I have a child who is dyslexic and has ADHD. Two books that have really helped me are:

Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World: Unlocking the Potential of Your Add Child by Jeffrey Freed and Laurie Parsons
and
Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz
(also for anybody with reading difficulties)

Dr. Shaywitz suggests going back over the more difficult phonics concepts such as prefixes, suffixes, dipthongs, blends... Hmm… I can’t remember.  Then she says to break down long words into syllables and practice reading them.  I did this with my son, making it a game and timing him to see if he could improve his speed with flashcards of (the same) long words.  He had fun with it and gained reading confidence.  I had skipped over some phonics concepts that my other kids just picked up on their own.  But her techniques turned Josh into a bookworm in about 2 weeks!  He still doesn’t have the comprehension skills or speed that his siblings have, but this really helped.

The “right brain” book is also so practical and wonderful, and it has specific techniques on how to teach almost every subject.  It has really helped me to see how Josh thinks!  It’s funny, though, that the author disagrees about phonics for these kids.  But after having seen how phonics worked great for Josh, I have to agree with Mr. Freed about almost everything except his condemnation of phonics.

He says to ask your child if he can picture a cube turning in his head and imagine each facet as it turns.  Josh can do this, but I can’t!  It’s one way to see if your child is right-brained.

Right Brained Children in a Left Brained World encourages parents to actually teach a few things to ADD kids early — can you believe it??  Because of him I introduced my 8-year-old son to negative numbers, squaring numbers, and a tiny bit of algebra.  This is really motivating to them and again, helps their self-confidence, which is usually pretty wounded in these kids.  Anyway Freed’s techniques are like Shaywitz’s.  They have amazing results.  The spelling one is introduced first because it is usually the most dramatic.

We had my son tested, and I believe it wasn’t an ideal testing situation because my son knew the rest of his siblings were playing, and as soon as he finished his test he could play, too.  This made him totally distracted.  Some of the questions that he got wrong, we asked him the next week.  He got them all right then…

Also the diagnostician (a wonderful Christian lady who did all this for free for us!!) doesn’t believe that my son is dyslexic or ADHD because she’s used to dealing with public school kiddos who had Butterfingers/Snickers for breakfast and are way more hyper than my son is and have much worse reading problems.  But I still believe he is.

Another thing that has helped is a book called Sequential Spelling. I try to do a test every school-day and it has really helped him to become better at spelling.  I read that studying spelling also helps with vocabulary and other areas.

Sequential Spelling is a very unusual spelling book because the writer starts with a root word and keeps adding to it until the child can spell very long words.  The student actually does not study for the tests!  It is like a dictation mentality, except they don’t have to write a whole sentence — just a word.

After he writes his word, I write my version in two colors, showing the parts of the word.  You don’t have to write it perfectly — there is no perfect way.  Just divide it how it seems right to you.

If he got it wrong, he erases and corrects his version.  Then he spells it outloud while writing it with his finger. It’s pretty fun, and it has really helped!

Josh also stopped having cereal, milk, or juice for breakfast.  (Is he still??   I need to double-check him on this.)  He does much better on:

• water
• fruit
• 100 percent whole wheat toast.  This idea came from the Homeschool Legal Defense Association webpage.

We do let Josh have a limited amount of dessert later in the day.  But I read that if the first thing in our mouths in the mornings is sugary, it spikes our blood sugar since it is taken on an empty stomach.

Another thing that helped Josh was to get glasses with prisms. He said his eyes get really tired when he reads without them.  Hannah says he is more hyper without them!  He doesn’t have a prescription for his glasses at all except for the prisms.  Thank you, Dr. Morrissey!

Be a missionary!

On the mission field we had some great experiences.  We traveled, saw many countries, ministered as a family, and learned how to be best friends with each other.

There really were no peers really because Japanese kids went to cram school in the evenings and had public school on Saturdays.  Our kids didn’t notice that they were being deprived of peers because they had each other to play with!

There were plenty of wrong influences in Japan, but since it wasn’t our home culture, the kids were oblivious to most of them.

If you want your children to have a heart for missions, what better way than to model it to them?  Our kids consider it quite normal to become a missionary because that was their life for ten years.

They don’t think we were or are heroes because we’re not — They would probably think that statement is quite laughable!  They just think it is normal to be a missionary.

