"dlabe"

  Surprisingly the title of my post is not gibberish, or another language, or even a mistake.

  It is however, intriguing and a little amusing.

  When we started homeschooling A, we thought it'd be good for someone else to teach her every once in a while.  So I signed us up for a local home school group and Bestie and I arranged a time once a week for A to hang out at Bestie's house so they could do some academic things together.

  

  Fantastic!

  The other day when A was over, Bestie did a little "evaluation" of A's spelling, reading, and reading comprehension.

  What we saw from that was very intriguing.

  That's where the title of this post comes in to play.  Have you figured out what it's supposed to say?

  When A did the spelling part of the eval, Bestie noticed that A confuses her lower case "b" and "d."  It's not just a matter of "I got ahead of myself and got confused and wrote the wrong letter" kind of thing.  A actually thinks it's right.  She had written a word and used the correct letter, but started to change it because she thought she wrote it wrong.

  A honestly believes "b" is a lower-case D and "d" is a lower-case B.  Something happened when she was learning them and she learned them wrong.

  Whoa.

  

  So the title of this post is actually how A wrote the word "blade."

  Now, I have to work Hard not to borrow trouble from tomorrow, so I'm reining myself in.  Is it a sign that A has dyslexia?  Possibly.  Am I stressing over how to get a diagnosis for that?  I was, but I talked myself down off that ledge (thanks Bestie!).  

  It's now been broken down into smaller, more manageable steps for me.  

  For now I will continue to expose A to reading and books and writing.  I did a bit of research and found that letter-tracing games for my Kindle and iPod can be helpful, too--so I've downloaded some of those.

  I've known since A was 3 and "rhymed" like this: "the ants go marching 2 by 2, the little one stops to climb a tree," that she had some risk factors for being dyslexic.  That list seems to be growing, not shrinking, as she gets older.  However, for now, we are settling into a good home school routine and working hard to get her anxiety under control.  I think around the beginning of school next year, we will be able to address any potential learning disabilities.

  I'm sure this will be something I'll be addressing in later posts...I'm also sure you'll be on stand-by, anxiously waiting to hear what develops. ;)

  ~Alexis