The Gentle King—by Monika Holt

 

“Homeschooling is for weirdoes and I am not in the business of raising hermits and social outcasts”, were the first ignorant words I blurted out when my sweet husband asked me to consider homeschooling our son. The truth is I could not wait for all three of my kids to go off to school, so that I would finally get a chance to become a free adult again. I yearned to go back to school, and further my degree. I ached to go back to teaching dancing. I hungered to once more have a clean house. Than, everything changed. My husband asked if I would please just pray about it.

Since I was dead set against homeschooling, I did not see any harm in praying for it. Plus I saw a great opportunity to earn brownie points with my hubby; through openly honoring his request for a prayer. I went to bed that night and prayed. I asked the Lord to make His purposes known to me. I guess I was sincere in my prayer, since what do you know, the next morning I woke up with an answer. Except, it was one I did not care for! The Lord wanted me to homeschool! The certainty of it resounded within me like a vibration of an enormous bell. Though strong and reassuring, it made me feel lost within my self, not quite knowing whether it was the trembling of His will I was feeling or the beating of my own heart. For a moment I thought I knew what Peter must have felt while walking on water. I was scared out of my mind, yet I did not dare to go against my Father’s so clearly stated wishes. This would require a lot of faith and courage!

A short month later I attended the homeschool fair; for if I was going to do this homeschooling thing, I was going to do it right. I researched and prayed. After purchasing my curriculum I lined the books up neatly on the shelf and prepared all the folders. I wrote out lesson plans for each week and allowed the excitement to build. I knew enough about my Maker to realize that when I accept a mission from Him, he will light the fire in me; and sure enough He did! I was ready! I was the teacher and I embraced my new role with passion!

I am glad that the Lord does not promise us the vision of the future, but that He always promises hindsight of 20/20. Indeed, for if I knew then what the next three years would hold for me and my son, I would have gone against my Father’s wishes, and bailed out, sending my son in to the public school system. However, in doing so I would also cheat myself greatly of the tremendous rewards, which awaited my whole family at the end of this rainbow.

Five months into Kindergarten my dear sweet, blue-eyed angel could not write or read. He had the hardest time with simplest letters and their sounds. His pencil became his greatest enemy, which drove him to tears, and me to serious anxiety attacks. He would slouch and slide beneath the table. He would stutter and yawn. In feeble efforts to document our work I purchased every hands on school activity there was. I blamed myself, than I blamed my son, I blamed my husband and finally I blamed God. I fervently asked God, if it was really what He wanted me to do. Maybe I misunderstood. How could I have been so certain and driven in to doing something that brings me so much stress? I cried and cried till there were no more tears left to drown the aches in my heart. I loved my son so dearly, yet homeschooling became a sore wedge between us.

I began waking up at 4:30 each morning to do my Bible study; I was afraid to face the day without the Holy Spirit filling me. You know the fear of failure, or of something so dreadful yet terribly inevitable? That is what each morning would hold for me. My evenings would also be robbed of peace and rest, as I squirmed in dismay, anticipating the next day. I learned to walk with Christ, so closely that the thought of me not leaning on Him constantly became strange and unwelcomed.

At the end of Kindergarten Cyrus was finally able to read short sentences and thanks to the Leap Frog DVDs he knew his letters and sounds. First grade brought more of the same. More prayer, more headaches, more testing of my love for my dearest child. More tears and frustrations. At home I was a mess, yet to the outside world I needed to appear that homeschooling was wonderful, because they would not understand the truth, which Patsy Clairmont stated beautifully, “ true victories are characterized by knee-knocking fear amidst God’s empowering strength.” I had the fear, and I had my Lord, now I waited for my victory.

With the start of second grade Cyrus and I made a pact; there will be no more yelling, just loving. I was spent and there was no more fighting left in me. I secretly began researching dyslexia. What else would make Cyrus, who was otherwise a very bright child, struggle so much with reading and writing? After all, he was a wiz in math and science. But dyslexia did not fit. I felt so defeated, and that is when my great Father allowed His Victory to happen. Again, a simple prayer changed everything. That night I lay next to Cyrus in his bed, praying. We both lifted our hearts up to heaven, and finally laid this burden at the feet of our Maker. We were out of ideas and depleted of human resources. The next day I woke up early, as usual ready to plead for renewing of strength and the gift of patience. After my quiet time I checked my email, and went on my dear friend Connie’s website: “Livingthebodyofchrist.blogspot.com”

There I discovered Stacie Stalling’s journey with her son’s dyslexia, and since dyslexia was already on my radar, I devoured the story searching for clues to my own depressing situation. Towards the end of her touching account, Stacie mentioned vision therapy, a concept I have never heard of before. I quickly switched over to Google and learned as much as I could about it. Within minutes I discovered a comment left for Connie, by another homeschooling mom, sharing that vision therapy was instrumental in extinguishing her son’s dyslexia. Next thing I knew, I was on the phone with Dr. Kotlicky’s office making an appointment to get Cyrus’s eyes evaluated. I was able to book this appointment for a day after tomorrow; everyone else I know had to wait a month. Honestly, I believed that the exam would show nothing at all and that more patience would be required of me.