Before I went on the mission field, I thought it must be the most exciting life there is!  After all, you get paid to travel to exciting places and tell people about Christ.  But I felt there were two big barriers keeping me from going:

• Missionaries probably have to be perfect.
• Probably everyone wants to be one, and all the spaces are filled.

If you have ever been on even a short-term trip, you know neither fallacy is true!  :O)  On the field I met very imperfect Christians like me.  They were just willing to go.

As for all the spaces being filled, well, all the mission houses we lived in now sit empty of believers.  No one is telling the Good News from those spots anymore.

If my children serve the Lord overseas, they will have a more realistic view of what to expect than I did.  I did not forsee any problems or loneliness or realize that sometimes we would open our doors, invite all, and no one would come.  But I am so glad we lived that reality in front of our kids, all the while having the privilege of drinking in an entirely new culture.

I saw things I had never seen before:  entire mountains simultaneously splashed with every bright Fall color, monkeys trying to get our French fries from my car window, all my children in silk kimonos, women who can sit motionless on the floor forever with a  perfectly folded position, cherry blossoms snowing down like a continual wedding, ice sculptures 3 stories high, Mount Fuji in all its glory.

My kids know that the United States is not the only place in the world.  They appreciate their home country even more for it.  When they study Geography, there is already a place in their brains for Thailand because we had a meeting there.  There are sins they shun because they have seen entire cultures broken because of their distain for God.

Our oldest two kiddos speak Japanese, and one got 16 hours of college credit for it.  Having learned a language at a young age, now their brains are more able to learn other languages later.

Our mission board, The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, takes great care of their missionaries.  We always lived in nice houses and were provided with a nice van.  They provided an adequate salary, the best language training, counseling support, materials for homeschooling, good medical and retirement benefits, incredible strategy training, and shipping of many belongings.  We are so grateful to them.

Every missions experience is different, and if you send your children to institutional schools on the mission field, I can’t guarantee anything.  But I am so glad we gave our young, energetic years to the Lord overseas.

We have never stayed on schedule all day, haha! But the schedule does help, and I am so thankful for the scheduling kit I got from titus2.org.  It is called Managers of Their Homes.  I have not tried the others yet about chores and school, but I’m sure they’re great.  Some moms look at it and feel like it is not good for them since they are a small family.  But I disagree!  I was a mess when I only had one kid, and the scheduling book would have helped me then, too…

• I give myself treats if I wake up on time like special coffee, special soap for shower, pear honey on my toast, etc. because me waking up is a big key.

• We sleep late if there is sickness going around, we were up late, etc.  Then we try to pick up the schedule according to what time it is when we get going.  If breakfast isn’t cleaned up and devotions done until 9:30, then we do what it says at 9:30.  (for the most part)

• I skip a lot of subjects that could be considered unnecessary like Health, songs, poetry, art, repetitive math worksheets once they understand, kindergarten…  I don’t do writing assignments much at all (and Micah just won a state-wide essay contest!)
• We have a lot of interesting books around to read in order to make the kids better writers.  English authors give a new flavor to the language, so we sometimes buy used Sherlock Holmes, Paddington Bear, Alice in Wonderland, and G. A. Henty books.

• With subjects like science, literature, and history, I mainly just try to have the kids learn to read, then I provide them with good reading material from the library, garage sales, used book sales, and old textbooks nobody wants.  Then I let them choose what they want to read for those subjects.  I don’t make them answer questions at the end of chapters.

• If they want to read, “Flies Taste with their Feet” instead of a science workbook or textbook, that’s great with me because they’ll retain the info better if they’re interested.  Or if they’d rather read a biography about Joseph Haydn than a history workbook or textbook, great!

• When I was in public school and taught public and Christian school, the teachers didn’t finish the textbooks!  So I don’t pressure myself to finish textbooks.  I don’t remember things I learned in school except math facts and a few other things.

• I read a book by a home school mom whose kids all went to Harvard.  That is not my goal for my kids, because colleges nowadays seem to force liberal philosophies on the students. Even Christian colleges!  But I learned from that book that kids can get a good education for not much money and mom not going crazy! She pointed out that math is just one of those subjects that required textbooks.  You can use ones from the grocery store or whatever.  I do like ACE because the kids finish books and get excited about moving on to the next one!  Also it teaches Bible verses in the math books, has comics the kids enjoy, and has great explanations designed to let the kids figure out their math for themselves.

