At the beginning of this school year, I attended a meeting for mothers of my first grader’s class.

When the teacher discussed the different things they would be doing, she mentioned that they would be beginning reading this year. I asked if they would be using the McGuiness reading method, and must have winced when she said they would, since she asked me if I had a problem with that.

I explained that it was extremely slow, and my eleven year old is still not reading Hebrew independently after three and a half years of McGuiness. He is very bright and I expected he would learn to read within a year; he unquestionably had the capacity. I was very optimistic and relieved that Hebrew reading was something I wasn’t going to have to teach when he began at this school but have since learned that the approach is agonizingly slow. I said that it was frustrating and disappointing for me because he wants to be able to read his parsha in shul for his bar mitzva, and I don’t see how that’s going to happen with this slow reading program.

My last comment caused a rash of whispering and shaking of heads amongst the other mothers. Clearly they thought I was completely unrealistic in my hopes for him and were tsk tsking to one another.

It’s interesting that not one of the other mothers came over to speak to me afterwards, even though I’m the only one in the class who has an older child in this school and has experience raising an older child with a disability. Maybe they were all put off by my comment.

One person wasn’t put off, and that was a new assistant. She came over to speak to me privately, and told me that a family member of hers trained in a different approach to reading and has seen a lot of success. She further explained that the course is available for parents so they can teach their own child to read.

I thanked her and looked it up right away when I got home. It’s a video training program for parents, accompanied by a workbook to use when learning with the child. It sounded interesting, but it was expensive and I was afraid to buy something like that and not see it through.

I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses. Systematic application of detailed programs are something I have to put a lot of conscious effort into, and I wasn’t sure that realistically I would be able to follow through. I have a tremendous amount on my plate at any given time, and it was the beginning of the school year and before the fall holidays, which are especially busy times. I was afraid I would buy the program and it would languish mostly unused, leaving me with guilt that I not only wasted the money but didn’t take steps to help my son with reading. I have enough things on my mental list that I wanted to do but didn’t follow through with, and really didn’t want to add something else to that list.

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While I was thinking about the reading program, someone else told me about a speech training method that would help my children’s articulation. Both my eleven year old and seven year old have Down syndrome/Trisomy 21, and thank G-d are smart kids. But their speech can be hard to understand at times. We’ve come very far with the help of Gemiini – ds11 was diagnosed with apraxia at age two, and by age five when he met a new speech therapist, she said it must have been a mistaken diagnosis because he didn’t have signs of it.

It wasn’t a mistaken diagnosis – we did a lot of work on our own using Gemiini and together with our own strategies, that helped him move forward in speech significantly.

The speech method I was told about is called Verbal Motor Learning (VML) and training would begin in December and be held mostly over Zoom for attendees in Israel. Again, I went back and forth in my mind about the expense (about four thousand shekels) and if I had the capacity to apply what I learned on a consistent basis.

Now I also had to consider which of the two programs was more important – reading or speech? Could I do even one of them? But both were so important to me.

After several months deliberating, I finally decided to jump in and get the reading program during Chanuka vacation. I would get started right away and get some traction, and then would sign up to begin the speech training.

Naturally, plans don’t always work out the way we intend.

The materials for the speech program didn’t come for a week, and by then vacation was over. In addition to usually having ds11 home with me (that’s been the case most of the year – a topic for another post), I was then busy setting up and meeting with therapists for the twins and other school meetings for them that had been delayed because of the war.

The deadline for the speech training was coming up. I finally sent in the registration form online, but didn’t get a response back. When I called, I learned that due to lack of enrollment, the Israel training wouldn’t be held and my forms hadn’t been received. I asked if there was another online training available. There was – just one more. It would begin two weeks later, taught in English and translated into Romanian, with the live demonstration portion taught in Romania.

The hours of the course are very difficult for me – two full days a month (9 am to 5:30 pm), then another evening from 6 – 10:30 pm, three days in a row. The training in Israel that was cancelled had been morning hours, with classes twice a week – that was more doable for me. But I decided to sign up, even though I can’t go to Romania for the hands-on workshop.

I’ll share more at a later time about each of these programs when I have more experience with them both. This is where I’m up to now:

It’s been about five weeks since I’ve been doing reading sessions with ds11 and it’s going really well. He loves it and every night before bed – when I’m so tired I really don’t want to do anything – he reminds me that we need to do reading and enthusiastically brings me the workbook. He’s great with a structure and keeps me on track! It’s very, very encouraging to see his progress so far.

Last month, I began the speech training program; right now I’m in the middle of the second month’s sessions. Most of the others on the training are speech therapists who work with non-verbal children; most are in Romania but there are a few from other European and South American countries. I’m the only one from Israel and there’s no one from America.

Even though as the eternal student I generally love learning, this isn’t easy or enjoyable for me. Almost from the beginning I could see what an incredible tool it could be for my boys, if I could see it through. However, I find it draining to sit on Zoom for so many hours. And it’s not easy on my family.

Last month, the twins got completely dysregulated after just one afternoon of me not taking care of them, even though the older boys and my husband were with them, and even though they saw me in the bedroom and talked with me briefly. They both just lost it emotionally.

The hours of the training allow me to get the kids ready and take them to school as usual, and at 9 am start the classes. Often during the week a child will stay home with me for a day, and the kids regularly ask me whose day it is to stay home. Yesterday when asked who was staying home, I told them everyone was going to school that day and I would be doing my classes from the computer, at home.

A few hours later, I got a call from dd6’s teacher to ask me if something was wrong with her, that she was very emotional, complaining that different parts of her body hurt and crying about everything. We had a relaxed and pleasant morning before that, nothing was out of the norm; I never send a child to school who indicates they aren’t feeling well. She was fine.

She came home and screamed and cried literally off afternoon, even though I was home and available for them. I haven’t seen her act like this in months. I believe that something about hearing I would be doing classes while she was in kindergarten caused her to feel like I wasn’t available even though she wasn’t home at the time.

They’ll be waking up soon and I’ll be sure to be extra reassuring and not mention the classes – yesterday morning I literally made only one comment in passing that I would be doing classes. I’m a very strong emotional regulator for her and it was pretty powerful to see how when she thought – not experienced – me not being available to her, it threw her into an emotional tailspin.

Last month the older boys had a couple of days off and together with my husband, took care of the kids while I was doing the training. This month I have chosen to make up the afternoon sessions and review the recording afterward (I usually attend live) so that I am there for them. This is more challenging for me but I hope it will help the twins stay on a more even keel.

Avivah