Beware the Snake Oil!

We are looking for additional resources for Braden.  Naturally, this means making lots of phone calls and asking the very basic of questions: what can you do to help my son?  I recently had a business owner make the following claims.

• I can teach your son to turn his dyslexia on and off at will.
• In just a few sessions, I'll do what takes Barton 3 to 5 months.
• I will quickly put him a full year or two ahead of his peers, regardless of where he's at now.

... and then she added the following:

I've been doing this for 30 years.  I used to believe in doing therapy with phonics and OG, but the kids tend to lose what they learn once they quit.  I use hands-on methods, which will fully remediate his disability by reprograming the way he thinks.  I first do a full evaluation to determine his strengths, and then I teach him according to those strengths.  My personal goal is to put your child two years ahead of his peers.

Wonderful, right?  The sweet aroma of success for my son - just an arms reach away and oh so painless was beckoning to me, tempting me with the promise it held.  "Just follow me," it said, "I'll make life easy for him.  I'll take away his pain.  I'll even cure him of his awkward social skills.  No longer will he be a weird kid.  Everyone will love him!"

I knew it was all smoke & mirrors, but I really wanted to believe her.  When I asked the tutor what her rates were, she somehow glossed over the question so that I forgot I ever asked.  When I asked what methods she would use to help my son, she emphasized retraining Braden's brain with her amazing approach.  We were on the phone for about 15 minutes and she didn't give me a single straight answer other than to state she didn't believe in the OG approach.

Plus, she seemed to never have heard of the Decoding Dyslexia movement.

Say whaaat? 

One thing was clear: she knew how to prey upon desperate parents.  There is no miracle cure.  Slow and steady wins the race: always.

So the advice I give is to truly listen to the person on the phone.  Are they interested in hearing your struggles?  Are they interested in hearing your child's story?  Are they interested in the other methods you have used?  What are their opinions of those methods?  Do they offer thoughtful explanations for why the methods may not have worked? 

Most importantly, do they show an interest in helping you find the resources you need for your child?  If there is one thing I have learned about quality professionals within the dyslexic community, it's that they have a genuine passion for what they do, and if they can't help your little dyslexic, they'll want to help you find someone who can. 

If they're heavy on promoting their product, profit is all they're interested in.  Your child's success is not a concern for them.  Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it is.  If it sounds like a miracle cure, it isn't.  It's snake oil. 

Teachers and Emails and Websites. Oh My!

Now that we're at the end of the school year, I'm completely out of steam.  Yesterday, Braden told me he got a 44% on a vocabulary test I never knew he had, and my response was little more than, "Bummer.  Well... we're almost there, kid!" with a firm pat on the back.

A few months ago, I might have lectured him, written the teacher and asked for a retest, told Braden he needs to tell me when he has these tests so I can help.  Today, I'm all, "Whatever.  Just pass the class and I'll be happy." 

You see, Braden has four teachers.  Each has a website.  Because he doesn't write homework in his agenda (and the teachers won't see to it that he does), this means I have to check four websites for daily updates and homework assignments.  A couple of those sites aren't updated on a regular basis, so getting up-to-date information is a crapshoot. 

In addition to the four sites for his teachers, I have to check a website for his grades and another for his force-books-down-the-kids-throat reading grades.  Then there's Learning Ally, which he is supposed read with every night.  This is a total of seven websites I'm expected to stay on top of... just for my son. 

Kaelin has a total of three websites.  So we're now up to ten websites I have to check to stay on top of the kids' grades and homework assignments. 

[This is where I'd like to recognize parents who have more children under your roofs than I do.  For three kids my son's age, that would be 21 websites!  TWENTY-ONE!  To you parents, I send my most heartfelt fist bump.  You guys are awesome!!]

At the start of the year, I did try.  But I think I quit some time before Christmas... though I may have already been overwhelmed by Halloween.  I'm really not sure.  I just know that every time I wrote a teacher and said, "if this was so important, why didn't I know about it?" he came back with, "if you checked my website, you'd have known."  What can I say to that? 

We parents of dyslexics can argue till we're blue in the face about how teachers need to make sure our kids write in their agendas or how we need reminders, the occasional friendly heads-up regarding major projects and deadlines.  We can argue that our kids understandably hate writing, that they have memory problems and communication shortfalls, and that we need help helping them.  None of it will do any good because while we have two or three kids to manage, they have thirty times that number and other cranky parents.  Both sides could go round for days about who needs to do what or what's fair.

What it boils down to is that teachers have websites now.  Even if those sites are vague and crappy, we are expected to check all of them.  All of them.  Daily. 

Oh, and before you have the chance to ask me why I didn't just print up the assignments every Sunday afternoon before the school week began, I want you to know I was doing that at the start of the year.  But:

• The dog ate the print-outs.
• The cat peed on them.
• The printer broke.
• The printer ran out of ink.
• They were too hard to track.
• Too much paper to keep organized.
• I had to wash my hair that day.
• I shouldn't have to check so many websites.

Anyhow, if you flash forward to today, when we enter the last month of school (thank god), organization and motivation have gone completely out the window.  I think Kaelin went to school with one pink striped sock and one orange sock.  I don't care too much because, hey, they were clean and she was wearing jeans, so nobody will see them anyhow. 

This year, I'm limping across the finish line and I'm dragging the kids behind me. 

And no sooner did I get that last sentence typed out than my phone notified me I had a new email:

I'd like to request a conference at your convenience because Kaelin seems to be struggling with tasks that were previously easy for her. 

*sigh!*

Twenty-nine days, my friends.  Only twenty-nine more days.