I just finished reading Simply Classical, and as I read it I was very encouraged about the possibilities for educating our children who have delays. We have 11 children between the ages of 11 months and 8 years: four biological, three adopted, and four we are working towards adopting. One thing I was wondering is if anybody on here has adopted older children (i.e. not infants ... ages 2-6), especially those who have experienced severe neglect, and if/how they have seen that affect their children's academic "grade level."
All seven of our non-biological children spent their early years in very, very bad conditions, and then moved homes at least a little bit during their time in foster care, so on top of any delays they would have had (due to genetic issues, their mother's heavy drug/alcohol use during pregnancy, etc.) is exacerbated by trauma from their early environment. We've noticed there generally seems to be a 1-2 year delay in their academic capabilities: so if the child is 6, but we pretend he is 4-5, his academic abilities are right on target.
I'm curious because in the Simply Classical book, Cheryl mentions that she was told to have the children reading by age 4 1/2 (or something like that, I don't remember exactly), but my overall approach so far has been to wait until the child seems "ready" to learn how to read, because when I tried following the same time frame as I would for my biological children, the adopted children just had no clue what was going on ... wait a year or two, and now they're grasping it much better - but that means that rather than learning how to read at age 4-5, it's more like age 6-7. So my adopted son who turned 8 last month (who joined our family when he was almost four and whose vocabulary at the time consisted of maybe 100 words) is just now approaching the end of 100 Easy Lessons and is doing 1st grade Abeka language arts books, but my biological 7-year-old is reading the Little House series independently.
So I guess what I'm asking is, should I try to push them to follow the same age-based timeline I would with my biological children, or should I "pretend" they're 1-2 years younger than they are and proceed accordingly? We have 3-year-old twins who are developmentally about 1.5-2 years behind right now - I feel like I would have about as much success teaching them letters as I would our 11-month-old. Prior to reading Simply Classical, my approach would have been to treat them like I would a 12-18 month old: provide an environment conducive to learning, but not have any rigid learning objectives, and give them time to heal and mature a bit before pushing any kind of serious educational goals, even if that meant they didn't recognize letters until they were age 5 or so (but "felt" more like a 3-year-old). They sit at the table with the other children when we do prayers/hymns/Bible stories/poetry, but otherwise they spend their day playing (we don't have a TV/screens for kids, so they're actually playing, not vegging out on an iPad or something).
All seven of our non-biological children spent their early years in very, very bad conditions, and then moved homes at least a little bit during their time in foster care, so on top of any delays they would have had (due to genetic issues, their mother's heavy drug/alcohol use during pregnancy, etc.) is exacerbated by trauma from their early environment. We've noticed there generally seems to be a 1-2 year delay in their academic capabilities: so if the child is 6, but we pretend he is 4-5, his academic abilities are right on target.
I'm curious because in the Simply Classical book, Cheryl mentions that she was told to have the children reading by age 4 1/2 (or something like that, I don't remember exactly), but my overall approach so far has been to wait until the child seems "ready" to learn how to read, because when I tried following the same time frame as I would for my biological children, the adopted children just had no clue what was going on ... wait a year or two, and now they're grasping it much better - but that means that rather than learning how to read at age 4-5, it's more like age 6-7. So my adopted son who turned 8 last month (who joined our family when he was almost four and whose vocabulary at the time consisted of maybe 100 words) is just now approaching the end of 100 Easy Lessons and is doing 1st grade Abeka language arts books, but my biological 7-year-old is reading the Little House series independently.
So I guess what I'm asking is, should I try to push them to follow the same age-based timeline I would with my biological children, or should I "pretend" they're 1-2 years younger than they are and proceed accordingly? We have 3-year-old twins who are developmentally about 1.5-2 years behind right now - I feel like I would have about as much success teaching them letters as I would our 11-month-old. Prior to reading Simply Classical, my approach would have been to treat them like I would a 12-18 month old: provide an environment conducive to learning, but not have any rigid learning objectives, and give them time to heal and mature a bit before pushing any kind of serious educational goals, even if that meant they didn't recognize letters until they were age 5 or so (but "felt" more like a 3-year-old). They sit at the table with the other children when we do prayers/hymns/Bible stories/poetry, but otherwise they spend their day playing (we don't have a TV/screens for kids, so they're actually playing, not vegging out on an iPad or something).
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