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.

Did you hear that sucking sound over the weekend? No, it wasn’t the Patriots losing. It was my email program’s IN box contents, disappearing into a previously unknown black hole located somewhere on my computer.

So, if you sent me an email over the last five - seven days with church school info, support group info, co-op info, or anything else, and did not receive a reply from me, please email me again.

Luckily it was only my IN box … and I am now doing the back-ups I intended to do at the first of the year!

Penelope is still at the shop and we do not have a clue when she’ll be done. Her bodywork was finished last week, but there was a noise the shop couldn’t pinpoint. She went to another shop and had her front end aligned, but that didn’t end the noise. Now the diagnosis seems to be a new steering box, but since that is over a certain dollar amount, the shop has to go back to the insurance company for approval of additional expenditures. So there Penelope sits, waiting for approval. And here I don’t sit, because while we’re down to one vehicle I get to be the chauffeur, driving Bill to work, driving David to college, picking them up, taking people here and there to appointments, etc. David has taken the bus a few times to college, but for an 11:15 class he has to leave here at 9:30, and it only takes 20 minutes to drive there. So most days I drive him there.

There is an upside to all this driving, though; listening to the local NPR radio station. For some reason I do not remember to turn the radio on at home, preferring to listen to Folk Alley. I get more accomplished at home when I listen to music. But I love NPR for all the great interviews, book reviews and talk shows they offer daily and it’s great company in the car.

Of course, there is also a downside to NPR; it spurs on my reading habit. After listening to interviews of authors who have new books coming out and listening to book reviews, I now have more books that I want to read. I have to keep a pad of paper handy in the car so I can jot down author names and book titles of those that sound really interesting. And when I get home, I head to PaperbackSwap to see if I can acquire a copy. If reading is my habit of choice, PaperbackSwap is my enabler. Most of the books I have read this past year have come from PaperbackSwap, and when I am done with them, I relist them and swap them back for more! If you like to read, check out PaperbackSwap. And if you decide to join, I would greatly appreciate it if you would use my email address ( wdkmg@pipeline.com ) as your “sponsor.” That will gain me a book credit! Thanks!

NPR and PaperbackSwap are the reasons for no blog post yesterday. I was engrossed in The Dive From Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer, an author I listened to a couple of weeks ago on NPR. But more about that tomorrow, when I post my review!