How to Remember the Great Lakes

"HOMES"

Huron
Ontario
Michigan
Erie
Superior

There are going to be ups and downs/Burnout

I had a meeting today with Gracie's educational therapist. She is doing great and making great progress. But our discussion brought up additional concerns around auditory processing that we have not identified as a known issue nor have we been addressing. Auditory difficulties are a part of dyslexia - for sure. Its just that we had not identified that was a problem thru testing or thru experience.

Just discussing it gave me a feeling of deflating a balloon. I had so felt that we were so right on the top of things and then something new comes up. Literally it felt like despair.

But I had to stop and listen to advise that I have given others.....it may be a race but we will all get to the finish line eventually and that is all that matters. So I need to take this information and re-evaluate our strategy because there are going to be ups and downs - no matter how hard we both try.

Also with this conversation, we agreed to decrease educational therapy sessions to twice weekly (instead of three times weekly) because Gracie is feeling burned out.
I really struggle with this because that just slows down the progress. But I have to be sensitive to burnout because this is a long journey.

It is all how you spin it.

I was talking with a mom recently about how she was going to tell her 9 year old son that he needed to be tested for a learning disability. And she was terrified about telling him.

I didn't understand that because to me the more data that I have that can help me address the issues, the more efficient I will be and the easier my daughter's journey will become.

My message her is that testing is not a bad thing nor is anything else....its all how you spin it.

Here is how you spin testing:

* Testing allows you to identify exactly where and why you are struggling and then we can spend our time specifically working on those areas - instead of guessing and making everyone frustrated.
* Testing will let us understand how YOU learn best. Because all people learn differently,
* Testing will highlight your strengths! And then we can make sure you get lots of experiences in the areas you have strengths in.
* Testing will give us - as a team- the information we need to help you.

This tells the child that they are unique and can learn, that they have strengths and that they are not in this alone!