How do you get through to a 10 year old?!!

I had another encounter with Murron this morning.

It started with the loss of her glasses. We can't find them after the weekend and now that she isn't being seen by the clinic we don't get a spare pair as a back up. I'm hoping that she left them at her friends house after a sleepover but as she didn't go to school yesterday because of a bad stomach I won't know until tonight. If she comes home without them and if I don't find them when tidying today then I'm going to have to go into town to order a new pair which will take a week to arrive.

Then we started on getting the kids ready for school which is an event and a half on it's own.
None of them has a sense of urgency.
They are all woken up at 7am which gives them plenty of time to get dressed, get their breakfast and get out the front door by 8.15am......... so you'd think.
Every morning is the same thing. I literally spend an entire hour saying, have you got your shoes on?, have you done your hair?, have you brushed your teeth?, hurry up and finish your breakfast!. The last ten minutes before having to leave are a nightmare because they just don't see the urgency. They're all stood there without their shoes on, without their hair done, bookbag contents spread all over the living room floor thinking they have all the time in the world. I would be interested to see what my blood pressure reading is at about 8.20 in the mornings!   

Then we ask Murron the ultimate question at the moment. Homework...... has she done it or has she got any to do?
The usual answer to this is no I haven't got any or I did it at school already.
Then I look in her homework diary to find messages from her teacher like..... English homework not done yet again!
Notes suddenly start appearing out of the bottom of her bag that she received a week ago and that need our immediate attention and usually money!

Murron had a great report from her teacher about her school work and that she seems to have settled in well but her attention span in class and homework is letting her down. She just doesn't do it.
We can't seem to get through to her just how important it is that she gets stuck into her homework.
When she does do it, it's a half hearted attempt just to show she's done something. A prime example was a little piece she had to do a couple of weeks ago on Christopher Columbus. She was told to do an A5 sheet with some information about the man and what he did.
When she showed me to let me see that she'd done it I was staggered. It has taken her all of 5 minutes.
At the top of the page on two lines and taking up about a quarter of the page in big red letters was the name 'Christopher Columbus'. This was followed by a nice big picture of his ship the 'Santa Maria' and a portrait of the man himself. Right at the bottom of the page was a little sentance that she had literally cut and pasted from the internet stating when he was born and when he died. Apart from typing the title and positioning it and colouring it she had just slapped what she'd found from the internet onto the page and thought that would be enough.
She couldn't grasp the concept that she should have read anything about him to find out exactly what he had achieved and that the whole point of the project was for her to learn something!

Anyway, Ian took the kids to school and I've calmed down a bit and I've just been having a discussion with Ian about something we've been suspecting for a while.
We think Murron may be dyslexic.
She just won't bring herself to read or do homework at home. Her spelling is atrocious and she can't even copy things from the board into her homework diary without missing letters out or mixing them up.

We did some research and after reading this little paragrah.......

"Many subtle signs can be observed in children with dyslexia. Children may become withdrawn and appear to be depressed. They may begin to act out, drawing attention away from their learning difficulty. Problems with self-esteem can arise, and peer and sibling interactions can become strained. These children may lose their interest in school-related activities and appear to be unmotivated or lazy. The emotional symptoms and signs are just as important as the academic and require equal attention."

.......we decided to see about getting Murron tested. We are sending out a letter today.
I don't know what else to do. I know she has a brain. Her teacher has said she's bright but she just doesn't want to use her brain.
If she gets tested and it proves she does have dyslexia it could be the best thing that's happened to her educationally so far. We can tackle the problem and hopefully she will begin to flourish.
That said, if the test proves that she doesn't have it then I am literally going to have to crack the whip! and my stress levels are going to rocket.