• I don’t make the kids do every page if they understand the concept.  I let them move up to the next grade if they are ready.  The ACE books are a little on the easy side, so it is good to have them a little above grade level.

• I try to look for writing contests when I get a minute (haha!  When do I have a free moment?!) to motivate my kids to write.  But usually the contests are for the older kids.  Sometimes libraries have contests for younger ones.  Often when the littlies see the oldies writing they want to write, too.

• I also use ATI, put out by Institute in Basic Life Principles.  It is so great and amazing!  We also read God’s World News but read the lower levels because the upper level ones have heavy subjects.  It is great, too, though!

• When I teach how to read, I use various phonics books – let me know if you want the names.  And I use the phonics cards from Christ Centered Curriculum.

• I have one who has a lot of trouble spelling, and Sequential Spelling has been a great help for him.

• One more — Handwriting Without Tears — Now that I don’t have a baby (Grace is three) I have time to teach some of the kids handwriting one on one for a few minutes a day.

• I recommend titus2.com for many issues, not just scheduling — They are a precious family –  Also growinggodlytomatoes.com is good for training.

Chapter 11 — “He Lived What He Taught Us”

“My Father did not push us to prayer, he led us–first by the consistent example of being a pray-er himself, then by asking the blessing (a phrase he thought more accurate than ’saying grace’) at meals, and by gathering all of us together after breakfast for family prayers, as described in Mother’s article. I do not say that we always followed willingly, or with anything like spiritual hunger or understanding, nor until years later for most of us. But I do say that there was no hypocrisy on his part to pull the rug out from under what he tried to teach us. Children are as keen as bloodhounds to sense that. He believed what he said. We could not have doubled that. And he lived by it.” p. 57

Chapter 21 — “Rules”

“God in his mercy told his people what to do and what not to do. My parents made rules for us, ’stakes’ and ‘ties’ to help us live a peaceful and fruitful life. The keeping of these rules was our early training in that renunciation and death to self which will never be easy for any if us so long as we live in this mortal body, yet that very renunciation is the route to freedom and fulfilment, The obedient child is the happiest child.” p.125

Chapter 22 — “Enforcement: A Mission For Redemption”

“I have tried to show that the rules and regulations of the home my parents established, the order that characterized that home, and the response of us children were based on love for God. Human love is subject to many vicissitudes. My parents wisely sought to follow, in shaping our behaviour, the way God deals with the children He loves

“‘If his sons forsake my law and do not follow my statutes, if they violate my decrees and fail to keep my commands, I will punish their sin with the rod, their iniquity with flogging; but I will not take my love from him, nor will I ever betray my faithfulness.’  p. 131

(George MacDonald,  Unspoken Sermons)” p.136

Homeschooling:

• I try to spend one-on-one time with our youngest child before I start the more intense schooling with the others so she sees that she is important to me.  Then she can face the day secure and ready to obey and be separated from me a little.   Then I move up the ladder to the other preschooler and spend time with him.  It is easy to teach a 3 or 4-year-old beginning reading with phonics flashcards, so the toddler usually feels special getting that one-on-one time with Mommy at the start of the morning.  I use Christ-centered curriculum flashcards.  They’re big, colorful, clever, and based on the Bible.  Then I move to phonics reader series like “Zip the Pig”, “Max the Cat”, and Bible-based ummm… what are those called again?  Write me if you want to know.
• Since we have several older siblings for Andrew, sometimes they each take a 30-minute shift taking care of him. Sometimes they each take 2 shifts a day.  This idea came from Terri Maxwell (titus2.org  –  I would probably recommend ALL of their books) and from my good friend Julie.
• Julie also suggested “high chair time” where he or she colors with crayons or plays with a Cheerio book.  This works well. 
• The book Creative Family Times from gfi.org has great ideas like room time, play pen time, book time, etc. where young ones and babies actually learn creativity as they play by themselves, getting down time to stay happy and learning contentedness with toys.  People comment on how happy my kiddos are, and I think one reason is that they have learned not to be whiney and clingy.  They don’t like these times at first, but if their routine stays the same they gain a feeling of security with the schedule.