Miraculously, a good friend of mine was able to watch my younger children. The evaluation took an hour and provided us with more answers than we could have ever hoped for. This was THE moment in my life where I looked back and saw the pieces of the puzzle fall in place so perfectly together, revealing the glorious picture of God’s undying love and mercy. All that He allowed us to endure brought us to a point where, after being humbled by our own weakness, we could worship Him unencumbered. The picture was clear. From the day my son was born, he was never interested in puzzles, blocks, coloring pages, Legos, or picture books. Not because he was a boy, though boys are different, but because he had eyes that could not see well, and those childish things held no interest for him. Instead, I think he learned how to observe the world quietly and listen for God’s ever-small voice in the tiniest of moments. My son’s heart belonged to His maker and his life was filled with actions, reflecting uncompromising truths, which dwelt within him.

This was why he could not write his name after two years in pre-school, and why he could not focus on the page in front of him. This was why his body drooped beneath the table when he attempted to read; for this seemingly simple task was overwhelmingly difficult for him to accomplish. I believe this is why God led me to homeschool him. In His love and mercy He spared us secular school systems and honored us with the trials designed to build His family and our characters.

Today we celebrate. We laugh each day and love school together. Though we are not done with eye therapy yet, my wonderful son now reads! What used to take him forty minutes to read, now takes him four. I did not even know that he loves to paint, and he loves to write stories, and he loves Legos. His hands are busy each day and he no longer mumbles or stutters. The biggest desire, one I yearned for since the moment Cyrus was born, was that one day he would read the Bible by himself. Three weeks ago, he asked me to get him a patriot Bible, which includes speeches of famous folks across the Christian history of our Nation, because his favorite is George Washington. That day for the first time in his precious little life, my son read the Word Of God! As he pulled out the highlighter and went for it, I melted and this time the tears of hope nourished my weathered heart.

Each day I watch Cyrus, I am amazed. Humbly I thank my Master for His perfect love and the Victory, which He gave us.

“All things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His Purpose.” Romans 8:28

Related posts you may also like …

Where have all the flowers gone? by Monika Holt

Empty Vessel

The Gifts We Have—Part 3, by Staci Stallings

Born and raised in Poland, Monika Holt is a homeschooling mom of three, with a passion for Christ. She has two special needs children, one with a peanut allergy and one with reading disability, on the mend. In her BC (before children) days she was a professional ballroom dancer with an unlikely degree in English Literature and Political Science from Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ. She now chairs the Special Needs Committee in her local homeschool group.

An Empty Vessel

            Yesterday, I received an email blessing from my friend, Monika. She told me of the far-reaching impact one of my blog entries had—the one by Staci Stallings on how she used vision training to treat her son’s dyslexia. After this story was published, several moms from my homeschooling group had their struggling reader's vision evaluated and began vision therapy. Monika told me not only of her son’s new successes (which will be published here in January) but of others. And that because of their success, they passed the word to even more mothers of struggling readers. Kinda like the old Breck commercial: "And they told two friends, and so on and so on ..."

            How awesome is that?

            Monika praised me for the blog and I was grateful to be part of the chain of events that led to these families finding help. But after I emailed Staci, the author who had written this article, I realized something extraordinary. I got to truly be an empty vessel of the Lord.

            You see, having not even written the article that brought clarity to many, I only provided the space and invited the audience. It was Staci’s experience that enlightened us. And wow! I got to sit back and watch it unfold.

            Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to engage in false humility, praising everyone but myself. I’m trying to point to the One who brought it all together. He connected me to Staci. He gave me the homeschooling audience and He inspired me to create this blog. And let's not forget, He allowed the message to be read by Monika in order to spread the word further. All I did was empty myself to allow Him to fill me for my task. And there is nothing more wonderful in the history of creation than to be used by your Creator and filled with His purposes.

            Leave a comment and tell us how God has used Your empty vessel.

