The Rare Grey Striped Albino Rhinoceros

Teaching Captain Chaos is a lot like trying to get Governor William J. Lepetomane to sign a bill into law.  “Give us a hand here,” Governor Lepetomane commanded.   As Lieutenant Governor Hedley Lamarr grabbed the governor’s hand and guided it through his signature, Lepetomane announced, “Work, work, work!  Work, work, work!” while looking everywhere and anywhere except at the bill in front of him.  Life imitated art yesterday when I told Captain Chaos to color a rhinoceros. 

It was a simple Language Arts assignment.  On a sheet of paper there were different shapes.  Inside each shape was printed a letter of the alphabet.  She needed to color all the shapes with consonants in them green.  All the shapes with vowels in them were colored grey.  If she colored all the shapes properly, there would be a picture of a rhinoceros standing in the jungle.  Captain Chaos understood the concept.  The problem was that she was more interested in anything and everything going on around her than on the art assignment in front of her.   Her hand moved as if it had a mind of its own, while she looked around the room and spoke about one of her brother’s video games, a fly in the kitchen, the squirrel running across the phone line in the back yard, and cumquats.  I only kept her interest by coloring a little bit of green for every little bit of grey she managed to smear on the paper.  I discovered that my daughter has an amazing ability to repeatedly drag a crayon back and forth across the same segment of paper without ever branching off to uncolored sections.  She completed her assignment with a nice rendering of the rare Grey Striped Albino Rhinoceros.

Of my three children, Captain Chaos is the most easily distracted.  She has the shortest attention span.  She also has physical challenges that make holding a pencil or a crayon difficult; consequently, she tires easily.  This causes her to lose her concentration.    I have to be aware of the need to chunk her work into smaller bits so as to not lose her attention.  This is easier to do at home than it would be in a classroom full of children: 24 individual sources of distraction for my daughter.  Our local elementary school wanted to greatly increase the number of hours Captain Chaos spent in school this year.  I politely declined their offer.  She will only attend Speech and Occupational therapies.     It wouldn’t take much time for my daughter to become a major distraction for a classroom teacher and the other students.   Seeing the success that we are having teaching her here at home, I am grateful that we have the freedom to homeschool in our country. 

Homeschooling Works!

Okay, so can we have a praise God moment? 

Each week at the end of karate class, the entire class says, “I promise to respect my parents.  I promise to listen to my teachers.  I promise to never misuse my karate.”   It is our karate oath.  Last week, our sensei gave the class a homework assignment.  We were asked to write the karate oath on a sheet of paper and bring it to class. 

Yesterday afternoon, I sat down with Captain Chaos, my six-year-old daughter, and asked her to recite the karate oath.  She did.  Then I gave her a piece of paper and a pencil, and helped her write her oath.  Please allow me to qualify “help.”  She did all the work.  I sat next to her, kept her focused, and guided her on “w” and “y," two letters that still give her trouble. This was a big test of her abilities.  Some of you do know, but most of you do not, that Captain Chaos had a stroke when she was four months old.  There was damage to both hemispheres.  Her left side was affected harder than her right, but there are muscle loss/motor control issues with her right hand.  For both physical and cognitive developmental reasons, we decided to hold our daughter back from first grade one year, and focus on three primary goals during this kindergarten year.  One was to teach her how to add.  The second was to teach her how to read.  The third was to teach her how to write. And yesterday she wrote:

This is a “Thank you, God!” moment.  This is an enormous achievement that is the result of years of prayer, therapy, hard work, and love.  This is the first time that our daughter sat down and wrote a sentence, let alone three.  My wife and I cannot help but remember looking at a very young girl on life support and wondering what the future would hold.  We looked at the Captain’s efforts yesterday and saw a blessing from above.  Thank you, thank you, thank you, God!

We know that as dedicated as our local school might be, they were not capable of giving the Captain the attention that she needed to get to this developmental milestone.    Our family has been blessed abundantly, and the ability to homeschool is one of those blessings.    Let’s all remain vigilant and work to keep homeschooling available to everyone.   

Homeschooling works! 

(An unsolicited addendum:  This is Linda, Arby's very devious blogging partner.  I love, love, love this post.  And I wanted some Hip Homeschool Moms to get a chance to read this amazing homeschool moment from one of the hippest homeschool dads I know.  Sooo...sorry, Arby.  You're now an honorary member of the Hip Homeschool (Mom) Hop.  I voted you in.)