Twice Exceptional: When Exceptions are the Norm

I realize that after three years of blogging about my twice exceptional boys, I’ve never written about what twice exceptional means. The conventional definition of twice exceptional, or 2e, is gifted with learning differences. Parents would tell you that it’s a life of contradictions and contrasts, often pulling against each other resulting in a child who looks, well, average, whatever that is. They’d also tell you stories of advocacy twice failed, kids who work twice as hard with half the results, and twice the concerns about where a child will fit in the world. And the kids? Some might tell about wondering who they were, wondering at why life seems so hard, and perhaps about just feeling not so smart.

Until my older son struggled in school with handwriting tasks, I didn’t know a child could be learning disabled and gifted. Since he was my first child, I took much of his way of being in the world as normal kid stuff. Well, I knew he was ahead in areas, largely in the academic realm, but I also knew he lagged in fine motor skills, from writing to tying shoes to buttering bread. The diagnoses of his level of giftedness and dysgraphia, a disorder of written expression, arrived in tandem, making sense out of what we’d noticed while making the job of finding an appropriate educational setting that much harder. The poor fit of school was made no easier with those pieces of information.

So eventually we came home from school. Three years later, the ADHD diagnosis came along for the ride, with a trail of question marks still following, challenges undefined and unexplained. And three years after that, my younger was formally diagnosed with Aspergers, changing everything and nothing in a few sentences that were too long in coming.

That’s what those second exceptionalities do. They change everything. And nothing.

Ideally, they how we frame our children’s challenges. What was once seemed stubborn is now likely anxiety about what just doesn’t come with effort alone. What looked lazy is avoidance of what just feels bad or is simply beyond one’s skill set. What appeared to be neglect is a brain that struggles to make sense out of time and space. When I knew that my older son’s refusal to write more than the briefest phrase was because holding the pencil hurt and that making each letter took intense concentration that made it impossible to focus on content, I stopped thinking of his resistance as stubborn or lazy. It was a reasonable reaction to facing a Herculean task. When I found out that his trouble following a list of tasks, never mind create his own, came from a frontal lobe that was taking its time maturing, I stopped seeing his day as strewn with neglect.

Or at least I mostly did. Truthfully, it’s hard to look at a kid who started to add at three and explore the details of earth science at four and understand why the trajectory of learning that came so easily when no product was demanded comes screeching to a halt when it seems to be time to write a simple sentence about the moon. It’s not much easier at 15, when detailed monologues about computer guts dominate conversations but writing a list of tasks and following it still requires Mom.

Parenting a gifted kid often means parenting a child who was somewhat like you. Even if time and thousands of questions without answers seem to have beaten the giftedness out of us, apples don’t fall far from trees, as my father would say. For many of us, there is something familiar about the intensity of our gifted children, if only in shadowy images as we remember our childhoods.

But if you are not also learning disabled — and my children’s father and I are not — the dichotomy of the 2e kid is frankly mysterious. I don’t know what it’s like to be unable to write  with ease, to be unable take notes during a lecture, to look for my homework that I’m sure I did only to find that I never did it, or be stymied by the social norms of conversation. I just don’t know. It’s an unfamiliar way of being in the world.

Now, that’s expected to some degree. I don’t expect my kids to like what I like or see the world the way I see it. They are individuals. But when their operating systems seems so foreign, it’s sometimes hard to parent effectively and respectfully. In a fit of frustration, I once asked my older if the world in his head was as chaotic as it appeared from the outside. “It’s much worse,” he replied, without hesitation or, thankfully, frustration with his stymied, frantic mother.

Having a child who is twice exceptional means school will never be a sure fit. Or at least not a simple and comfortable fit. Mid-second grade, when my older came home, I was exhausted by meetings where I tried to explain what seemed like impossible partners, my son’s disparate needs for more information and challenge with less written output (although a keyboard would have been welcome). Having mercy on my son, myself, and even the school, I took the challenge home. That doesn’t make any exceptions vanish, but it does return your child to being your child, free of as many comparison points and evaluations. The dissonance with the world persists when field trips are missed (too loud, too many people, too many places to go in a day, or just too something else) and when reading through boards for parents of gifted kids, but being at home is a respite from the expectations of the world, where “gifted” and “learning disabled” mean different classrooms, methodologies, and outcomes. And as I’ve returned one to school (dual high school and college enrollment), I’ve been reminded that the differences persist, causing different challenges than eight years back, but still making fit difficult.

And for the kids? It’s even harder. For my older, having learning disabilities has caused him to question his intelligence. How can being smart and a quick learner coincide with forgetting to do assignments and struggling still to write a legible sentence? It seemed a more likely explanation that he wasn’t very smart at all, I suppose, and at an age where being “normal” is valued above being oneself, it seems reasonable to want to wish both away. Having both his giftedness and other challenges negated by school didn’t help, either, although by now I thought time would erase those feelings fo poor fit. Thankfully, college experiences in schools with strong disability resource offices have somewhat ameliorated of those feelings. (See Accommodating Disability, College Style for more on that adventure.)

My younger, at least on the surface, has an easier time. At home and in online classes, his difference doesn’t often interfere. After all, a preference for no eye contact, fewer bodies in the house, and a tight routine all mesh well with homeschooling. He’s also comfortable in his own skin, embracing his difference. (Don’t you dare call it a disability, Mom!) But I worry. The accommodations for him are largely invisible to him — careful scheduling, plenty of time for transitions, and adequate downtime happen without him realizing it. And while he’d likely be eaten alive in a live middle school classroom, he’s just one of the pack in his online classes. I’d not say it’s been easier to parent him over the years (oh, it’s not been), but out of school, the social issues just don’t cause as much difficulty day-to-day. He sees himself as smart and capable and enjoys the friendship of some wonderful children and adults who accept him as is. I’m grateful for his comfort within his own skin.

