SD9 goddamn illiterate
Okay, not literally. She can read... somewhat... when she feels like it. But she can't write and refuses to try to spell anything. We (read: I, because DH is gone all day) have the skids doing some work during their summer break to keep them sharp for the next school year. Mostly SD, because she came to us just... behind. Totally behind. She's a pretty poor student. The girl isn't sharp. She's usually a nice kid, tries to be helpful, gets along with her peers (but not her brother, which is par for the course), and is fairly athletic and outgoing. But she's just not bright. Anyway, we've set up a system for them to be rewarded for reading grade level or higher books (the harder the books the more "points" it's worth) and then writing a one-page summary, typed. This girl does not have any ability to write a summary. The first book she read was one of the Wayside books, and her report was just atrocious. She can't spell, won't even try to sound words out, will just make up words if she gets to something she doesn't immediately recognize ("superstition" would become "surprise", say) and often has trouble even making a decent sentence. When she tries to sum up, she'll pull one significant event and seven thousand pointless details, or sum up the first third of a story and leave off the rest. "The fox looks like a red coat and white on the summit" is an example of her writing. I have no idea where she got "summit" from, I'm blaming spellcheck. When asked to sound out "funeral" today she wrote "fyouayl" or something to that effect, and when I called her out on missing the "n" and "r" sounds she burst into a tantrum and wailed about how "I don't know how to spell it! I don't know!" which is her go-to response to any challenge, no matter how small.
If she were just starting school, then I would be able to look past it some. But as she's going into fourth grade, and bursts into tears whenever she's asked to sound a word out properly, it's getting pretty annoying. She'll cry and shout "I don't know!" over and over and over again. She does it less with me because I've never put up with it, but I've noticed that if I have her working on something, even if she's doing well she'll throw a fit and try to get out of it if DH comes over to help me (or even walks by, sometimes. Her behavior around her dad is often fairly infantile, but that's another subject). It's not that she doesn't know how, because if you don't let her get her way with her crying jags, she'll eventually get mad at you and just do it right out of spite or to get you to leave her alone. She's illiterate through laziness.
- Frollo's blog
- Log in or register to post comments
Comments
Thankfully, while he's not
Thankfully, while he's not always the most proactive parental figure in the house, DH supports me when I bring up things that I think we need to work on with his kids. He's willing to be the bad guy, although that role is usually mine because it comes very naturally to me. SD9 used to do the "I wanna goooo live with moooooooom!!!" thing whenever she didn't get her way, but now that she's made friends here and has been with us for a while she's adjusted.
They weren't raised by the cleverest people, if we're going to be honest. Everything that I've seen of her mother paints a picture of "dumbass". They're starting with a disadvantage, which we're trying to work through. Problem is, they're stuck in the habits of "If I ask for help, then someone else does my work for me!" or "If I cry hard enough, I can get out of this".
DH is good about standing up to her crying, and is a wonderful "good cop" to my "bad cop".
Me too! That's for the
Me too! That's for the encouragement
Hopefully. They've both shown
Hopefully. They've both shown a lot of improvement. SS12 is quite smart, but he's kind of shady. He'll lie about having homework, or whether or not he turned things in, or what exactly he was supposed to do for the assignment. That's what's holding him back in school. SD has been trained (so I hear) to think of herself as less than capable so, in the way of mind over matter, she's become less than capable. She has the potential to be working well at her grade level, but she doesn't seem to want to put the effort in.
Thanks for your well-wishes though!
I was like this too. My
I was like this too. My mother put no importance on schooling when I was a child. I did not read my first chapter book until I was in high school and struggled with crammed through out my classes. The school recognized this and put me in after school learning classes. I also didn't want to be made fun of in high school so I worked extra hard. I've since graduated with a 4 year university degree. So there is hope for your SD, you just have to keep pushing academics.
Oh, I know there's hope. But
Oh, I know there's hope. But it's going to be loooooooooong road for me, lol
We're trying to impress upon
We're trying to impress upon her the importance of actually paying attention to what she's doing when it comes to schoolwork. She has the capability to catch up and be an adequate student, but she doesn't seem to get just how important it is that she push herself into learning new things instead of just staying where she's at.
have you considered the
have you considered the possibility that she might have a learning disability? I'm a former teacher, and the inability to sound out words or make connections sends up red flags for me.
Kudos to you for pushing the summer academics.
This is what I was thinking.
This is what I was thinking. Not sounding words out properly like missing the 'r' in funeral may be a hearing impairment.
I have a delightful cousin who is dyslexic. Severely so. But until she was 8 she kidded everyone and tricked her way through school with a terrific memory until it got too difficult to remember all her work. One evening she was home alone (I think she was 16) and she called me and wanted to know the answers to the newspaper crossword. We didn't get the newspaper so I sat on the phone with her in another part of the city trying to help my cousin to do this damned crossword. It just got crazier and crazier as we worked out this crossword. And how did she dial my phone number? (pre cell phones). She memorzeed the number patterns.
You just need to find her 'unit of currency'. And she sounds rather lacking in self esteem.
This is what I was thinking.
This is what I was thinking. Not sounding words out properly like missing the 'r' in funeral may be a hearing impairment.
I have a delightful cousin who is dyslexic. Severely so. But until she was 8 she kidded everyone and tricked her way through school with a terrific memory until it got too difficult to remember all her work. One evening she was home alone (I think she was 16) and she called me and wanted to know the answers to the newspaper crossword. We didn't get the newspaper so I sat on the phone with her in another part of the city trying to help my cousin to do this damned crossword. It just got crazier and crazier as we worked out this crossword. And how did she dial my phone number? (pre cell phones). She memorzeed the number patterns.
You just need to find her 'unit of currency'. And she sounds rather lacking in self esteem.
She's been tested for that.
She's been tested for that. She was in speech therapy in her last school for a lisp, so when she came to our school they had her tested for hearing, vision, reading etc. I don't think it's a physical "can't". She might be challenged cognitively as far as language goes, but her teacher this year said she was doing fine in class. DH and I might just have higher expectations than we should, or she just doesn't feel like working for us as we're not her teachers. She does it during the school year too, so it's not just her fighting "summer school".
Also, yes, she does lack in self-esteem sometimes. Her BM apparently just figured that a girl wasn't worth the effort her boy was, or something, so she's never been pushed and then encouraged when she succeeded. She gives up almost immediately on most new tasks, so it's hard to show her that she CAN do well if she gives it a bit of effort.
She's better at math, except
She's better at math, except when it comes to word problems. Sometimes she gives the impression of just being too lazy to read ALL the words instead of just picking out the numbers. Other times she just doesn't seem to understand WHY we're saying that the sentences she's writing down aren't proper sentences. She's got a terrible time with grammar, and I can't tell if it's because she's being a brat and just yanking our chains in an effort to piss us off enough that we'll just throw in the towel, or if it's because she genuinely doesn't understand how to process language. Sometimes she'll be fine, othertimes she'll write gibberish. She still does some "baby talk", like sughetti or cabern (by which she meant cupboard) or fustrated, but she learns the right words eventually so I think that is just a result of her stepdad being a godawful parent. He's a rant for a different time though.