Light Dawns On Marble Heads



We used to have a saying where I grew up. Any sort of  epiphany was met with the quip "Light dawns on Marblehead!". (Today we just say "Doh!")   I'm not sure how many people even got the pun.

Anyway, I think we have finally, finally recognized that Kid 2 has dyslexia. The list of symptoms fits almost exactly and I for one feel like an idiot. The school system has bent over backwards to provide services to help Kid 2 succeed but over the years, none of the solutions have been particularly successful. Were we too busy to wonder why until now? Every year around this time, he suffers a sort of mini-breakdown. He stops doing the work and goes into full Bartleby Mode. We always figured he got tired, that it was his version of Spring fever.

Finally, I started to really think about his progress and particularly his writing ability. This is the sample that really got me going. It's something that he attempted to writing for Social Studies and I think it was supposed to be a topic sentence: 

"Wars are generally horrific one of the most is the Revolutionary war so many bodies that were not ided but 3 reasons that this war was caused by was......" 

I stumbled across this unfinished assignment, handwritten on a piece of shiny brochure paper while I was doing a sweep clean of my desk. And I thought OMG, this is not where a seventh grader should be. And that year after year, his writing was not improving, although his spelling is now fabulous compared to what it was. 

He is a brilliant kid and his inability to do the work has always been vaguely attributed to "ADHD" or laziness. He is charming so he passes his classes each year--barely. But now I finally think we might have stumbled across a way out. He will attend a month-long writing program in July at a local private school that specializes in "language based learning disabilities." He can't get in for 8th grade, as there is no space but maybe for 9th grade. The only downside is that it's $48,000 a year. Maybe I'll become one of those lottery mavens that clog the space in front of the checkout counter at gas stations when you just want to give the clerk a $20 bill for regular at Pump 1. I really don't care what I have to do to get the money.....


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