolyear.

The second favorite part of the day was talking to Jackie Carter about doing dyslexia testing. She also mentioned that it sounds like she might have a Language Processing Disorder. She said there are a lot of modifications that can be made to her instruction that will take more time than just reducing the number of questions to answer... I'm grateful that I'm going to have someone in my corner on this. I think we are going in the right direction. My daughter and I are both very willing to work, but we need to also have good communication and cooperation with what's going on at school. That's something I need a professional to back me up on. Maybe, just MAYBE things will get better.

The letting go part Jackie also helped me out with today. I'm starting to forgive myself for not getting more help for my daughter earlier. I did the best I could at the time. The professionals in her life just weren't coordinated and aware enough about her particular mish-mash of "issues," and I freely admit there are many. I think I'm almost ready to just forgive us all and move on -- there is no conflict, only an ever-increasing circle of cooperation.