Others will talk about home educating with little ones-sadly I didn't know about it then.
I will tell you about our experiences with reading though.
All three went to school, all three have dyslexia and associated difficulties, to different degrees.
The youngest was nearly nine when she left school, she was completely unable to read or spell a single word, not even her name ;(
her dyslexia was diagnosed as being very severe. It simply couldn't have been any worse. She had no word attack skills at all according to several experts. She could neither recognise phonics to enable her to sound words out , nor recognise the shapes of words.
She has a very high IQ but believed herself to be totally thick and stupid, because of her experiences in school.
I had been told that she would need one to one help through all of her compulsary education years.
When they first we dereg seven years ago, we did everything we believed we should, that we had been told by the Dyslexia Institute and by her teachers. We tried dyslexia lessons, and Toe by Toe and Reading Reflex. All produced the results of a screaming hysterical child. Even when we limited it to a couple of mins of work.
Eventually we stopped and listened to other more experienced autonomous home educators. We stopped making her work on reading and spelling altogether.
I stopped my mother saying "well what do you think it says" and "let's try and sound it out"
Instead we read to her, we got story tapes from [http://www.calibre.org.uk/decYoungCalibre/modResourcesLibrary/HtmlRenderer/youngindex.html Calibre] and ensured her love of stories-rather than being sacred and hating the written word.
If she asked what a word was, we simply told her.
I was her voice for the written word, wherever we were.
Others in the HE community did it for her, if I wasn't there.
We have had lots and lots of "purposive conversations", we have been to lots of art galleries and museums and workshops.
We have been to the theatre, watched TV/DVDs, films at the cinema.
In short we have let her education run ahead whilst waiting for her reading and spelling ability to catch up.
In school reading spelling and writing are essential tools-as everything is geared up to using them.
The only way of the teacher knowing that all 30 kids in her class have understood what she has said, is when they write it down.
When you are one to one with your child (or one to three in our case) you know instantly whether some point has been understood, by the child's reaction and next question.
We have seen other HE children read late when, they were ready-and very quickly catch up-so you would not notice the difference, but to be honest I don't know of any who have done it so late as our dd2.
We began to see signs when she was around 12 ish-and suddenly she understood what i had repeated before about how to tell the time.
the first time she read the word "Ladies" on the door of the toilets I danced in the corridor of the cinema!
slowly more and more words were recognised.
She is 15 now. She reads and spells very well. I know as I have just proof read a nieces work, her vocabulary and spelling are above that of her schooled cousin.
the same cannot be said of the youngsters she left behind in the remedial classes at school.
She is confident and articulate and well educated. She travels independently around the country to visit her HE peers and to sing and rehearse with the band she is in.
manging bus and train timetables is second nature to her now.
She is fascinated about the root and language base of all words.
She is the one who enjoys scrabble and crossword puzzles with her father.
And the one who now spells words for her siblings that they are struggling with!
So I too would agree with having a look at the Sandra Dodd/autonomous way of doing things.
Read books/magazines to her, get story tapes, let her see that reading is an enjoyable pleasurable thing to do.
NO child will willingly not read-they all want to learn and find their way in this world.
If my Dd2 can do it, then every child can.