There is no ending. Twice exceptional kids become twice exceptional adults, and with guidance, support, and a bit of luck, they enter adulthood confident in their talents and equipped to seek and use supports for their disabilities.  I keep my fingers crossed, admittedly, but mostly I just keep guiding and supporting. And loving.

If you want to know more about supporting 2e learners, follow the links below. 

• Hoagies Gifted: Twice Exceptional
• 2e Newsletter (school-oriented but useful for homeschoolers)
• Davidson Institute for Talent Development (see the lower right corner)

Accommodating Disability, College Style

I was a lousy grade school advocate. I tried my hand at speaking up for my oh-so bored (but don’t use that word) older son during his first grade year, asking for assignments that took bigger bites with less repetition. I didn’t get very far, and even when we handed over the testing they requested to prove that he really didn’t need that, the testing that showed that he very much did, nothing happened. We were welcome to keep him in the school, but with the understanding that they had nothing to offer him.

Thinking that getting little for nothing was a better deal than getting nothing for 10K a year, we tried a public gifted program. Now we had more information. In addition to a quick mind, my older had a writing disability. Intervention via a scribe or keyboard wasn’t available for a gifted kid, it seemed, so while free, he was stuck with education that was boring and unaccommodating to his disability.

So eight years ago, we went home.

Last spring, it was with great trepidation and a good amount of encouragement from a psychologist who “gets” twice exceptional (gifted and learning disabled) kids that I made the call to Madonna University  a small private college just minutes away from home. With my son just months from 15,  called their designated admissions advisor for dual-enrolled students (a good sign of an open-minded institution). I spouted a few scores and what we were seeking — Calculus I and Sign Language and Society (a liberal arts intro class with no signing). Yes, they’d be glad to have him. Then I asked for what I’d not asked for in the previous seven years – accommodations for dysgraphia and ADHD (and assorted executive function disorders.

I held my breath.

“Of course we can accommodate him,” she began before spouting off a list of accommodations I’d not known was even possible. I exhaled, thanked her profusely, and nearly cried on the line.

A few weeks later, after scheduling his classes, we were walked down to the Office of Disability Resources (ODR) to meet his advisor. This would be a first for the university, a dual-enrolled student using the ODR, we were told, with a smile and not a small amount of enthusiasm. I could hardly believe it. Two grade schools had met him with doubt of the validity of his gifts and his disabilities, despite reason, pleading, paperwork, and repeated meetings. This place — this college — was ready to help as soon as we presented ourselves.

Well, not only ourselves. We’d brought the latest evaluation from his psychologist, complete with diagnoses and specific recommendations. We had ACT scores and more, hoping that the high scores on those measures wouldn’t negate the very real challenges my son faces. My son and I were both nervous. Me because I’d failed every previous attempt to advocate for him. Him because he was sitting in a college advisor’s office and was not yet 15, plus he felt that somehow his disabilities negated his intelligence. Being twice-exceptional is quite the head game.

The rest was easy. The advisor chatted with both of us, getting a feel for what worked and didn’t work for my son. Note taking was the biggest concern. Dysgraphia affects the ability to write by hand but also the ability to organize thoughts. Note taking in college classes require a rapid hand and an ease with sorting out what is relevant and noteworthy from what is just interesting. It requires constant focus, which in these classes, meant attending for up to three hours at a time. Note taking is his greatest nemesis.

And the box was checked for a note taker. A paid — by the university– note taker chosen by the ODR was available. This service could be done anonymously or more openly, with carbon copy notes either handed over after class, sent via email, or placed in a numbered box in the office.  If the first one didn’t work out, a replacement would be provided. Either way, a student already in the class would provide him with notes. I exhaled again.

What else did he need? Quiet testing? Okay. Time-and-a-half for testing? Just in case. Keyboard for testing anything longer than a single-word answer? Definitely. Permission to use a laptop during class for in-class writing assignments? Yes.  We were handed the list of possible accommodations to consider, encouraged to take what might be needed. It was overwhelming. And encouraging.

College accommodations come with a caveat: it is up to the student to enact them. The student needs to approach the professor with the paperwork for scheduling a test in the testing center then file the paperwork with the ODR secretary. The student needs to ask to use a keyboard for an assignment in class instead of writing it out. No teacher or advisor will come after the student, meaning that it all can be in place on paper but go unused in reality. For a student with executive function issues (difficulty planning and organizing), this seemed a daunting task.

Fast forward to fall, with nine credits on the schedule, a nervous mom, and plenty of adrenaline for my son. Only the note taking accommodation was used, and without that, he’d have been lost. Thanks to long class times, extended test-taking time wasn’t needed. While offered a reader and a scribe for tests, he decided to use neither, and thankfully his Calculus teacher assured him she’d dealt with far worse handwriting than his (somehow his numbers are legible where his letters aren’t). He was sure that telling someone what to write down for math would be far more challenging than just showing the work himself, and he was likely right. But just like most security blankets, knowing the accommodations were there for the taking was a comfort.

Accommodations even when enacted, don’t solve all the problems of the learning disabled student. Poor executive function — the skills of planning, organization, and impulse control — isn’t easily accommodated for. I’ve served as his frontal lobe for a good long time, and I’ve had to continue that role as he moved some learning to the college classroom. While we’ve worked on ways to keep schedules and lists, these skills still aren’t used to anything close to their full potential. Additionally, a few tests went bad — or at least weren’t that great — mostly due to poor self-monitoring and a tendency to be overly optimistic about what he knew. An assignment was missed (miraculously just one), likely due to wishful thinking that he’d already done it paired with a lack of follow-up to assure that was true. In short, the  usual problems persisted.

