School

Dear Kate,

HOLY CRAP! I have just enrolled you at school, because you asked me to.

Next I'm off to the bottle shop.  I guess I should meditate, but I'm up for a more passive form of relaxation that doesn't require mental discipline.  Avoid your inherent psychological tendencies and don't be influenced by my coping strategies, if you would.

How do you think you'll go? 



Can I just let you go,
or
will I need to pick you up,
or
will I need to scrape you up?



Or will it be another case of liquification?  I hate mopping.



Watch this space and you'll find out! I'll give you my perspective at least.

I've always said that if you feel ready to tackle it, you will have the mental duress to succeed. (Are there too many 'mentals' in this passage?) Now I'm less certain.  Actually, I was never certain at all.

Good luck! Huh! What an outrageously inadequate thing to say!!

Love Mum
xxx

P.S. Are you sure I have equipped you well enough with what you need?  You seem so definate these days!

P.P.S You were the age champion of the home school swimming carnival today, remember?

P.P.P.S  I got your visual processing test reults yesterday.  Remember someone said you are essentially blind and have no visual memory?  91st percentile for visual memory and 99th percentile for visual spatial skills -you hit the ceiling of the test and the examiner commented that he assumed you would be an exeptional reader.  What an enigma you are!

A Loss of Perspective

Dear Kate,

Last week you finished a 2 week intensive visual processing course with an expert on Dyslexia.  The upshot was they "hoped like hell that it had done some good" but considered your impairment to be "very severe" to the point that you would always need a reader and a scribe as you are functionally "deaf and blind" where literacy is concerned.

It has really knocked the wind out of me...again.

You enjoyed the course (and all the bribery I used to get you to do it) and skipped out happily and chatted away, while I staggered and grunted non-committally and the migrane started to brew.

The next day I set off on a 100km walk to fundraise for the Fred Hollows Foundation. For each $25 my team and I raised, the charity can restore vision to one person whose blindness is caused by poverty. A cheap easy solution. Appealing huh?

You and your sister wrote me little notes to give me encouragement along the way, but the only one I can really remember said "Go mummy go.  If you get dorb (bored), try torking in pig lengig (Pig Language)."

What I should have done, is enjoy the running joke between us, but instead I counted the errors and wondered if anyone else could have gleaned a meaning from this.

I recognise my complete lack of perspective in responding this way.  I guess that is good.
It is a new week and time to start afresh.

Love Mum
xxx

A big glimmering, glistening ray of hope! Perhaps you need one?

A big glimmering, glistening ray of hope!  If you are reading this blog perhaps you need one.

Here's where I found mine:

DyslexicAdvantage.com is one of the world's largest dyslexia communities.

It's HERE!


"Probably the most helpful material ever published on dyslexia..."

So true!!

Here is my letter to the authors:


"I wanted to thank you for giving some colour and texture to my hope.  I knew that dyslexic minds were amazing ones and my daughter’s amongst them, but couldn’t quite articulate how.  After she was labelled as gifted, teachers and therapists kept asking “But how is she gifted?” and I could only answer “Well, cognitively”. 


 It certainly wasn’t functionally because she was performing in the low-average arena for most things at school.  Everyone looked at her performance from ”the flip side of the coin” and only addressed her areas of weakness, me included.

Now that you have highlighted her processing style for me, I can see for the first time how it is that she will progress from the caterpillar to the butterfly and I could howl, snort and slobber (not merely weep) from relief.

Those 16 typed-pages of fairy story that she dictated to my mother at age four, are the masterpiece that I thought them to be, a window into Kate's world and maybe the first grading in what will eventually become a vertical trajectory to fulfilment and success.   Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!"

Superkate's Mum

An Exploration Of Bitterness / The Blog I Tried Not To Write

Dear Kate,

This post is not for you.
The barbed shards poking between each line are not pointed at your jugular.

  

21/05/2011

To The Collective Former Educators Of My Daughter,

RE: Super Kate, Student No.1

Your 'good old Christian charity' did not start at home.
In fact, whenever I mention your name, I am answered immediately with a sentence containing the word 'evil'. Do you think that unjust?  Well I challenge you to ponder a few points.

"You are expected to know that by now!  Students of your age do not confuse their /b/s and /d/s!"

Who exactly was this tirade beneficial for?  Did you let off some steam?  Did you feel better by making it clear that you are an inherently, easily successful person, and that you expect the same of others?

