About

Meet E: my 9 year old daughter.

Happy Heart.

Funny Girl.
Animal Lover.

Genuine Soul.

Spunky Diver.

Sassy Chica.
 Friend Maker.

However, there's more to the list...

Dyslexic.

Dysgraphic.
Vision impaired.

Frustrated Academic.

And I'm Amy 

(you'll see my posts signed by Aurora- 

nickname I used when I was nervous about posting our real names on the internets)

I'm not a professional nor an expert.
I'm just a mom determined to help her daughter
navigate her way down a path of scrambled
letters, numbers, concepts, thoughts, processes...

The hubs & I have 4 children and
we thought we had this parenting-school-aged-children gig
playing out well after our first three.
Then my youngest daughter gained us admission into a whole new world
of learning disabilities.

And it can be a lonely, frustrating place to hang.
I'm a chronic researcher, information collector,
and question asker...
so I decided to write it all down for myself
because I don't have many memory cells left
(see the 4 kids part)
And for anyone else who is on this scrambled path
and needs a boost.
*High Five*

Let's do this.


The Short Story:
E had exceptional verbal skills and an intense desire to attend school,
so I enrolled in her kindergarten at age 5 years 2 months.
She was our youngest kindergartener and for a long time,
I thought this solely accounted for her struggles.

In kindergarten, we noticed concerning things,
but teachers assured us, it was normal for beginning learners.

In first grade, we noticed more things,
and the teacher enrolled her in extra academic help.

In second grade, she was in a new school across the country,
we blamed her rough start on that huge life change.
Her teacher offered a lot of support and communicated well with us.
And we had the option to have her teacher again in 3rd grade.
We were excited to skip the 'learning curve' with a new teacher and
hit the ground running the next school year!

But in the third grade, she sank fast.
And one day, she snapped.
She wrote everything in mirror image,
but she didn't know it was backwards.
It was freaky and even more so, when her seasoned teacher thought so, too.

Her brain was stressed and she could no longer employ her usual coping strategies.
I cried because somehow I already knew she was really struggling,
but I guess I thought it would all click and come together for her
at any minute.
With one more tutoring session.
Or an extra lap through the flash cards.

Seeing this collapse confirmed to me that she indeed had fundamental issues
and I knew we were entering a whole new realm.
I was scared for her.
Scared for the future.
I remember talking with her over the weekend and
realizing what a genuine, long struggle she had been enduring on her tiny shoulders.

We got some answers from our district's academic diagnostic department.
We formulated a plan.
I also took her for a complete vision well check.
We discovered she could not track properly, hold a gaze,
nor switch gazes quickly and she was farsighted.
We were given vision exercises and a prescription for glasses.

As it stands today,
she is in 4th grade in a Texas public school.
She wears glasses.
She's in speech therapy.
She has an IEP (Individualized Education Plan).
She participates in tutoring sessions during and before school.
She has an understanding teacher.
She has parents navigating it all with her.