So this semester, he’s taking three classes, carrying eleven credits between two colleges. I hold my breath again and again, wince regularly, and cheer whenever appropriate. The second school offered similar supports, including audiobooks, preferential seating, advance copies of in-class reading and writing assignments, and speech-to-text software for writing assignments and tests. None of those are necessary in the PC Troubleshooting and Repair class he’s taking, but it’s good to know they are there. For a reading and writing heavy class, he’d need it all.

Accommodations are readily available at the college level, even for dual enrolled students. While they can help with some of the challenges of the child with disabilities they can’t touch the underlying executive function issues many kids with learning disabilities experience. Twice exceptional kids who need the intellectual stimulation of the college environment will still need support at home to meet deadlines, hone studying skills, and provide organizational support. It’s a continual balance between those disparate needs.  Disability resource offices offer some substantial support, but parent will end up offering a good amount, too. At least for me, that job doesn’t seem likely to end soon.

 

Cautiously Optimistic

Depending on how I count it, we’re either in our ninth week, fifth week, or third week of school. Since it only really all came together in the past few weeks, I’ll pick the latter.

I’d been dreading this school year since at least May. Okay, maybe even April. The previous two years were a downward spiral, with my older son and I finding our way ever more deeply into a black hole of discouragement, despair, and daily battles. Okay, perhaps that’s a bit strong, but neither of us were happy with each other or ourselves. And Instead of working together, we both seemed bent on proving to each other that things could indeed get worse. So they did.

As August approached, my dread increased. I certainly wasn’t helping my older grow into more responsibility. If anything, I was hurting the process. In acute distress one day, I went so far as to call our local public high school two weeks before it was to start, ready to demolish our plans in hopes that school could help him more than I could. The act of calling calmed me down and absolutely convinced my son that immediate change was required. Besides, it reminded me why we’d left school almost eight years earlier. Asking for accommodations for an exceptionally gifted kid who needed significant support for his dysgraphia wasn’t going to be easier at 15 than it had been at seven. Anyway, the promised returned calls after the initial talk with the counselor went unanswered. Surely that was a sign to continue as we had planned.

And so continue we did. He’d begun his Coursera literature class in July and his physics course in August (the only class with me at the helm but with the benefit of a friend in attendance as well). After Labor Day, two classes at Madonna University promised a new way of learning independent of Mom but requiring a far higher degree of autonomy and responsibility than previously experienced or exhibited.

Yes, I had my doubts. And instead of remaining upbeat, positive, and generally supportive, I was sitting in a place of fear tinged with not a small amount of resentment and anger. Boy, did it show. But there he was, excited about university classes and tolerating the accommodations offered given his learning differences. Somehow, despite my negativity, he was still quite sure he’d be fine. As his first day of school approached, his excitement built. Mine did, too, although I continued to worry.

Then I stopped. His university classes were days away from beginning. He was more excited about those than any other academic endeavor in the past two years. Perhaps he’d be fine. And if he wasn’t, perhaps that would be the nudge he needed to work harder on the organizational piece that’s always plagued him.

Was I comfortable with the idea of letting him fail, or even letting him flounder and swallow some poor grades? Not really. Even at a reduced rate for dual enrollment, the tab for eight credits is significant. Beyond the financial investment was my concern about his ability to manage the deadlines and dates that school requires. He’d struggled mightily with that at home, and how much was teenage rebellion and how much was executive function challenges was unknown. But my deepest concern was that a failure at school would confirm his growing sense of identity as someone who couldn’t succeed.

He, however, was all confidence and enthusiasm, and that was contagious. And hopeful. So I relaxed.

He returned from the first class, Calculus I, ebullient. He’d attended with another 15-year-old friend, and together, it seems they took the class by storm. The professor asked questions, but the other (traditionally aged) students didn’t answer. Some would mumble, my son reported, but only after much prompting by the professor. So he and his buddy started answering questions. After suggesting he make sure others have a chance to answer, I let out a mental exhalation. In those few hours, he’d been reminded of what he’d forgotten for years or perhaps what he never actually believed:  he was smart.

Yes, I know that plenty of college (and high school) kids zone out in class, knowing plenty but saying nothing. But participating successfully in that setting (yes, I asked if his answers were correct) reminded him that he wasn’t stupid. Nothing I’d been able to say had changed that perception of himself, as for years he’d only seen the learning disabilities and not his own giftedness.

That bit of confirmation of his own abilities along with the desire to do well in the college setting seems –so far — to be enough to help him summon some basic organizational skills. While his binder and backpack were scary when we looked through them today (first check), I could see that he’d received excellent grades on all his assignments. Heck, I was thrilled he’d remembered to do them and to turn them in, but the grades on them confirmed to him and to me that we’d made the right choice this year. Today, three weeks in, we spent some time on Basic Backpack and Binder Organization 101, and while I’m sure paper chaos will return to that black maw, I’m seeing some light at the end of what’s seemed like a very long tunnel, and I doubt it’s an oncoming train.

So here I am, cautiously optimistic with a son who’s happier, more independent, and more confident than he’s been in years. It’s early to say how the semester will go, but I think there’s every reason to believe it will be fine. His improved organization and planning have spread to his Coursera class, where he’s taking more ownership over his work and no longer asking for assistance on essays. Honestly, this independence is taking some getting used to. I’m accustomed to butting in more, and those habits persist. Being rebuffed because of growing ability, however, is fabulous.

May the “No, thanks, Mom. I’ve got this,” that I’ve heard so often these three weeks continue. Those words are warming my heart.

Is growth happening in your house? Share away!

