I have a similar situation with a younger child who seemed to be hot on the heels of the older one. We started homeschooling because my oldest had speech development difficulties that hindered his learning. Public schools wanted to keep watering down his work rather than help him get up to speed – but that’s not my point…..

Once we started homeschooling, I spent a couple of years fumbling around trying to find our groove, so to speak. Most of that time, I was able to school my boys on about the same grade level, though they are 3.5 years apart. My youngest was a very good “technical” reader (he sounded out words really easily). We had him up a grade level on many things and my oldest down a grade level and kept them about even. This was mostly for my sake as I was putting together my own curriculum. I could tell that my oldest was not thrilled with the fact that he was doing work on the same level as his brother and most of the time, being blown back by his brother’s speed.

Then we found T4L and I sort of put them into their own grade levels, the youngest in 2nd and the oldest in 4th. Given a specific list of lessons, my oldest bore down and finished 4th AND 5th grade in one calendar year! He’s now in 6th grade and doing quite well. His brother is in 3rd grade and has intermittent struggles. My oldest skipped past a good “technical” reading phase and went straight to flying through books, reading them for pure fun and having amazing comprehension (tho he still has difficulty when asked to sound words out). He uses his allowance money to buy more and more books on his own.

Roles have been reversed back to what some might see as normal. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them flip back and forth more over the years. or they may not…. who knows.

Here’s what we did….. We praised them both – tremendously and all the time for their own accomplishments. yes, sometimes, we could see the other feeling “less”. That cant be helped, tho we almost never _compared_ them, particularly in areas where they were disparate in ability. No matter what you do – even if you had twins only seconds apart – there is going to be competition of some form and hurt feelings and such. I believe the trick is to not show favoritism, by comparing them unfavorably or by praising one more than the other or less, OR by “false” praising one just so he doesn’t get left out. Then I am thankful that any time I fail in that or it still doesn’t work no matter what I do, GOD is there and covers it all.
sonja