The Gifts We Have--Part 3

Today, is the final installment of Staci Stalling's journey with her son's dyslexia. It is in this account where she shares the therapy which made all the difference for him. It is also a reminder to all of us why God tells us Judgement is His. Only He knows all the facts. Staci saw, through her son, a glimpse of her son's challenge that hadn't been revealed to her earlier. 

The Gifts We Have...

Part 3

In January of my son's second grade year, God spoke to me in three unmistakable messages--one from my mom, one from a "random" flyer sent home from school, and one from a note on my table.  All pointed me to a local doctor who specializes in Vision Therapy.  I had never heard of it, and at first I was skeptical.  We were already covered up with homework, and with two other kids, I didn't have time to take on something else.  But I know God, and when He wants me to do something, He will send three messages.  So I went to that first meeting and then signed up for their free screening.

The first free screening turned up some anomalies in my son's vision, so they sent us to the eye doctor to see if he needed glasses.  He did not.  Back at VT for the extended, three-hour testing, we found (and I finally got to see) more anomalies.  Like the fact that my son couldn't follow a ball with his eyes while answering simple questions like how to spell his name.  His eyes would literally start shaking so violently, I could see it from across the room.

After each test, he would sit back and rub his eyes as they turned red and watered.  I had seen him do that thousands of times.  I always thought it was just him. Never would I have guessed it was because his eyes were struggling so hard to work.  Other tests turned up other issues--like his near-to-far focus time.  He could focus near, and he could focus far (think, look down at your paper and then up at the board, and then back down at your paper to copy something from the board).  Each refocus would take progressively longer.  So the first shift in focus might take 5 seconds, the second 10, the third 15, the fourth 20...

Suddenly, those words written across the tops of so many papers, "This was written on the board"  And "He copied this from the board" (with a word circled that was spelled wrong) came into sharp focus for me!  How long was it taking him to try to copy something one letter at a time from the board?  You try it.  Pick a word.  Look up and count to five.  Now look down and count to 10 and write the first letter.  Now look up and count to 15, now look down, count to 20 and write the second letter.  How much was he missing as he diligently tried to get this done?

NO WONDER!

We had a lot of "no wonder" moments.  No wonder he kept "being distracted."  When he was reading, it would go like this: "The boy took the... Mom, guess what Mrs. Jager said today."  "We'll talk about that later.  Read."  He puts his gaze back on the book "The boy went to the barn to...  Guess what Emmy did on the playground."  Talk about FRUSTRATING!  But now, I understood.  His eyes were literally working SO hard, they had to have a break.  It was like his whole system was screaming, "OVERLOAD! OVERLOAD! Overheating, must take a break!"

In fact, that's exactly what the "spells" in first grade had been.  His system got so overloaded that it had to shut down for a few seconds or even a minute to avoid complete meltdown.  The spells weren't causing the reading trouble, the reading trouble was causing the spells.  And it all went right back to his eyes which were not working the way they were supposed to be.

Picture this.  You are going to get into shape.  So you go to the gym and go over to the fifty pound weights.  Now you haven't worked out in forever, but these are the weights you "should" be able to lift.  So you do--or at least you try.  How likely are you to succeed at that?  How likely are you to hurt yourself?  How likely are you to want to do it again and again and again?  Would you if you thought everyone was looking at you and judging you if you couldn't lift them?  Or might you find other excuses to get out of doing it so everyone wouldn't know you couldn't?  What tactics would you employ to give yourself a "break" while you were trying to lift what you couldn't?

That's exactly what was happening with my son (and I'm guessing countless others).  He was trying to "lift that 50 pounds" because everyone expected him to. But the truth was, his eyes simply were not strong enough to do so.

This eye-strength connection also explains why these problems tend to be genetic.  My two siblings, I know only now, struggled with this same problem (and barely made it through school without full-blown dyslexia themselves).  At least four of my husband's siblings also struggled with this.  So much so that I remember the stories of his mom spending hours each night reading each of them their homework.  At the time, being a reader myself, I thought that was horrible. They should have read it on their own.  Now I understand. They simply couldn't, and she had no recourse or resources to do much of anything about it.

So, bottom line is, my son's eye muscles were extremely weak.  His eyes did not converge like they are supposed to.  They would shake when he was trying to read something--especially something with very small print.  They would "jump" back and forth across a line of type so that he didn't read the last word, or he would skip words, or leave words out, or repeat words.  Near-to-far focus was also a problem as was making accurate visual maps of things.  He could not look at a picture and then turn the page and draw what he had seen.  Once it was gone, it was gone.  