 

We’ve Come Full Circle: Ken Burns, The Civil War, and Homeschooling Memories

This week, my younger finishes up his third American history class from Online G3, and the last topic of the course is the causes of the Civil War. He has three months before starting the course that covers that war, but he’s ready to study it now. So today, we started watching The Civil War, a Ken Burns film from PBS. It runs 660 minutes and covers just what the title says. It will take some time to get through, but he’s all enthusiasm.

I’m all memories.

My older came home from school seven and a half years ago, in January 2005. He’d grown enormously in a fine Montessori preschool for ages four and five. Under the tutelage an open-minded teacher who truly valued his intellect and respected his limitations, he’d grown to adore and appreciate math and geography. He’d weathered (barely) first grade in another Montessori school, where output was valued more than the joy of learning. In that year, he learned to dread the pencil and that learning was more about the amount of paper one produced than making connections about the real world. He’d barely tolerated half of second grade at a public gifted and talented school, all the while wondering where the math and science were. Since he was offered nothing new to learn in those subjects, he assumed he wasn’t smart enough to be taught them. Halfway through the year, out of options and nearly out of hope, we released him and brought him home.

Over the Christmas break, I researched and planned, ordering only what I felt sure we’d use, avoiding the temptations that were in the Rainbow Resource Catalogue and our local teachers’ supply store. I bought a balance scale, gram weights, some Key Press Key To.. math workbooks, a Wordly Wise vocabulary book, copies of Usborne’s and Kingfisher’s history encyclopedias, Handwriting Without Tears Printing 1 and 2, and the entire set of Joy Hakim’s History of US. Overall, my choices were wise well-used. (If only I’d continued to use such restraint.)

Back to Ken Burns. I asked my son that December what he wanted to do for history. My own history education had been abysmal. I recalled next to nothing of the names and dates that filled my elementary and high school classes. I’d hated the subject so much I’d avoided history entirely during my undergraduate years, earning credits instead in courses on race relations and other tangential studies that avoided the word “history” in the title. So when I opened the question to him, I did so part because I had nothing to offer from my own knowledge on the subject but also because I wanted him to shape his own education.

His reply was short. The Civil War.

Groan. Aside from the bare-boned facts about the war (Lincoln, slavery, who won, and approximate dates), I was ignorant about that subject. Okay, I was ignorant about most of history, so this choice didn’t unnerve me more than any other would have. So I did what any sane homeschooler would do before the proliferation of online forums and chats. I went to the library.

I left the children’s sections with stacks of books on the Civil War but no videos. I wandered to the adult documentaries and found the Ken Burns title. I vaguely remembered good reviews of the series, which I’d of course not watched on PBS because I really despised history. But now I had a mission. Home it came.

We took our time with the videos, the library books, and the Joy Hakim book on the war. The more we read and watched, the more my interest grew. His grew right along with mine, and in those few hours his younger brother attended preschool, we took in all we could about that part of American history, following rabbit trails as we went. During our study, I came to understand just how hard the physical act of writing was for him. His brain and hands, which worked so well in concert at the piano, were enemies with a pencil and paper. I learned to scribe for him, writing out paragraph-long descriptions of the events, places, and people we studied on oversized index cards which went into a timeline box.

But I felt we needed a project, a way to demonstrate all we’d learned. If I sound enmeshed in this learning experience, it’s because I was. Finally, history was coming alive. It was a story, the telling of what actual humans had experienced. It chronicled the best and worst of humanity, along with a bunch of what was incredibly average and everyday. We were both smitten. So together, we designed and created a board game about the Civil War. Using the internet to find images and our books to find questions, we made a trivia game of sorts. I typed what he told me to type, and together we created questions and decided upon the rules. Those hands that could only write with pain and struggle worked hard to cut and glue. He laid out the board to his liking.  A coating of contact paper covered the top, and we were ready to finally play. Of course having created it, we were quite good at playing, and winning was fairly easy, but, boy, were we proud.

The next year, we started at the beginning of the Hakim books, reaching for our library card for books and videos all along the way. We moved from Hakim to Susan Wise Bauer’s Story of the World series, with a stack of library books following us from room to room and a steady stream of videos gracing the TV stand. We were hooked, and by the time my younger was five, we’d hooked him, too.

So we’ve come full circle, returning to where we began. As the first strains of the fiddle playing the Ashokan Farewell theme song for The Civil War, my older smiled and turned to me. “I remember that!” he noted with pride and a sense of nostalgia. My smile returned his, and we settled into the start of the series. With far more history into my knowledge banks, connections came quickly, and I soon was tormenting both boys with liberal use of the pause button and bits of information I just had to share.  Afterward, I dug out the game board, rules, and pieces for us to admire and then admit that we were too rusty to play yet. The details will come back. The important parts — the whys and wherefores — implanted deeply and have informed the history study that followed that first attempt to understand where humans have blundered and succeeded.

But more important, my older regained his love of learning through that first history study. Not all our time was that blissful. I made my share of blunders and missteps that first year (and in every year since). But together, we made our way to learning at home, and a few years later, his younger brother joined us. I don’t get it right all the time, and neither do they. They’re learning, and that’s the point. I’m learning, too, and that’s just delightful.

Preliminary Planning for 2012/13: My Older (10th grade)

A few weeks back, I posted preliminary plans for fall for my younger son, A.B. My older son’s plans still have some holes, but here’s what I have so far.  As always, plans are subject to change. For past plans for both boys, see the tab above, “What We Say We’re Doing.”

A.D. (15, 10th grade)

Math: This one is easy, at least for me. My older will be enrolled in a local homeschool-friendly university for Calculus I and II this year. Math is his strongest subject, and his biggest challenges will be showing his work and writing legibly. The math part should be no problem, especially since he’s spent the past month working through my college calculus text with the help of Khan Academy videos. Yes, he’s excited, albeit in that somewhat cool, detached way teenage boys often have.

