Leaping From The Box

Today I will be responding to the first of several questions I have received about homeschooling. Please feel free to leave your own comment with helpful suggestions for this worried mom. And if you have your own question, click on the “Email Me Today” link on the right sidebar and send me your question.

I have a question about Universities. I home-schooled my daughter and son till the 12th grade. They both have dyslexia which with a great deal of hard work have managed to overcome. My daughter was also diagnosed with add/hd but my son was only diagnosed with add. They have both finished high school and started in our local community college.

Ironically, my daughter is doing relatively well with the help of the access office with is a program that allows for students such as herself more time with tests, helps with note taking, etc. My son on the other hand has not done so well. I believe he is a late bloomer. He is not so willing to be a part of the access office of the college. He failed the few courses but never fails to be absent from a single class and is always 30 to 45 min early to class. Yet he struggles to meet the required work for the class. I truly feel that he would benefit from attending a small university that understands these types of students.

During the time I home-schooled the children there was not as much support available. At times I was even told I was doing my children a great disservice. The schools were very damaging to my children’s sense of self worth and self esteem and I can clearly see this in my son to this day.

I was hoping I could get some information about a small University that would accommodate this type of student.

I would deeply appreciate any information you may give me.

Thank you so much for your help.

A worried mom

Dear Worried Mom,

There are universities and colleges that “specialize” in students with learning disabilities. I believe there were two or three mentioned in Lauren Pope’s book, Colleges That Change Lives (read my review of Pope’s book).

I did find this website about dyslexia and college, through a Google search, that looked as though it offered support to the dyslexic college student: Dyslexia At College. That website has a discussion forum where you might get better information about specific colleges / universities. It does appear as though the site is selling some sort of dyslexia testing, just so you know.

Since your son’s current college is already offering assistance, though, it sounds like the issue is that your son is not willing to take advantage of that assistance. If your son is not willing to accept assistance offered locally, going away from home to a university likely will not improve that situation. If anything, it will throw additional stressors into the equation, causing him to question himself and his abilities even more. Has he given a reason for why he is not willing to seek out help from the college?

You say you believe your son is a late bloomer, so I wonder if maybe he is just not ready yet for full-time college. Has he tried just taking one or two courses during a semester? Or maybe he is not ready for college at all? Does he have some other interest that he could pursue for a career, something more hands-on? Maybe the reason that he is not willing to seek out the help is because he would rather be doing something else?

Come on, LeapingFromTheBox.com readers! Step forward with your thoughts and suggestions! Feel free to comment if you have advice for Worried Mom.

Could you use a $100 bonus? I know we could!

Our monetary situation and financial goals have been subjects in our household recently. Better employment opportunities for my husband was one of the reasons for our move to Tallahassee, with the goal of seriously augmenting savings and retirement funds. Our eldest child has been trying to sell her house for many months and we all know how painful the housing market is right now. Our middle child is a full-time college student (living at home) who, whenever gas prices go above $3.00 per gallon, has been required by mom and dad to use the city bus system rather than the family van to get to class. (Gas prices here in Tallahassee jumped from $2.89/gal. last Friday to $3.17/gal. yesterday!) And our youngest child is job hunting and discovering just how difficult it is to get that first job.

I am always looking for ways to save money or earn more money. I cut costs where I can and can hold my own amongst the best of penny pinchers. The last three months I have been on a “turn off that electricity consuming device when not in use” campaign and lowered our monthly electric bill by close to $100. So when I saw an opportunity to make an extra $100 while at the same time accomplishing one of our long-term goals, augmenting savings, how could I pass it by?

My Money Blog gives the details of Suze Orman’s SaveYourself promotion. Open a TD Ameritrade account by March 31, 2008 and set up an automatic deposit of at least $50 per month for 12 consecutive months. At the end of that 12 months you will receive a $100 bonus, as long as you have not withdrawn any money from the account in that time.

Since one of our goals is to save more money, I set up a TD Ameritrade account yesterday. I choose the money market fund option rather than a trading fund and have until the end of March to fund it. I can wait until the next payday (which only comes around once a month here) and then set up the automatic deposits. My thought is that I won’t be tempted to dip into a savings account that is not connected with our regular checking account at our regular bank. Out of sight, out of mind, right? And at the end of the first year we will have at least $700 tucked away, $600 of our own and $100 bonus (plus whatever interest accrues between now and then). Cool!

I was tagged by Sandra to list seven interesting things about me. Since I was tagged here at my LeapingFromTheBox blog, I will try to keep the seven items related in some way to learning/education. And maybe I will go the more personal route on my Musings, Mischief and Mayhem blog later.

1. I started out at college studying to be a history teacher, but quickly decided that teaching was not for me. Isn’t it ironic that I become a homeschooling parent?

2. I don’t really enjoy website building, html coding. I find the whole technical aspect of it extremely stressful. Yet I enjoy writing about our experiences, reviewing resources and sharing that information on the web. And I love tinkering with the layouts, finding what is visually pleasing, as you can tell from the fact that the theme of this blog just changed again!

3. I love the hunt of finding new resources, which has been both a blessing and a curse in our homeschooling journey. A blessing because I often stumble onto things that either my own family can use or that turns out to be useful for a fellow homeschooler. A curse because I can easily go overboard, overwhelming everyone with the options I find and stressing the budget with the choices I purchase.

4. I began the LeapingFromTheBox.com website because I was continually answering emails about homeschooling. I thought if I put my knowledge and information online, then people wouldn’t send me emails. Of course, they still send me emails, but at least now I can usually just redirect them to the appropriate pages on my site for answers.

5. Homeschooling math has always been a challenge for me. It is a subject that I always feel is just slightly out of my grasp, like grabbing a fistful of Jello. Just when you feel you have a handle on it, it goes squishing away again. I would like to know more about it, it fascinates me, yet I am not sure I really have the brain for it. It may be one of those subjects that I will always regret not understanding more.

6. I never even tried homeschooling science. Over the years I provided a lot of resources, we gardened, grew plants indoors, had pets, watched NOVA and read a lot of science books, but I never tried to teach science. I let my middle child make any scientific explanations that were needed, as his level of science comprehension exceeded mine at about age three. I know science information by rote, from what I learned in school, but I will never understand it at any level.

7. I will consider myself an unschooler even when I no longer have children being homeschooled. Once an unschooler, always an unschooler.

I am supposed to tag seven people, but I guess I will just let you tag yourself. If you blog this meme after reading it here, please leave me a comment with a link!