Mealtimes: 

• When Andrew was 2, he usually hit the highchair early and started eating while the cook was still cooking.   For homeschool lunches, the cook was 10-year-old Hannah.
• During the meal we tried (emphasis on tried!!) to teach him to be quiet, especially when others are talking and to sit down the whole time.  We didn’t allow him to drop food on the floor.  If he was very discontented with his food we sometimes took it all away and let him have it back when he said, “please” nicely and apologized.  We didn’t hold him to all the food rules that the older ones had to comply to, though, such as, “no dessert unless you eat everything.”   As I am writing this, he is almost five, and he has to comply!  Grace is almost 3, and she has to sometimes, too.
• Andrew (Drew) went through a stage where he would finish meals before we were done.  Then he had “blanket time”, which I learned about from an amazing lady named Lori Voeller.  She taught me how to teach this to a young one:  “You need to stay on the blanket with your toys.  Hooray!  Good boy!  The carpet is a ‘NO no’.” (spank the carpet all around the blanket.)  Start training sessions at five minutes, then increase.  Praise him a lot for staying on the blanket. 
• After we eat, 2-year-old Andrew usually “helped” 10-year-old Hannah to put laundry in the machines.  Although this requires a very patient 10-year-old, it is great for comic relief! 

Raising Godly Tomatoes has some good tips on how to  train your toddler to stay on your lap.  Look at the bottom of the page under Babies in Church.

There are some more great ideas at: 
http://www.aop.com/enews/hsview/08.03.06/toddler.php

Q: What do you do about situations with siblings when one tattle-tales, yet what the sibling they’re tattling on is doing probably isn’t best. It’s like, I don’t want to reward the tattle-tale behavior, but also, how do I let a sibling that was doing something *wrong* get away with it? It’s very tough and I pray for leading in this. Let me know any thoughts you have–experience, etc.

A: As for the tattling, that is something I still struggle with.  Even tonight.  But one thing I like to do is say, “Let me hear you talk to each other about this.” That has many benefits:

1. I can hear the true attitudes of both people involved.

2. The seemingly innocent child probably has at least an attitude problem, so it is a good chance for him/her to work on it.  They should honestly care about their sibling, correcting them so they will have a happier, more unselfish life in the future, not correcting to make themselves feel more superior or to be excited that their sibling is getting in trouble.

3. If the one being tattled on doesn’t respond in humility, there’s another character trait that can be worked on there.

4. The true story can come out if all parties are testifying!

Chapter 23 “Encouragement”

Chapter 25  “Work and Play”

“‘I commend the enjoyment of life,” says the teacher in Ecclesiastes, “because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of the life God has given him under the sun.’ (Eccles. 8:15 NIV)

“Work should always be associated with joy. Being on vacation did not exempt us from work. Wherever we were there was a balance of work and play. Mother and Dad were never exempt from work–why should we be? We were all members of the family. Everybody but the baby was a working member of the family. The worry of some parents, that by requiring work they would be depriving their children of childhood, never crossed our parents’ minds. They would have been amused, I suppose, if anyone suggested such an idea. Doesn’t everybody know that play is more fun if interspersed with work? And how shall we ever learn to work if we don’t begin in childhood? My father believed that when God had ordained hard work for man after he sinned, God knew that his wandering thoughts and imagination would need to be kept in check and his mischievous hands would need to be kept busy. If there were no need to earn money, each man would be a law unto himself, and we would soon have chaos instead of the large measure of order that we do have.”  pg.156

“One day Mother found the bags all over the floor, but Tommy was in the living room where Daddy was playing the piano. She went in and told him to put away the bags. With a smile of seraphic sweetness he looked up at her and said, ‘But I want to sing “Jesus Loves Me”!’ Here was an occasion to teach the great principle that obedience is better than to sacrifice. It’s no good praising the Lord when you are being disobedient to your mother.” pg.164

Chapter 26 “Courtesy”