Language Arts:  The goals for this year are to continually build his writing skills, with a focus on the essay and academic writing, and doing more formal literary study and analysis. For the writing, we’ll selectively work through Models for Writers: Short Essays for Composition, adding in a few research papers throughout the year.  He’ll also complete a Hewitt Lightning Literature course, likely American Mid to Late 19th Century, although that’s under debate.  I’d like to add some formal vocabulary study, since that fell by the wayside midway through Word Within the Word II. What we’ll use remains unknown (suggestions welcome).

History: This one’s a mystery. This summer, he’s watching and discussing The World Was Never the Same: Events that Changed History (Teaching Company) with a group of homeschoolers.  I’m adding some readings to round out the subjects as well. A friend is musing about creating a course on the history of the English language, but this is still in the maybe stage. Last year was American history, so this year won’t be. Beyond that, I’m uncertain (and again, open to suggestions).

Science: Ack! It’s physics time! Somehow, I found myself volunteering to teach (algebra-based) physics to a handful of local homeschoolers. Then, I promptly lost a night of sleep in sheer panic. I’ve found my ground and some good resources. We’ll likely be using Singapore’s Physics Matters for the text, with additions for the material it’s lacking (parabolic motion, centripetal and centrifugal force, and quantum physics, just to name a few). A friend’s husband, who will be doing labs for my younger son and his own son, volunteered to run labs for the high school kids one day a month. I’ll teach the material, likely working some smaller labs and demos during our weekly meeting, and turn over the true excitement to him. Lesson plans will appear on this blog as they develop.

Foreign Language: Latin didn’t work. Spanish with Rosetta Stone (assigned to give the flavor of the language only) yielded less than 20 vocabulary words, per my son’s estimate. So this fall, we’re trying something different. So this September, my older will start the American Sign Language  sequence at our local homeschooling-friendly university. A kinesthetic language for a kinesthetic learner seems appropriate. Will colleges accept it? Many do, and he understands the limits this choice may place on his options later.

The Rest:  He’ll continue with piano through the summer and next year. His negotiations with him piano teacher did yield a happier student and a generally satisfied teacher, and he’s pleased enough to stay put.  While he spent some time at tennis lessons this winter, he’s not interested in our local Y’s current configuration of classes (teens were moved from  classes with adults to classes for age 8 and up). He needs exercise, and finding what will work for him is one of our summer quests.

I’d like to teach a class using David White’s The Examined Life: Advanced Philosophy for Kids, although not first semester when I’m settling into physics. Both my boys enjoyed White’s Philosophy For Kids: 40 Questions That Help You Wonder About Everything, but I’d rather run this second one with a larger group than my own two children (and I think only my older is ready for this much more challenging tome).  I’m also waiting to hear from my older. It is, after all, his education.

Suggestions are always appreciated, as are links to your plans.

Show Your Work

Show your work.

If I had a refrain, that might be it. Sure, there are others. Take care of your dishes. Check your list. Shower now if you can’t remember when you last washed. Take your feet off the wall. But over the course of seven-and-a-half years of homeschooling, this one line may be the one that I repeat the most often.

Of course I say it most often about math assignments. I sometimes wonder if I say it so much now because I didn’t say it at all to my older when he first came home in the middle of second grade. The gifted and talented school he attended didn’t offer him math lessons, since he’d already met their benchmarks for the state’s standardized testing. You read that correctly. The school dedicated to gifted and talented kids didn’t math accelerate. It’s part of the reason we came home. Math and science were his passions, and school offered little of either. But I digress.

Once at home, I came face-to-face with the severity of his dysgraphia. His writing disability made lining up numbers near impossible, and even with large-grid graph paper, his fingers tired long before he made it through even the shortest problems. So I scribed for him. Reducing the writing load for the dysgraphic child frees the child to think about the work rather than think about forming the letters and numbers. So for years, he sat next to me, telling me what to write for problem after problem.

Well, not always. Often, he could do them in his head. For many of the word problems, he juggled numbers and concepts while walking around the room, producing the correct answer while I scribbled my own process down on scrap paper. He was often faster than I, and he was usually correct. However, he could rarely tell me exactly what he was doing up there in his brain, but since it turned out reliable results most of the time, I didn’t press him. On the times I did ask, the answers as to process were so convoluted that I couldn’t have begun to put them onto paper.

I wish I’d tried. He started Algebra just before turning ten. The math was a breeze. The new requirement that he write down each step was not. I worked problem after problem on the white board, showing each step. On his first attempts to isolate the variable, he tried to do what I had done. While he could easily find the right answer, his steps were scrambled versions of mine, unrelated to his answer but rather inaccurate approximations of what I’d done in the examples. I was stumped.

Eventually, as the problems became longer, he saw some merit to showing his work. There just was too much to hold in his head once he was factoring polynomials and the like. Besides, he’d discovered the wonder of partial credit.  I started giving him tests, hoping to coax some respect for accuracy out of him.  That did improve, but an unanticipated side effect was that he showed more work. If he worked an equation correctly but made an arithmetic mistake along the way, he could still gather most of the points for the problem, process being top priority. Show your work equaled a higher score, even with an addition error here and there. It wasn’t my intention that these be linked, but the result was desirable — he started to show his work more consistently.

