Okay, this blog post has been a long time coming. Part of my hesitancy to write this story comes from the fact that it is not truly my story to tell. It is my daughter’s story. She is 18 now, however, and has given me permission to write about her experience. Another reason that I haven’t written about this sooner is simply about my capacity; when you are in the middle of living with a struggling learner, you usually feel like that is all you can do – struggle to survive. I’ve been mulling it over for a while now, but here goes…
This is what life was like with my struggling learner before we found the neurodevelopmental approach:
Sarah was a bubbly little girl. She was joyful and full of energy, but she was oh, so stubborn! She loved animals of any kind, she loved being outside, and she loved playing with her brother. He could always do everything better than her, but that was because he was 2 years older, right?
Even before she started school, Sarah was visibly struggling with things like learning to swim, tying her shoes, or brushing her teeth. She always hated to have her head or hair touched. At age 8 she could not ride a bike, even though we had worked continuously on this skill for several summers in a row. Sarah never let these difficulties bother her, just steered her friends in other directions and found creative ways to participate when it was time to play.
Once she got to first grade, however, Sarah’s learning struggles became more apparent. She struggled with reading, writing, and math. She had trouble holding a pencil, and wrote just about every letter and number backwards. Even the number 8 looked weird (I mean, how can you write an 8 backwards, right?). Sometimes her writing was mirror-image, you could hold it up to a mirror to look correct.
One day she knew something and the next day she didn’t; this was always frustrating for me as both mother and teacher. And then there were the behavior issues – it was like Sarah could not obey. I would tell her to do something and she just would not do it! Sometimes I felt like a complete failure as a mother and as a teacher. We were both consistently exhausted from just trying to get through each day. I could see her frustration and I felt it too. Surely this couldn’t go on forever, could it?
And then we found the neurodevelopmental approach.Someone came to our town every few months and evaluated my struggling learner, looking for gaps in her development. The neurodevelopmentalist then created a detailed personalized program to do at home with my daughter to fill in these gaps. It was not easy, and insurance didn’t pay for it, but it forced her to do the things that were difficult for her. There were days we would both shed tears or grit our teeth together as we worked toward improvement. We worked with the neurodevelopmentalist for a couple of years, overcoming one obstacle after another. It was an intense program, and we didn’t have time for much else, but we gradually saw actual changes in our daughter.
Eventually, I took a moment to step back and look at all we had accomplished. Sarah was able to behave. She was able to learn, and when she learned something it actually stuck. I am not saying there were no more struggles, but I am so thankful that we invested the money and time in our daughter to help her become the best learner that she could be.
I don’t know who needs to hear this today, but it’s been on my heart to share our story for a few months now. Even if you don’t have a child with learning struggles, are you doing hard things? Are you homeschooling in the evenings after work? Are you homeschooling with several younger kids underfoot? Are you homeschooling several different grade levels? You can do hard things! And you will often come out better for it on the other side.
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Thanks for sharing. I found it relevant and will check into finding a neurodevelopment counselor.
So glad it was helpful! Here’s a list of NeuroDevelopmentalists by state: http://icando.org/ican-members/ican-members-list