Homeschooling with Dyslexia and Other Learning Disabilities

Homeschooling with Dyslexia to OVERCOME it or to Overcome Other Learning Disabilities

Kids with learning disabilities usually require creativity in teaching to overcome their difficulties. At home, you can be as creative in your teaching as your child needs you to be!

When you are homeschooling with dyslexia evident in your child, figuring out how to teach your child can be challenging. However, there are lots of great tools and methods you can use to improve your child’s learning.

Rising to the teaching challenge often beats the alternative of having your child’s educational needs go unmet in public school. Learning Abled Kids is here to help you find ways for homeschooling with dyslexia or other learning disabilities. I want to help you teach your child well.

You have lots of great resources here. For example, you can use our multisensory teaching ideas to get started on the right homeschooling foot.

Homeschooling with dyslexia or other learning disabilities in order to overcome the disabilities can bring about excellent educational outcomes! We’ve had great success as have several other homeschooling families we know. You can teach to meet your child’s learning pace. Plus, the one-on-one teaching you can provide is PROVEN to be highly effective for kids with learning disabilities.

Although I was initially afraid to homeschool my boys given their learning struggles, schooling at home created better educational and emotional outcomes than I ever imagined. Our results were better than any of our public school’s low expectations ever predicted.

If you doubt your ability to homeschool your child because you think you’re too impatient, too disorganized, or not smart enough to homeschool, check out Overcome Your Fear Homeschooling. It will help you learn how homeschoolers accomplish amazing educational outcomes for their kids.

Learning Disabilities often exist in Twice Exceptional Children – those who are gifted with learning disability. There are many different learning disabilities that can make it difficult for an otherwise bright child to learn at home or school. The National Institute of Health defines a Learning Disability as follows:

“Learning disabilities are disorders that affect the ability to understand or use spoken or written language, do mathematical calculations, coordinate movements, or direct attention. Although learning disabilities occur in very young children, the disorders are usually not recognized until the child reaches school age.”

The IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), defines Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) as “a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. It includes conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.”

According to the IDEA federal laws, Specific Learning Disabilities are NOT “learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.”
[34 Code of Federal Regulations §300.7(c)(10)]

Some children have processing problems which interfere with the storage or retrieval of information. Your child can have difficulty with short-term memory (holding information in his head long enough to manipulate it or work with it). He may have difficulties with long-term memory (getting info into storage for access at a later time), executive functioning (planning, sequencing, organizing, etc.), memory recall or other processing difficulties.

Your child could have other specific areas of learning difficulty in reading (dyslexia, ocular motor deficiencies, scotopic sensitivity, Central Auditory Processing Disorder, etc.), math (dyscalculia), writing (dysgraphia, fine motor delays), etc.

There are so many possibilities for difficulties that affect your child’s learning when you’re homeschooling with dyslexia or other learning disabilities. It is often difficult to determine where your child’s problem lies. Therefore, it is most helpful to have an independent neuropsychological evaluation by a qualified doctor.

Having an evaluation can also help you know your child’s strengths and how to teach your child. This site provides information on various disabilities. However, always keep in mind that this is not professional advice. No one can ‘evaluate’ your child without individualized testing and working with your child. Any help you receive here, or in the Yahoo group, is advice from people with similar experiences. The information I provide is based upon my experiences and Instructional Design training. The information can be helpful, but you must always keep in mind–Your child is uniquely gifted with his strengths and weaknesses.

Learning disabilities can affect a child’s ability to function in any single area of learning, or in multiple areas of learning. Children with learning disabilities are, by definition, of normal or above average intellectual ability. Therefore, if you’re homeschooling with dyslexia or other Learning Disabilities, know one thing: YOUR CHILD CAN LEARN!!

In fact, IDEA used to use a discrepancy formula to identify children with Specific Learning Disabilities. However, this practice was ineffective for identifying children with any degree of consistency. The reauthorization of IDEA in 2004 changed the laws so a significant discrepancy between ability and achievement is not required to identify a child as having a Learning Disability. For more about the current laws and identification of a child as having a Specific Learning Disability, visit SchwabLearning’s article, “IDEA 2004 Close Up: Specific Learning Disabilities Evaluation and Eligibility“.