Fast forward to Chemistry. Teaching two boys entering their teens (one wasn’t mine), school work often seemed to be an impediment to their good time. I started the year singing my “show your work” sweetly and gently. By November, it was more gruffly growled than sang, and I started deducting points on tests for non conformers. In general, that improved how much work was shown, but they were hardly showing it all the time. I developed a litany of reasons to show work. Here’s today’s version:

• When you show your work, you can more easily check your own work for mistakes. (Yes, this implies that one would naturally want to assure and answer was correct. No, this has not yet gained a convert to work-showing.)
• Writing down each step of your work helps you work more efficiently. It’s hard work to hold a bunch of numbers and variables in your head.
• Writing down work means you may get some points for a wrong answer. (AKA, the Partial Credit Plea).
• Showing your work tells me that YOU did the work, not the answer guide at the back of the book. (Yes, playing the “you could be cheating card” is rough, but that’s actually one of the more compelling reasons to show it for my older.)
• If you intend to be a scientist or mathematician, you must show your work so others can try to replicate your findings and verify that you did not pull the data out of your nose (or other body part). (Since my children aren’t inclined in these directions, this receives either polite nods or blank stares.)
• I’ll send you back to do it again (and again) if you don’t show the work, or I’ll simply mark it entirely wrong on a test. (Tough love or just practical? I don’t care. This one works moderately well, at least until said student just wants to be done and forgets this extra-work producing rule).
• Show it because that’s what you’d have to do in school. (Yes, this one seems lame. However, my older returns to the classroom for Calculus in the fall, so the skill needs to be in place).

I’d love to report that I don’t need to sing or scream that refrain anymore. My older’s heard it so many times that I’m surprised he doesn’t mutter it in his sleep. Yet just this week, he was sent back not once but twice on the same assignment with my chorus ringing across the house. My younger ran into the same chorus an hour after the older’s first offense. He repeated the assignment, this time extolling the virtue of showing work and promising to sin no more.  I’m cautiously optimistic.  Until I know he really is a true work-shower, I’ll continue to remind him before problem sets and likely need to repeat the refrain when we move into physical science in the fall. For now, I’ll sing, shout, plead, or whisper in increasingly menacing tones: Show your work!

Review: Jacobs Elementary Algebra

I wrote recently about options for math after Singapore 6B that we’ve tried or at least considered. While some of those resources found their way into my older son’s schedule while he was finishing Singapore, he felt strongly about immediately moving on to  ”real” algebra. He was nine and sick of arithmetic. He was also fascinated with the algebra I used to solve some of the more perplexing parts of Challenging Word Problems 6, Singapore’s last book in their honestly named supplement series. When I couldn’t make those bar diagrams work, I’d resort to methods more familiar to me. He wanted in on those methods.

After a moderate amount of research and consideration, I went with an old-standby, Elementary Algebra by Harold R. Jacobs (ISBN 0-7167-1047-1). Written in 1979, this black-and-white text is written with humor and interest without the distracting color splashes and sidebars that grace more modern textbooks. Perhaps those brighter, busier features and are a draw for some learners, but for my son (with ADHD), the less chaos on the page, the better. The cartoon at the start of most lessons held up well over those decades and grabbed my distractable child onto the page while giving us both a chuckle. A bit of a laugh is a fine way to start a math lesson.

There’s plenty of substance after that laugh. In seventeen chapters with four to nine lessons each, Jacobs takes a learner directly into the use of variables while teaching order of operations, graphing, exponents, radicals, and other pre-algebra topics not covered in Singapore’s first six books. For a mathematically geared child, this seamlessly integrates those missed topics into algebra, obviating the need for a separate pre-algebra course. For my older son who is highly mathematically intuitive, this was fine.

In Elementary Algebra, Jacobs does far more than teach the procedural goings-on of algebra. He explains why it works. This is not a text of algorithms to memorize and practice, practice, practice. Rather this is a book that encourages deeper understanding of the math it contains and that connects math to the greater world.  This creates a rather lengthy book, and my son did take a year and a half to move through it. At then end, however, he had a fine grasp of algebra and could easily relate and apply it to other studies.

The structure of the book makes for easy teaching, and the supplemental teacher’s guide (A Teacher’s Guide to Elementary Algebra  ISBN 0-7167-1075-7) provides additional ideas for teaching if that’s desired. This is, however, not a scripted program. For the parent whose algebra is more than a bit rusty, this text could be a challenge. Or, perhaps, it could be an opportunity to polish those rusty skills and dress them up with deeper understanding. Even if one doesn’t require the additional teaching tips in the guide, this book contains the answers to three of the four sets of problems in each chapter. (One set has its answers in the back of the textbook.) For this, it was worth its price several times over.

Each lesson takes a mathematical idea and develops it in two or three pages of text, diagrams, and examples. I’m a believer in interactive math lessons, since I think there’s much to be learned from discussion about mathematics. My son and I would sit together, with me reading the chapter aloud and discussing examples along the way, generally with scrap paper or a white board by our sides. Each lesson concludes with four problem sets: one review, two sections to practice the ideas from the current lesson, and a fourth presenting a challenging problem or two often with a historical bent or mathematical twist.  We generally omitted the review and did the second set (first set of practice problems) together. He’d then do the third set (second set of practice problems) and fourth set (challenge problems) on his own. The following day, we’d review his mistakes and move on to the next lesson.

Each chapter ends with two sets of review problems, of which I’d assign one. One review could be used for a test, but we used tests from the accompanying Test Masters for Elementary Algebra (ISBN 0-7167-1077-3), which offers four tests for each chapter, additional exercises on a host of topics, four multiple-choice midterms and two multiple-choice final exams. We’d have been fine without this supplement, but this was in my more obsessive “afraid we’ll miss something” homeschooling days. It’s definitely an optional supplement.

