Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 58 Comments

More rain

And still it rains. And rains. And rains.

And still it rains at school.

French Homework is to complete a crossword. A French Crossword. Marks will be deducted for incorrect spellings.

Dad I can’t even do a crossword in English never mind French. I can remember the sounds but I can’t spell the words. The Teacher knows this but just says I have to try harder.

And we have more…

Drama Homework is to complete an acting related Word Search Game. Really. Very early on his previous school it was identified that he could just not do Word Searches Tables. The Psychologist who looked into this established that for some reason he was not able to visualise letters and collections of letters if they were printed diagonally or backwards. On top of this his dyslexia just made identifying words difficult. As this was stressful for him it was strongly recommended that his education did not use word based games. Fast forward a couple of years and his current school now requires him to do word searches as it’s the set task for the class.

I can see the point of a French Crossword for some kids but how is a dyslexic kid expected to complete this. Has our school system become so inflexible that we can’t just vary the teaching programme a little for each individual child need. Clearly not. The Government is committed to this Factory/Production line model of education. That’s for State Schools. Private Schools have more scope to flex the teaching programme. Unfortunately many can’t afford to go Private. But that won’t bother Boris and his buddies. As long as the chauffeur driven car turns up and the expensive wine keeps coming.

Ok I can see the point of a crossword for French for some BUT… What is the pigging point of a word search for Drama. I guess it’s all part of the Government’s drive to make every kid spell correctly the defined key words. Spelling is given a higher profile that actually understanding what the word means. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the best way to develop the next Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg and Tom Cruise is to focus on spelling. Oh hang on a minute these have dyslexia as well. So no I don’t see the point.

We just set too many of our kids up to fail. They see other kids repeatedly praised for great spelling or neat handwriting while at the same time they are just told to try harder. How demoralising is that. A phrase you hear often is that kids with learning difficulties have to try super hard just to keep the perceived learning gap from widening. DAMM RIGHT THEY DO. Too many kids are forced through the same stereotyped classroom hoop. Never given a chance to demonstrate their unique skill sets as these are not in the areas deemed valuable by the Government.

Too many kids have been failed by our society. It’s not as if our society is particularly successful or sustainable on the back of this. This has to stop. When it does stop and we start allowing all our kids to grow – just take a few minutes to think how good this world will become. That is a hope worth fighting for. That is a hope worth voting for.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 62 Comments

Dyslexia we are on your case

The dog is happy. His friends are back in the farmers field. And yes I still haven’t moved the shovel from last months gardening. And yes I still haven’t removed the two old Catherine Wheel fireworks from the fence. Wonder what the Guinness Book of Records listing is for the most old Catherine Wheels on a Yorkshire Garden Fence is.

Last night we had been talking football. Namely clubs which go out of business. Son was struggling with the economics of the process.

Dad. Basically with the billions and billions of pounds generated by football how can a great club like Bury be allowed to go out of business. It’s the economics of the madhouse. The rich get richer the poor get poorer.

Can’t disagree with him. Football is just a reflection of our society. Someone bleeds an asset dry then discards it. The person with money moves on leaving a scene of desolation behind for others to live with.

Dad which other clubs have gone out of business. Don’t worry Dad I will google it. How do you spell business.

Within a couple of minutes son is doing a pretty awesome job of reading out an article. Yes he was getting some of the words wrong. He had to ask me to read some words like ‘Maidstone’ and ‘Aldershot’. But I understood fully what was in the article.

He’s found a way of getting by. He can now read pretty accurately about a third of the words. Another third he can get part of the word correct which allows him to guess the rest of the word. And as long as he understands what the subject of the text is then he can guess the remaining words – fill in the blanks. It works. In his eyes he’s moved from can’t read to can ‘sorta’ read.

I fully realise that he is unlikely to have enough trust in the people around him in the classroom to demonstrate this at school. The teachers won’t have the flexibility to exploit this educational opening. But at least now rather than just guessing what text means he can have an educated guess. Even that will help his self esteem. It’s progress. Self achieved progress.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 44 Comments

Not a clue

I’m still trying to get my head round the fact that me wearing a In The Night Garden T-shirt is not a sign of me absolutely reeking of awesomeness. Apparently it just makes me sad.

Clearly I have missed the last 20 years of cultural development and I am fossilised, moldy and a dinosaur. As you can tell this post is about how dated I have become. The most obvious sign is how our son is talking a different language to me.

When I was young (about 3500 years ago) if you liked something you shouted ace. Apparently not anymore. I should in fact be shouting yeet. I ramped up my uncoolness as for a couple of days I misheard him and started shouting yeast.

A few months back son started referring to the worlds best footballer, Messi, as GOAT. I naturally thought that was to do with his beard or worryingly maybe something to do with satanism. Thankfully I finally discovered it was Greatest Of All Time.

Then I was shopping with our son and I kept hearing kids talking about buying new Rides. Trying to be with it I asked our son why so many kids wanted a new bike. The look I got. Apparently they wanted new sneakers.

Or maybe it was the time son was getting ready for school and I asked if he was sure that he didn’t need his sports kit.

Hundo P

I assumed he was referring to some new Manga character. Again I didn’t have a clue. Apparently it means 100% sure.

Today in my customary daily humiliation which is playing our son at FIFA 19 I was called a Newb. Harsh but my team had just been beaten 14-1. I am also a newb at Fortnite, Minecraft, WWE2K, Xenoverse 2 and Rainbow Six. Why is it that the only games I ever got good at have disappeared without a trace. I was the John Cena of the Donkey Kong world. The Yoda like playing beast in the BBC computer space game Elite. And don’t even mention my brilliance in Galaxian. But today that counts for nothing. Time moves on.

As I was putting the finishing touches to this rubbish a new blog notice popped up from Autism in Our Nest. Spookily Robyn had just blogged on a similar theme. Again she deals with this with far more insight than my sledgehammer approach will ever do. However it is reassuring that I’m not the only one out of step with modern culture.