Learning Differently: A Mom's View of Raising Children with Dyslexia and Adhd

By Elizabeth Blake-Casano

Too many parents wait too long to advocate for their children who learn differently because they feel incompetent or ignorant. When in reality, children just need their parents to do the next right thing and walk it out one decision at a time. That can be scarey though when you feel alone and like everyone else’s child is “normal”. Learning Differently is meant to create a community of parents that will be brave enough to say, “My kid is different and it is my job to fight for them until he/she is old enough to fight for themselves.” We as parents hold the keys to whether of not these “differences” create victims or victors. Let’s create champions together!

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: May 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664232051

Elizabeth Blake-Casano

Elizabeth Blake-Casano is a southern momma who has dedicated the last 11 years of her life to being an advocate for her two oldest children who are dyslexic and have ADHD. She is also the host of the podcast, Honey Hush as well as a Certified Enneagram Coach. @honeyhushhive @ebc_consulting

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Copyright © 2021 Elizabeth Blake-Casano.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

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except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

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views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation,

copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission

of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-3204-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-3206-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-3205-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021908283

WestBow Press rev. date: 05/11/2021

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1   The Beginning

2   The Stars of the Circus

3   The Way I See It

4   Silent Not So Silent Thief

5   Feeling Lost

6   Vacation

7   Freedom

8   The Very Beginning

9   The Nerd in Me

10   Transparency

11   Hard Things

12   Love Hate Relationship

13   Behind the Curtain

14   Seasons

15   The Clown of My Circus

16   Talkin ‘bout My Girl

17   Timing is Everything

18   Safety in A Number

19   Trouble with a Capital T

20   Average is Good

21   Two’s Company and Three’s a Crowd

22   Game over

23   Confessions

24   Kumbaya

25   A Grammar Lesson in Faith

26   Captain See Through

27   Tolerate the Process

28   Sharp and Light

29   Third Time is the Charm

30   What Now

Dedication

If no one else ever reads this book other than my own children, that will be enough for me. Parker, Blake and Anniston, you are dearly loved and cherished by both of your parents. I have known no higher calling in this mortal life than to serve as your guardian and mother. I thought I knew love before you were born, but something happened to my innermost soul the moment I laid eyes on you. There is no depth or length I would not go to establish your footing. I cannot walk this life out for you, but I can provide a best path for you to choose. Allow the words of this book to be a salve for the days that you remember as hard and a motivation to know that a diagnosis is not your or anyone else’s identity. You are champions and incredibly brave. I am blessed to have a front row seat to all God has prepared for your three lives.

Acknowledgments

Dr. Ronald Kent, from the very moment you met with Justin and me in your Hattiesburg Clinic, you prayed over us. You were very honest about the long, hard road ahead of us and never once tried to sugar coat the future. With realistic timelines and expectations, you pointed us to scripture at every appointment. You never promised a perfect tomorrow, but you always encouraged God’s good and perfect will for our children despite what we saw today. Thank you for seeing the need of this underserved population of children and then dedicating your life’s work to bringing true healing to families in Mississippi.

Holly Johnston, you will forever be held to the status of an earthly angel for both Parker and Blake. We know their reading comprehension and communication levels would be drastically different if it were not for your tireless efforts of perfecting your craft of dyslexia therapy. You have a gift that will continue to impact our family for generations to come. Thank you for not growing weary when the tough got real tough navigating this curriculum in a State that did not make it easy for you or us.

Lindy Oswalt, your calm and persistent pursuit of our children has given them the foundation to tap into their emotions regardless of how messy it may seem. If nothing else, they know that giving up is not an option. You have consistently shown them that nothing is too big, too scary or too far gone that God cannot make good out of it. Thank you for being our family’s source of rational thinking and a safe place to scream when we need to just let it all out.

Introduction

I write this book from the perspective of being Momma to three children, two of which were diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia after they each completed the first-grade. It is too early to determine if the third child will also have the same learning disabilities as her siblings because currently, she is only in Kindergarten. If she does though, I am prepared, ready and confident to take it on head first. I want the same confidence for you in whatever stage of parenting you are tackling.

In my 10 years of meeting with other Mommas offering my compassion, strategy skills and constant encouragement, I often find that too many of us wait too long to advocate for our kids because we feel incompetent or ignorant. Your child is not looking for perfection from you as a parent. In reality, your child just needs you to do the next right thing and walk it out one decision at a time. Sweeping the obvious under the rug only creates a big bulge that oftentimes brings more negative attention than before. I fully understand that taking the appropriate and needed action can feel scary when you feel alone and like everyone else’s children are normal while yours seems to suffer in some capacity. It can quickly become paralyzing if you do not have a well laid plan. Just like me, you are not going to get it right every single time. But something is better than nothing. Hoping and wishing for things to change is not a strategy.

I want you to lean into my words chapter by chapter to follow along with my family’s story so that you can feel my empathy for your family’s story. I see you. You are doing an amazing job. Let’s laugh together and cry together. But most importantly, let’s be ringleaders of our own circuses together.

My goal is to create a community of Mommas that will be brave enough to say, My kid is different and it is my job to fight for him/her until they are old enough to fight for themselves. In leading by example, we are also teaching them how to fight along the way. We as Mommas hold the keys to whether or not these differences create victims or victors. Let’s create an army of champions - together!