Algebra was more than a math class for my son. It was a jump in organization, textbook use, and test taking. Up until algebra, he’d done most of his mathematical work in his head. Dysgraphia and impatience with process had led to me scribing most of his work until this point, and while I’d modeled showing work, algebra was the first time I insisted he show his work every time. It was a painful first many months. The math came easily. Writing down steps did not. A second challenge presented when working through problem sets. Writing answers on paper while referring to a page in a book proved difficult. Often the writing issues, visual tracking work, and organized step-writing proved more challenging than the math. Test taking was also new to him. I don’t test my boys much — generally I can tell what they know and what they don’t. Test taking increased his accuracy and gave him a reason to show his work, since even a wrong answer with a clear and largely correct trail could earn partial credit.

Jacobs’ Elementary Algebra prepared my older well for the math that followed: Algebra II, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Precalculus flowed fairly easily from the lessons learned in that first algebra text. I enjoyed teaching from it, and he enjoyed learning from it. My understanding of some concepts deepened along the way. While it’s hardly the only algebra choice for the homeschooling family, Jacobs’ Elementary Algebra is a strong text based on sound pedagogy that prepares mathematical thinkers well for higher math.

Balancing Hope and Acceptance

What about parenting and/or homeschooling do you find most challenging? What keeps you up at night, sounds its sirens to you at top volume during the day, and suddenly tugs at your chest just when you think it’s furthest from your mind?  What do you swear you’re going to master or promise you’ve going to accept, yet only to find yourself face to face with it again?

I ask because I’m hoping I’m not alone here.

I’ve written extensively about the learning challenges my boys have.  My younger son’s Asperger’s, formally diagnosed just over a year ago, is an omnipresent reality in our home. It was no less a reality for the nine and a half years before that, but without the blessing of a name (and is was, indeed, a blessing), it was harder to describe the brain difference itself.  Instead, the focus was symptoms: tantrums, meltdowns, rigidity, precision, social skills, and more.  He was the primary focus of household angst.  He demanded it, not with words but by the depths of his distress.  Today, his Asperger’s is no less present, but most days, he’s more settled and comfortable in his own skin and his world.

His Asperger’s is not my biggest parenting and homeschooling challenge.

My older son is a sensitive, compassionate, kind young man.  He avoids conflict (sometimes to his own detriment) and feels deeply for others.  He’s smart and talented, with a sense of humor that ranges from dry to slapstick.  He’s helpful when asked and often even when not.  I love him beyond all reason.  He also has ADHD/Inattentive type, and some of the traits that go with his ADHD challenge me above anything else.

I joke that I have a case of acquired ADHD. I always seem to require a return trip into the house before we can finally leave the driveway. I misplace my coffee daily. I slip into autopilot in the car, finding myself driving to church or the library when my destination is in the opposite direction. But I don’t share his ADHD, not really. I don’t know what it’s like to live without a firm hold on time, to be distracted by minutia, to struggle to prioritize and order an hour, much less a day. I just don’t get it, and it shows.

Every week, sometimes every day, I start anew, thinking, “Today, it will sink in. Today, he’ll remember to complete his assignments/budget his time/organize his day effectively.” I’m that hopeful, I suppose. But I think that hopefulness is exactly the problem. I don’t wake up each day thinking my son with Asperger’s will now be appropriately social, able to read metalanguage, and enjoy unpredictable situations. I accept him where he is — who he is — and gently encourage his growth. Yes, I’m hopeful that he’ll find a way in the world that doesn’t leave him lonely. No, I don’t find myself hoping that this is the day he won’t have Asperger’s.

If only I were so charitable to my older son. My hopefulness damns us both to repeating the same (one-sided) conversations (tirades), where I think that this time, I got through.  This time, he’s going to see how being more organized will make his life better, I think hopefully. And I really believe it. Then tomorrow comes and he struggles as he always has. And I’m disappointed.

What’s hardest for me is to accept is his attention challenges: the executive function skills that just aren’t in place because his brain is wired in a way that places priorities differently than mine does. It’s no more or less of a brain difference than his brother’s autism spectrum brain difference.  Perhaps, however, I’ve always seen it as less. After all, he’s been a far easier child to raise, and he is pleasant and accepting nearly to a fault. He values family harmony, humor, and fun while caring deeply about the feelings of others. All these delightful character traits were part of what kept it from really seeing his ADHD until he was in double digits, when the difficult parts of ADHD really made teaching him harder.

Accepting his learning differences fully is what I desire. I want to accept his brain as-is, while encouraging him to acquire the skills he needs to get where he wants to go in life. I want, in a sense, to be less hopeful that tomorrow will be any different from today, that the long view is far more important that if this week’s planner use is any more effective than last week’s.  Maintaining long-term hope for the ability to enjoy his higher education (yes, he wants that in his future) and find a career he finds satisfying is different from hoping for change today. It requires more emotional distance than I’ve been able to muster thus far. It requires more appreciation of his brain as-is than I often have. In truth, my deepest panic is that he’ll struggle years down the road, that he’ll find himself unable to do what he wants to do in life.

Saying it like that helps. Certainly he will struggle (we all do) and undoubtedly his every wish for his life will not come true. That’s life, and no amount of nagging, hoping, begging, or wishing will change those essential truths. Of course, I want him to struggle less and succeed more, but that’s parenting — wanting an easier way for our children.

So it’s out there. I’ve said aloud (or at least in print) what worries me most and challenges me the greatest.  I’m seeking to be more accepting rather than constantly life-changing organizational solutions or hoping for sudden change. This works nicely, since acceptance seems far more likely to find and is actually within my control. I want better than the intermittent acceptance, interrupted by my fear and latest flash of (not) brilliance of what will help him now. It can only be better for him for me to find a deeper acceptance than that. It would also be better for me. I’ve not abandoned hope, but I’d like to move it to the periphery, like it is with my younger child. This is perhaps, ironically, the most hopeful course of action I could take.

