Well, school has ended and I have to say, this was the most frustrating year to date.
School has never been easy for her. With being dyslexic and ADD, she struggles with the basics, like Math and Reading. We have constantly try to be involved in her day to day school activities and homework; however, this year was different. She did not want our help.
She wanted to try this year without taking her ADD meds and did not want our help. We kept asking about her homework and she would tell use that she had done it already. That was tough for us, especially for my wife, because as a Teacher, she wants to help her and help her grow. Her grades were Ok, not great, ranging from A – D. Thankfully or if you really want to say, luckily for our Daughter, the teachers were extremely nice and allowed her to make up low grades, which enabled her to end the year with A’s and B’s. However, being from one of those states with Mandatory Testing, she did not do well on those tests. This worries us a lot, because next year, if she does not pass those tests, she could be held back.
So what do we do? How can we help our daughter love reading and school when she struggles so much without our help? Well, this summer is going to be a little more restrictive, ok restrictive is not the right word. We are going to be more structured this summer. We have already assigned her a required 30 minutes of reading every day and she also must write a brief summary of what she read and write the definition of at least one word she did not know. We have also allowed her to pick the book she wants to read. She also has to do one Math worksheet every day as well.
While I know this may not be the solution, we have decided to force ourselves into her school work and not allow her to just do it without our help. We have explained to her that we are the parents and it is our responsibility to ensure she gets the best education possible and we will be involved daily.
Well, let’s see how this works next school year.