Stuff that Kind of... Sucks.

Ten days ago G(8) came home from school with two letters.  The first one said he needs speech therapy.  Okay.  I can handle that.  The second one said he needs remedial reading help.  Okay.  A little tougher. Then he handed me his graded paper packet.  He also needs to improve the speed of his "minute math".  Can we PLEASE cut the kid some slack?  All in one day?  Was that necessary?

In the past week, he's started his pull out reading help.  I emailed the teacher and learned that they're expected to be at 97 words per minute with 99% accuracy.  I had to remind myself that this is third grade... because quite honestly I don't think I read with 99% accuracy and I've passed college level classes with flying colors!  It turns out G reads 68 words per minute with 91% accuracy.  So the plan for that is to practice as much as we can and disguise it as fun as often as possible.

The math he's struggling with is pretty basic and just a matter of rote memorization.  We'll practice with flash cards and math games.  There are sites he can use online, but I haven't had a chance to sit down and look through them thoroughly enough to know what's involved.  Maybe I'll find time tomorrow.

The big thing, though, is the speech.  I think so much of the academic issues are tied into his speech and that's directly related to his hearing.  I finally broke down and scheduled his corrective surgery for the week of Thanksgiving.  He's dealing with a perforated ear drum from two sets of tubes he had when he was younger.

Hard to say if his sudden academic issues are the result of the hearing problems or the fact that I was checked out for a lot of his second grade year as I dealt with the loss of our baby and the almost immediate pregnancy with Connell.  We're working on a plan to help him catch up.  With a willingness from Graham and help from his teachers, we should be able to over come it all.