Now it’s your turn.  What wakes you at night about your homeschooling or parenting journey? What mistake to you fear you’re making? What would you like to master or to never do again?

Executive Function Skills: Job One

Google can only provide so much. For example, no matter how you rearrange key words, searches on the order of “how do I help my gifted kid with a bunch of ADD get through the day with something done correctly and without ruining our relationship or stripping him of much-needed independence” yield no useful information. I don’t need to get my child off the refrigerator, but I do need to find a way through what are becoming more and more discouraging, tear filled days.  He’s miserable, too.

Maybe We’re Due for a Change

My older son needs a change.  For most of the last school year, I’ve thought he needed (in no particular order) a change in attitude, in focus, in underwear, in diet, and in priorities.  I’ve alternatingly (by the day, by the minute) alternated between chastising him, encouraging him, gently prodding him, and ignoring him.  Since my progression through those was neither linear nor scientific, I have no idea whether alone or in concert any of those interventions helped or harmed him. <deep parental sigh>

He’s on the cusp of 14, celebrating his birthday in two weeks, making this a year we celebrate Mother’s Day and his birthday on the same day.   One his first Mother’s Day, his third day of life, I felt like we were still intimate strangers, bound by biology and need yet painfully out of rhythm with each other.  By his first birthday and second Mother’s Day together, I was still constantly adapting to his changes but felt far more comfortable with my Mom role and our relationship.

Now I’m not so certain.  While still externally appearing prepubescent, his brain is certainly changing.  He’s become more taciturn — not when I’d like him to be, like when I’m on the phone or reading, but at the table and on car trips.  He’s more reserved in countenance, and I often ask if he’s okay, only to hear a perky, “I’m fine.”  I ask that question often, ask what’s on his mind, and I just don’t get much from him.  During his last year, he’s become far more physically competent, honing his skills with tools and becoming quite handy around the house and yard.  He’s a willing helper, especially if it gets him out of our major minefield, schoolwork.

Schoolwork.  It’s become the trigger for many lectures on my end and angry tears on his end.  He’s a brilliant previously capable boy who seems to have developed a mind of mush.  I’ve always struggled to understand his approach to education.  I was a perfectionist teacher-pleaser who loved a clean new workbook and notebook and strove (successfully) for report cards filled with A’s.  My parents and teachers liked my efforts and rewarded them with praise.  Yeah, by the end of highschool, I was over-identified with my grades and , by college, sometimes shied away from classes that might jeopardize my GPA.  I’ve often seen homeschooling without grades as a possible partial antidote to this affliction, and to some degree, it has been.

But a few years back, I started grading his math tests.  During Algebra I, his careless mistakes were disturbing me more and more, so I starting giving and grading math tests.  He was ten, and he agreed this might increase his accuracy rate.  It did.  Most of his mistakes that year were not in comprehension but from careless calculations.  Over the year, he improved, however.   So for math, I kept on grading.  The past two years, I’ve given graded science tests as well, and while he’s still a very erratic studier and a poor judge of how well he’s studied material, he’s done fairly well.  Until this semester.  This semester (okay, and at the end of last), he’s crashing.

Oh, he’s a master at MineCraft, an online game where one digs and makes places that appears to appeal to boys of a certain age.  He explores the programming, adjusts things I don’t understand, and talks the game with his friends and brother ad infinitum.  He’s also an expert in Star Wars Miniatures, another field that leaves me cold but delights his brother and neighborhood buddy as much as it does him.  I’m a poor listener about these subjects, admittedly, although I try to understand some of the MineCraft programming successes he’s had.  I miss his preoccupation with storm systems and chemistry, both which at least held college and career promise down the road.  Heck, at least they were something to which I could relate.  I could even build curricula around those topics.  But MineCraft and Star Wars Minis?  I’m not that creative.

And I’m not willing to give up basic studies.  Math.  Science.  Language Arts.  History.  These are not negotiable to me, and, as I’ve often said, unschooling just isn’t on the table.

But I am willing to look at his homeschooling a bit differently.

My older son has what I’ve always called a healthy case of ADHD.  He’s quite organizationally challenged, saving undesirable, uninteresting, or difficult work for a nebulous later.  As I recently blogged, we’re using a white board for scheduling.  This works fairly well, except for his tendency to erase things that are “almost done” or finished but not printed and turned in to me (and that’s not done).  Once off the board, they’re out of mind.  He’s easily overwhelmed with a long list, and just keeps getting behind, no matter how much I take off the schedule.  Enter the chastising, prodding, and encouraging.

Today I proposed the following:  Would you prefer to do less topics each week, say limiting a week to chemistry and history of science, followed by a week of math and language arts?  Would more intense time on fewer subjects be better?  An emphatic “yes” came from my lately-less-responsive teen.

Will this help?  Can this mid-course correction increase his rate of succesful completion of work and decrease his scattered discouraged state?  We’ll see.  We’re a tad limited in implementation, since his online course in grammar and vocabulary marches forward on its own and chemistry is scheduled weekly with his buddy.  But with the rest, perhaps we can schedule differently and make a difference.  Perhaps we can even find some rhythm with each other, or at least as much as a 41-year-old woman and almost-14-year-old boy can.  Now that would be a Mother’s Day present.

Addendum:  This same taciturn child interrupted my writing three four times just to chatter about kittens and Star Wars Minis.  The last time, he mentioned how much he wanted time alone.  I pointed out that he could be alone at that very moment, if he left the room and ignored my nearly silent typing in the study.  ”Oh!” he responded, “You’re right!”  Then he bounded off with a smile.  Such is life with my young teen.