Our Story

C. was 5 when he started kindergarten at a private school, like most kids.  Upon our first semester at our school we realized he wasn't retaining the information.  We blew it off with excuses as " He's a boy, they are slower"  or "This is his first year in school"  or " Everything will click in the spring." Well, spring came and went and we still could not retain information.  We decided to hold him back another year to see if he would mature and begin to hold on to information.  Information like, learning and remembering his A,B, C's or numbers.  The second year of kinder was a bit better, but not much.  In November that semester we decided to have him tested to determine our cause of non-retention.  We had a board certified neuro-psychologist test him and a speech psychologist test him....both came back with Mixed Receptive Expressive Language Disorder (MRELD) ....First off, that was not the diagnose we were prepared for.  We thought  maybe he was dyslexic or maybe ADHD, what the heck is MRELD.. We had never heard of it before that day.

The clinical version is the following according to Wikipedia:

Mixed receptive-expressive language disorder (DSM-IV 315.32) is a communication disorder in which both the receptive and expressive areas of communication may be affected in any degree, from mild to severe.
If someone is being assessed on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, for instance, this may show up in relatively low scores for Information, Vocabulary and Comprehension (perhaps below the 25th percentile). If the person has difficulty with spatial concepts, such as 'over', 'under', 'here' and 'there', he or she may have arithmetic difficulties, have difficulty understanding word problems and instructions, or have difficulties using words.
They may also have a more general problem with words or sentences, both understanding and speaking them

yep, not much help there....

So thought the next semester we knew he could not continue at our beloved private school, just due to the fact he simply could not retain the information to advance to first grade.  Our choices were public school, another private school, state school for the mentally handicapped or home school. 

We visited our public school in our district to see the special education class and discuss this disorder and what could be done to support his education.  The district had NO CLUE as to what MRELD was or how to help ( there is only 3-5% of school age kids who have this disorder--yay! lucky us).  They were going to stick him with the emotionally disturbed kids or the ADD kids or the who no's what kids, basically since they didn't have a clue what or how to deal with MRELD kids therefore any 'learning' disability class was fine....Oh.. not for this mama
In our area their is another private school that deals with learning disorders, however it is too far to drive and expensive....We do like to eat here, and electricity is awesome!
Third choice- state school for the mentally handicapped.  At this point we looked at the psychologist as if she were crazy. 
Therefore that left homeschooling.  And that is what we are doing...BECAUSE we work daily on his therapy, we learn at his pace and I love that our program is an accredited program so yes, my son will get his diploma when he is finished....

We have survived and continue to survive this disorder.  It is a day to day struggle and everyday you have to be flexible.  But as of today, I can say we do know our alphabet and numbers.  He is a whiz kid at math.  Loves science, but of course hates reading.  We have completed 2 simple level 2 books cover to cover and plan to read more ( I plan it, he doesn't).  And still dreams of being a fireman...