The Reading Fight that Broke Something Open

Sometimes letting go of the curriculum is the only way to find what's really going on.

There’s a particular kind of rage that comes from loving someone so much you’d do anything for them and still not being able to fix what’s hurting them.

That’s what I felt the day I finally slammed the book closed. Not out of anger at my son. Out of anger at myself. At the curriculum. At whatever invisible wall kept showing up between him and a page of words. He was defiant, in tears, and so was I — and somewhere in the middle of that standoff, I made a decision that would change everything: I let go.

No curriculum, no lesson plan, no academic milestone was worth more than my relationship with my son. And I refused to let him grow up hating learning because his mother couldn’t stop fighting him over a lesson.

So I put the school books away. For a full school year, we did almost no formal academics. We read aloud constantly — that never stopped — but the workbooks, the phonics drills, the pressure? Gone. Instead, we played games. We talked. We just were together.

And here’s the thing I still cherish, even now, looking back on what felt like a year of “failure”: our mornings. Coffee for me, Bible and Scripture together, and read-aloud time with great literature and classic books. Frustrated as I was underneath it all, those mornings are some of the most sacred memories I have of our early homeschool years. They reminded me that connection was never wasted time, even when I couldn’t see where we were headed.

By Thanksgiving of 2021, our life looked completely different. We’d moved over 300 miles from everything familiar into a much larger city — one with a thriving homeschool community and far more opportunities for our kids. We plugged into a Christian co-op, church-hopped until we found where we belonged, and slowly started building real friendships with other Christian homeschool families. I was on cloud nine. Hopeful. Optimistic about this new chapter, even with all the “known norms” and family we’d left behind.

By the following summer, I heard about a local program — a certified structured literacy program, the only one of its kind in our state, run through a local Christian school. After a lot of prayer and many conversations with my husband, we made the decision to move forward with their $550 evaluation.

I’ll be honest: I was hungry for answers. But guilt hung heavy over me too. I didn’t want a label on my son. He was — he is — a gift from God. Precious in His sight. Deeply and dearly loved. Labels felt like they might cheapen that somehow.

But by this point, something had to give. I needed to know if there was something real going on here — something beyond my own ability to navigate as his mother and teacher. So we scheduled the two-and-a-half-hour assessment, and I told myself I was ready for whatever we’d learn.

Two to three weeks later, a five-page report arrived from the Structured Literacy and Dyslexia Specialist who’d evaluated him. Well-organized. Thorough. And profound.

I felt paralyzed reading it.

Our son — just a few months shy of turning 8 — was barely reading at a first-grade level.

Gulp!

I felt like I’d failed him. He was home with me every single day. His growth, his learning, his future — that was supposed to be my job. And even though I knew, deep down, I was bracing for a hard truth (this was, after all, the same child who flatly refused to touch his schoolwork), I wasn’t prepared for just how far behind he actually was.

The truth hurts. But it also sets you free.

And in that hard, humbling, expensive season, we received our blessing. To this day, I am so deeply grateful we followed through with that assessment. I’m proud of us — of my husband and me — for advocating for our son. For refusing to settle for “he’ll catch up eventually.” For digging deeper and searching for real answers, even when it cost us financially and emotionally.

So what did that five-page report actually say? What was really going on with my son — the piece of the puzzle I never saw coming?

That’s next. Stay tuned.