A Better Year

It's been awhile since I wrote an update about Fellan and his Dysgraphia and eyesight problems.  I guess I haven't been thinking about it as much because everything is going so much better this year for him in school than last year!

Last year, at the end of the year, his teacher had basically told us that public school was not the place for Fellan.  That sent us into a whole tailspin of testing, touring and applying to alternate private schools, more testing, receiving a diagnosis of Dysgraphia, and eventually MORE testing and determining that he has some vision problems.

Luckily, after all of that, this year has been so much better than last year.

Within the first week of school last fall, we met with Fellan's teacher to explain to her about his problems with Dysgraphia.  The woman who did the testing gave us a list of suggestions for his teacher - such as not forcing him to do writing work and trying to help him to focus better on his work by folding his paper over, etc. She was extremely receptive to the idea and it has shown in Fellan's confidence and enjoyment of school this year.

We've met with her a few time throughout the year, too, and every time we meet with her, she gives him glowing reports.  He still can't sit still, but she's able to redirect him most of the time and he does fine on his tests, so even though it looks like he's not paying attention, he's definitely still learning.

The most significant change we've seen in him, though, has been his reading.  About 3 months ago, it was like a light bulb went off in his head and he started devouring his Percy Jackson books.  He had been slowly, slowly reading The Lightning Thief over the previous three months, but Zoom! In about three weeks, he read the remaining 3/4 of the book!

And he was off to the races from there.  He is now starting the 5th book of the series and I'm thinking about maybe doing a family book club this summer to start reading the Harry Potter books.  None of us have ever read them, so it could be a fun thing for the whole family to do.

I'm so happy and proud to see him finally blossoming scholastically.  We knew it was in there from the beginning, we just didn't know how to get it out!  Maybe it's all the testing we had done and the occupational therapy that he's been doing.  Maybe it's the fact that the teacher is supportive of him as a person this year.  Maybe it's just that he's maturing and all of this would have happened naturally even without the extra work.  Honestly, I don't care what made the difference.  I just hope it sticks.  :)

Proud Cub Scout with the awards and belt loops he earned this year