Oxford · Saturday March 17, 2007 by Lily
Dh and R set off early to Oxford so they could fit in some bus spotting for R in the morning. I joined them later in the day and we saw the Gang Show. It’s intriguing to see how each group puts their show together and this leads to some interesting discussions. R is really enjoying going to see the shows around the country; we meet lots of new people and chat to folks of all ages who are involved in Scouting and stage productions.
When R first started home ed, the last thing on my mind was the socialisation “problem.” He’d become deeply unhappy at school and home. He’d changed from the “happy-go-lucky” boy he was described as at nursery to feeling depressed and worthless. We were working with him in the evenings and at weekends to catch up and prepare for the annual SATS tests the school did, to lift him out of the bottom set that private tutors (yes we did that!) said he didn’t belong in.
I arranged a private assessment at the Dyslexia Institute and having been told by the school that ds was slightly below average and not dyslexic, the Educational Psychologist greeted us after the assessment with the fact that R was indeed dyslexic and his scores were very high for nonverbal reasoning and average for verbal reasoning and that gave him an overall high average IQ.
We needed to act quickly to regain our son, raise his self esteem and most importantly give him a worthwhile learning experience whilst freeing up time for him to be a child and play. He didn’t go back to school after that assessment and we started home ed in Sept when he would have gone into year 5.