In spelling, this meant he had no visual image of the words.  He couldn't "see" them in his mind.  That's why, when we tried to spell in the van in the mornings, he would refuse to spell the words.  He couldn't see them, and he couldn't write them down, so he couldn't spell them.  (Dumb me thought he was being obstinate!  Hello, 50-pound weight!)  It was the same with the words he read.  Suddenly, the fact that he was trying to memorize the same words three times--once to read them, once to write them, and once to spell them, as if they were three separate words, made sense.  So did the fact that to that point, he could read words he couldn't spell, but he could also spell words he couldn't read.  That never made sense to me.  Now it was starting to.

I have to say as much as his eye therapy helped him, it helped me equally.  I finally understood he wasn't being lazy.  He wasn't trying to be distracted.  He wasn't trying to test my patience. There were real, physical challenges he was experiencing, and we needed to work on them and fix them as much as possible for him to be able to do this.  So, we started with the 1-pound weights with the new eye exercises and started working our way up to what he "should be able to do."

And the results were nearly instantaneous.  He went from mid-80's in spelling to mid-to-high 90's and even a couple of tests over 100 due to bonus words.  Tests that would have been disasters, in the 65-magnitude before, were now low 90's.  In the van, he could spell the words accurately and fast. He went from struggling through 18 easy pages of reading a night to 55-average easy pages of reading a night (in 20 minutes).  He was finally starting to READ instead of stumble around.

We continued our intensive at-home reading and added in the home therapy, which are basically little exercises for the eyes that take about 10 minutes a day to accomplish.  Eye therapy has just become a way of life around here.  In fact, my older daughter (16), who had incredible reading challenges of her own in fourth grade, has now begun eye therapy as well.

She has one eye that doesn't turn in like it's supposed to.  For a long time she read by moving her head, and she had horrible headaches all the time.  Glasses helped once the eye doctor agreed to give her starter glasses (and before we knew about eye therapy).  But the eye therapy is turning up issues we didn't even know were problems--other than she had great difficulty doing simple things like catching a ball or transferring things from one hand to the other.  Now we know... it was her eyes that were the problem all the time!

Toward the end of school with my son, we went back and started the Hooked on Phonics program again.  He went through all six levels (two he had never been able to do) in about six weeks.  His final six week Language Arts grade was a 95.  Even more importantly, I see the confidence in reading he's gaining.  We can now sit down and read for nearly an hour with only a few distractions.  He can focus on what he's reading so that he gets the jokes and thinks the stories are funny.  He's finally enjoying them.

He's learning to "chop" long words, and we're tackling those last few letter combinations he's having trouble with. Finally it's not ALL of them!

Best of all, his wonderful little personality is back.  He's happy. He makes up stories and plays for us again.  He's creative and excited about life.  His new big thing for the summer is the bunny trap he's set up in the backyard to try to catch an unsuspecting rabbit.  I thank vision therapy and God for lighting our way through this unbelievable darkness.  As a parent, I can't tell you how lonely I felt so many nights as I tried to figure out what was going on, praying that somehow we would find something that would help.

So to parents out there who are struggling with their dyslexic son or daughter, please know, there is hope.  And to all of you who have this challenge in your life, know that there are answers.  It's not "just you."  You are not "stupid."  In fact, you have many, many gifts wired into you as well as this challenge.  Please know that you have my respect for getting this far and not giving up.  Know also that God has a plan for you, and He's right there with you.  He will lead you to your answers if you will take His hand and trust Him to show you.

The gifts we have, we are given to share.  I believe that.  As a parent of a son who is on the cusp of being a "former-dyslexic," I want to pass on the gift of knowledge that we have gained about Vision Therapy.  It is truly one of the best gifts I have ever received!

To see Parts One and Two of this moving story:

The Gifts We Have

The Gifts We Have--Part 2

 

A stay-at-home mom with a husband, three kids and a writing addiction on the side, Staci Stallings has numerous titles for readers to choose from.  Not content to stay in one genre and write it to death, Staci’s stories run the gamut from young adult to adult, from motivational and inspirational to full-out Christian and back again.  Every title is a new adventure!  That’s what keeps Staci writing and you reading.  Although she lives in Amarillo, Texas and her main career right now is her family, Staci touches the lives of people across the globe every week with her various Internet endeavors including:

Spirit Light Moments -- One moment with God each day

  http://spiritlightmoments.com

Facebook Author Page at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Spirit-Light-Author-Staci-Stallings/266593276699576

Search Staci's Books:

http://stacistallings.wordpress.com/

Spirit Light Books--The Blog
  http://spiritlightbooks.wordpress.com/

Or...

Follow Staci on Twitter @StaciStallings

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