Cheers!

Elizabeth

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1

The Beginning

O ne time, okay like a million times, I made the grave mistake of saying the word never. I probably said I will never about what I would not do as a parent so many times that you would think I would have eventually got on my own nerves. Saying never is like begging the universe to dump all of that self-righteous garbage right into your lap like a big bucket of that green slime from the old Nickelodeon show we grew up watching. Because who really has any business having an opinion about something they have no experience with? Apparently, I thought I did. I am so embarrassed about that now.

When I originally set out to put my thoughts on paper, I had two children and I was in my mid-thirties. The oldest was my son going into fourth grade and the youngest was my daughter who was to begin first grade. We had completed some behavior testing for my son a few years before and were beating our heads against the wall day after day trying to fit his square peg learning style into a traditional round hole learning environment. My thoughts actually started out more as a journal so that I could connect the dots during a very stressful time of parenting. It was during this time that I recognized all of the preconceived ideas I had about myself before actually being in the everyday trenches of nurturing another human as being ludicrous if not absolutely delusional.

Parenting sounds one way in your head. But then in reality, with all the moving parts, it ends up looking a bit different.

I will never let my kids sleep in the bed with me.

I will never allow my children to talk that way to me.

I will never spend that much money on something for my child.

I will never let my children eat that.

I will never let my children act like that.

I will never…homeschool.

Oh, my gracious days alive. That last one was for my children’s benefit, not mine. I am not a nurturing person by nature and I definitely do not have the spiritual gift of patience. Y’all, I am embarrassed to say this, but I do not really like kids. I like my kids and I like my friend’s kids. But kids are unpredictable, needy and messy. I am structured, independent and I like order. Nurturing and patient would be two key attributes I think most people would find necessary for a successful classroom experience. Am I right? Absolutely all the reasons I said I would never homeschool my own children. I had convinced myself before the question was ever asked that the answer would always be no.

While this book has very little to do with homeschooling, during the two years this became my reality, I found out what I was truly made of as a Momma. I was so outside of my safety zone that all of the nevers I had ever muttered under my breath were sure to all come to pass at one time. Isn’t that how Murphey’s Law works? State out loud boldly to the universe what you will and will not do only to have the very thing you were trying to avoid manifest itself right before you. Okay, maybe not quite so dramatic. But until this point in my life I had been pretty good at rerouting my life’s not so pleasant moments. My children’s development was not going to be one of those things I could control with such ease.

Give me a task; I can knock it out. But children are not a task to be knocked out and certainly neither is their education. Up until this point I had been sure to enroll each of my children in swimming lessons as infants, taught them functional sign language, schedule play dates with multi-cultural families, feed them organic homemade food, all of the crunchy educational over-intentional scared to death trying to not mess up this Momma stuff. I was the poster child for checking off the task list on how to raise a well-rounded kid. My husband and I even had a spreadsheet we used to interview schools before each child attended kindergarten. I am not kidding.

So why? Why after doing so many other things right was homeschooling my fourth and first grader looking like my only option? Surely, I misunderstood the calling. Right? I am confident in who I am and who I am not. An interesting fact in all of this though, the Lord specializes in who you will become. And all of the proper preparation in the world cannot really truly prepare you for your greatest calling of raising another human being, much less more than one.

Of all of the things I want to believe I am good at; parenting is not one that I will ever excel in by myself. Mix in a child, or two, with a less than ideal learning situation and you have yourself a recipe for self-doubt and insecurity. And I am referring to myself here. Fortunately, and unfortunately, my children have self confidence in areas they have no business having it in. It is going to take a miracle for any of us to come out whole on the other side of this.

I am a southern belle transplant from St. Louis Missouri. My parents moved from a large metropolitan city to follow my parent’s family to a small farm town in Mississippi when I was about a year old. When I was ten years old, my parents moved our family from that small town to a university town about thirty minutes up the road. This is now where I raise my own family.

My earliest recollection of children learning differently than each other was when we made that move from that small town where I attended the local private school, to the large public school at the epicenter of Mississippi State University. Everyone in my small private school seemed to look like me and learn like me. All twenty of us. But that was not the case at this new public school where there were close to four hundred children in my grade. The first thing the new public school wanted to do when I arrived was to test me.

Test me for what? There was no prep or study guide. After I asked my new friends what this test was about, I quickly found out that nerds go to Peak, dummies go to Chapter and artsy fartsies go to Viva. Who in the world came up with these awful defining categories? All I knew is I did not want to be called a nerd or dumb and I was not an artist. On test day, I figured out the pattern of the test really quick and played the game right back on them, or so I thought. I just wanted to be normal and not go to any special class ever. Why did any of us need to be categorized? I got enrolled in the nerd classes anyway against my will by junior high. My heart always hurt for the ones who were identified as dumb. Do they still feel that way because of that test they took in grade school? Or did anyone come alongside to champion them past that standard government-issued definition?

Now as a parent of a kid that learns differently and needs to go to that other special class because they for real failed that test, I get it. He just wants to be normal too and stay back in the regular classroom with his friends just like I wanted to. But the task at hand is much larger than I feel equipped for. Remember, I am the girl who failed the test on purpose raising a boy who would give his left big toe