When Coleton was in preschool, i did a joy school group with some neighbor friends, at the same time i also had coleton enrolled in the upstart program through the state of Utah. It was suppose to do great things for your child! giving them the head start to learning and by the time the started kindergarten your child is really close to reading! As a first time mom, i figured i was getting coleton so ready for kindergarten that we would practically be a reader before he went to school but its funny how things don't go as you planned! A few months before summer started the upstart program decided to test coleton like they do all the children to see how much he progressed! we were very regimented in our work with the program but i was concerned because it seemed like he wasnt getting alot out of it. We had done everything we were suppose to and even had him work on the program on saturdays which was not expected and after they tested him they asked me if we really did follow the program because he didn't seem to have learned much. I explained that we had and that i was also confused but they chalked it up to us not making the full effort. Frustrated that i had put so much work into him learning and not seeing the results i asked our school district for testing to see if there was some type of learning disability that we may be missing. We went in for testing and they said he was a very smart boy and that as a first time mom i was over reacting. I explained that he still didn't know any letters even after a years worth of work and they explained that online learning was not for Coleton and that i needed a more hands on learning because he was a "Severe Physical Learner" Still i was unsure about it all and starting kindergarten he was very far behind. I was shocked to hear when he started kindergarten that he actually fell in to the lowest 10% of all kindergartners attending hurricane elementary. Though for a while i felt so guilty that i hadn't done a better job at getting him prepared i was happy to learn that he qualified for Extended Day Kindergarten where he would attend a class of 15 children for half the day to get caught up. Feeling like finally we could get him caught up we excitingly sent him to school all day! At the end of the year, we heard the great news that he had been caught up and was right were he needed to be to start first grade, we felt like we caught it just in time and that was the end of that struggle. That summer Brandon was transferred to Desert Hills High school in St George and though we would stay in the same school district we would be changing schools! Off we headed to Little valley were coleton received a great teacher she started working with him and after a few months we got the report that coletons reading was way below average! we were shocked and so confused?? We had gotten him to grade level what happened. For the next year we struggled to keep him where he needed to be! She did flash cards, teachers came into help with his reading scores but his dibels scores were dropping. His teacher was great! Mrs Ence helped us, and we felt like there was more of a problem that no one was catching. she assured us that many children just like him struggle and that we just needed to work harder, but i felt like we were working as hard as we could! Coleton was exhausted i was exhausted and i felt like we were at a stand still. I started getting more feelings like this wasn't just a lack of effort on mine or coletons effort and i started researching. I felt like it maybe dyslexia, but after taking with many professionals about potential testing they assured me i was chasing a ghost, Dysleixa is just a word that means they have a hard time reading, its not really a thing, so for a while i gave in and stopped looking. by the end of the school year coleton was staying a float but i was discouraged that we couldn't figure it out with all the reading and work it should be clicking but it wasn't. we decided to have ms ence tutor him during the summer, we hoped that it would get him ahead and that he wouldnt regress over the summer. During the summer he did great, he worked hard and Ms Ence felt like he was right were he needed to be. We were glad because during the summer we had been accepted to attend George Washington Acadamy which was down the street from our home. It has earned great awards in preparing kids for the future and we would be switching schools once again but now it would not be in the same school district since it was a charter school. The transition was hard, but good, they pushed their kids and we loved the schools track record of achievements and we loved the uniform. Coleton once again got placed in to a great class, Mrs. Lebaron. She was very academic and pushed coleton and we thought that that might be what he needed to progress. He learned so much in her class, he loved core knowledge! They learned about religions, all different cultures and countries, he found a love of learning that he didn't have before and he worked hard! Mrs lebraron often talked about how hard of a worker he was but spelling and reading were his areas of struggle. It was decided that he needed to have a intervention with the school. A meeting was scheduled to talk about coletons academic struggles. Brandon got off work and into the meeting we went. There was a lot of things that were discussed but it seemed as all of the suggestions that were presented were just band aids to an underlying issue that no one was talking about. They wanted us to get him a watch to help him learn to tell time, a calendar to learn the order of the months, practice phrases to help him with word recognition but i didn't feel like it was going to help him. We were along with the suggestions but after six weeks were told he was progressing enough that the intervention wasn't needed anymore which we were discouraged by. He was doing hours of homework and reading but nothing was changing, he still struggled on words like the, next, even, ten, there, and he still was unable to put his d's and b's the right direction.
Frustrated one day, i decided to call my mom, while i was talking to her i voiced my concern that once again, i was back to the conclusion that he might be dyslexic. Since its a family trait that no one in our family had, i must be wrong. that is when i was told that my father always had the feeling that he may have been dyslexic but it had never been determined. Quickly, i called my dad and asked him why he thought he may have been? he told me of all the struggles that he had faced in school and as i listened i knew that Coleton and my father had gone through the same struggles, wha ever it was, it was real and i had to figure out what it was.
After that discovery, i researched, and i spoke with other parents and i tried my hardest to figure it out but after everything, i once again came up with nothing. No one was able to help me and i didn't know what else to do.
It was nearing the end of the school year, and we met with coletons teacher once again for SEP and we had our break though!! After going over test scores and grades, she explained that she had one of her college professors come and shadow her class and after she was talking to her professor about some of he children that were struggling in her class. Her professor asked if she had given those students a "phonics test"? she had not thought to do that so during some free time that day she took those students who had been struggling out to take this test. It was a test that had all of the upper and lower case letters that the children had to identify. They had sight words of all varieties and had non-sense words that she had the students read. As she was explaining this test to us, she explained that the results where shocking. She continued to share that coleton could not identify the lower-case letters p, q, d, b, h, y which was not typical of a (end of year) 2rd grader. She also explained that alot of the sight words he did not know and often completely mixed the letters, and that the non-sense words he was unable to identify at all. not sure what that meant i asked what she though this meant and she stated "i don't know exactly, but i think we are missing something big here" That is what i was waiting to hear from someone!! I had always felt that way but no one else did! unsure what to do i went to my Doctor, who sent us to a psychologist, but after meeting with her and finding that our insurance wouldn't cover the testing, we were once again at a stand still.
I called a close friend who worked in special education with the washington county school district who explained to us that we had the right as a parent to go in and request testing. We had attempted to get testing but the school said that they didn't see any need to since he was still progressing but she explained that by law if i formally request it they had to honor it. Terrified, i made an appointment with the school, where i was told since it was the last few weeks of the year they would not honor testing especially because i had signed papers at the interevent stating that i had seen progress. I left once again defeated (and quite frustrated) that i couldn't get it done. A few hours later, i received a phone call from the special education director from the school apologizing, pleading that i would wait until the beginning of the next school year to formally request testing because they didn't have time. i agreed that the beginning of next year would be fine, i felt as thought i had made, we were going to get answers or so i hoped!
The beginning of the school year began and once more we were blessed with a great teacher for Coleton! Mrs McCoy was so sweet and i felt like this was going to be our year! I signed the paperwork and i felt like the special educaton director was more the irritated that i was requesting testing even though the school felt like there was no need for it. It made me worry that maybe i was just this overly exaggerating mom, who just couldn't admit that it was my fault he wasn't thriving in school. The day of testing came, i stressed!! Coleton came home exhausted and explained that it had been a horrible day and that he had missed class all morning and lunch taking a really really hard test. Weeks passes waiting for the results and then i got the email. Here was the results, they were confusing to understand and i still wondered if they would find anything at all and then as i read it i could hardly hold back my emotions, Finally!! i got my answers!!