“Little Jim puts down his spoon and begins the slow, careful climb down from his highchair. ‘Thank you Mama,’ he says in his southern accent. ‘Ah enjoyed that!’ What a lovely thing that was for this grandmother to hear! How unusual in our times–courtesy from a small child who had not been prompted. He had picked up on what he heard from his elders. The power of example again. So often what is picked up is quite the opposite–the flung down spoon, the rush from the table with nary a thought for the meal or the one who prepared it. Courtesy is the plain old-fashioned thoughtfulness–what will make the other person more comfortable? Do for him or her what you would want done for you. Nobody is born thought-full. We must all earn it.” pg. 165

Chapter 27 “A Mothers Devotion”

“There is no doubt that the influence in the first eight or ten years of  child’s life pretty well determine his future course. Whoever spends most of his waking hours with him is the principal moulder of his character. This was God’s plan when he created Eve to be the mother of the race and Adam to husband (to protect, provide for, and cherish) her. Mother was not only there for us. She was regularly there, keeping her appointment with God–for us. Like her Lord Jesus, for our sakes she sanctified herself.

She read the Bible–read it, prayed over it(‘Wonderful Counsellor, open Thy word to my heart. Open my heart to Thy word’), marked it, quoted it, asked the Lord to help her to understand, remember, and live by it. She believed word of it to be inspired by God, profitable or doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

We would have said that Mother always read her Bible and prayed after breakfast. But of course it is not possible for anyone to keep perfectly to a schedule, especially with a large family. There were lapses of another sort, as a poem of which she herself is apparently the author indicates:

“‘Give unto______, my son, a perfect heart to keep Thy commandments, Thy testimonies, and Thy statutes.’” -pg. 175

“Mother’s… hymn… which took on special meaning after her ‘chicks’ had flown, I.S. Stevenson’s hymn of 1869:

Our kids like to read.  We have soooooo many books, and they just enjoy perusing through all sorts of them.  We are certainly not the experts on this subject, but here are a few ways that we guess they started getting interested in books.
1. One of the main reasons our kids read is that we don’t have our tv hooked up and don’t have video games. 

2. One way to get them to read is to take them to a big church library and let them pick out books that interest them.

3.  I like to read to them.  This peaks interest in books.  But if you have one that only wants to listen and not read for himself, you can even stop at a cliff-hanger and say that he has to read it for himself to find out what happens! 
4. If you suspect dyslexia, take a look at Dr. Sally Shaywitz’ book,Overcoming Dyslexia (and other reading problems).  It was a great help to us.  Also what has worked for us has been:

• Changing the child from a breakfast of cereal and milk to 100 percent whole wheat toast, fruit, and water
• Getting glasses with no lenses but just prisms because when the words jumped around it made our child tired
• Giving the child Capryl or Caprillic Acid (same thing) — It kills the yeast in his body and makes him more able to concentrate.  Amazon.com has the best price we have found.
• Sequential Spelling has been a $10 purchase that has really helped our dyslexic student to get a grasp on spelling, and that has helped many other areas as well.

5. Have a “rest and read” time after lunch while the baby is napping. 
6. Collect books from garage sales and used curriculum sales. I don’t make my kids read big textbooks usually (except Micah who studies for CLEP tests).  But I buy old ones and stick them in the bookshelves for them to discover.  They love them — literature, history, science text books, etc.  Since they love reading them on their own, they may learn more than if I made them write answers to questions at the end of chapters.  It’s what Gregg Harris calls “Delight Directed Study.”
8. Let them see you reading when you have spare time (Ha!  What spare time?!? :O) 

If you go to FEMA’s website (training.fema.gov) and then go to independent study maybe?  It is called Emergency Management Institute.

Go to the course list, and it will tell you which courses give credit.  Some of them give you one hour, and some are a series, so you have to take 2 or 3 courses to get credit.

Open the test, and open the summary or lesson PDF (whatever you can find in the PDF) and use that to go through the test.  They are open book tests! That means it is okay to look at the material while you take the test.

They are all in different formats, so they can be hard to figure out.  One way I would suggest getting information is to go to the forum on instacert.com. There is lots of information on there.  You don’t have to pay for instacert to get information on the forum.

My son, age 16, is getting a Social Sciences degree, which is one of the fastest degrees you can get without taking classes! Only tests!

Note – be sure and check to see that your desired college accepts these FEMA credits. I do know that Thomas Edison State College (accredited – in New Jersey – you can get your degree completely online) does accept the FEMA credits.