• DO YOU NOT THINK, THAT SHE WOULD HAVE LIKED TO GET IT CORRECT?
• DO YOU NOT THINK, THAT IF SHE WAS ABLE TO DO IT, SHE WOULD HAVE?
• DO YOU THINK THAT THIS CANTANKEROUS ACCUSATION OF LAZINESS WAS IN ANY WAY HELPFUL OR CONSTRUCTIVE?

 Several weeks before this event, I gave my daughter a ring.  A small, conservative, silver cygnet ring.  We worked out between us that she could wear the Ring on her Right hand which she wRites with.  This helped her with directionality and therefore /b/ & /d/. YOU told her to take it off.

 I pleaded our case and was told that jewellery was not allowed in any circumstances.  This rule did not seem to extend to earrings, as they were worn by many (I guess because of the clear link between small pieces of metal stuck through earlobes and superior academic performance as well as Godliness).  At length you made a concession and we were told that  a skin coloured hairband could be placed upon the wrist.  The very next day, my daughter was informed that hairbands were to be worn in the hair and not upon the wrist.

So this year you are on a mission.  How is that treating you?  Someone I know regularly laments the fate of the poor 3rd world children under your tutelage, but then is happy that you are not inflicting your 'evilness' on the Australian children who are her friends.

I bet you feel good about your personal sacrifice, to help the minions.  I bet your colleagues and friends hold you in high esteem for your noble efforts.  I bet you get a warm fuzzy feeling when you see the new schoolhouse that your international adventure has procured.  That will look lovely on the resume too.  Make sure you get a happy snap of yourself and some cute black children stood out front.  God smiles on shit like that.

With all that gratuitous pleasure up for grabs, why would you want to help a silently melting child take her first incremental step toward becoming literate? Where are the accolades in that? You tried once but she clearly wasn't trying, because  it didn't work and YOU are an 'awesome' teacher.  

 Oh, and you teach in an 'awesome' school.  And 'the technology is just awesome!'.

I .FIND. YOUR. CONTINUOUS. LIP. SERVICE. ABOUT. YOUR. OWN. 'AWESOMENESS' . REPUGNANT.

 How awesome was it to watch the little girl, seated (inappropriately) at the back of the classroom, slowly turn to dust, along with her prospects and aspirations ????

???                                                               
                                                                           ??
                                                                                                                                                         ?
                             
**************************************************************************

Now that I have spewed forth that diatribe I have the breath to say:

I think you are generally good, kind people.
I don't think that you are bad teachers when it comes to basic mainstream education.
I don't wish for you to stop being teachers.
I do wish that you would understand that your general success as teachers and as a school does not make you superior and well informed in all areas of education.
My opinion as a parent is valid.
Education is lifelong, for you too.
You are not informed on appropriate teaching methods for gifted children with learning disabilities.
The ramifications of your ignorance can be devastating and life long.
Ignorance is not an excuse.
I do not excuse you.

Kind regards,
Super Kate's mum

Dyslexia, You, Me, The World.

Dear Kate,

Today I feel scared to be your parent, and hence another post. 

In the meanwhile, since my last post, you have been your usual exceptional self, accomplishing many amazing things and showing the capabilities of your brilliant mind. Since we began homeschooling, your happiness and confidence have grown to the point that you are sometimes impertinent and I secretly love it.

But......

today I am scared.  I am scared of damaging you, psychologically, emotionally and academically.  I know that with your giftedness comes great sensitivity.  I know that your giftedness combined with your disability, places you are up against some pretty terrifying statistics.  Statistics that involve rejecting education & society, leading to conduct disorders and prison.

I am scared that my knowledge and frustration separates me from the people close to me.

I am scared that other people's ignorance about twice execptionality makes them discount me and my opinions.



The reason that I feel this way, here and now:

Yesterday I went to a conference.  It was about the many children who are just like you.  I learnt something new, just as I hoped I would.  Something that perhaps is of benefit to you.  I drove home bursting with it. I tried telling several people about it (and you are so perceptive and you know me so well, that I probably don't need to tell you, that it was not at the right time and not in the right way).

I didn't get the response I had hoped for and that was difficult after being with a room full of people all day who spoke my language, just as fervently as I did.  And that was saddening and frightening because I only have one chance to be your parent and I want to do it well and I want to be supported in doing it.

At times like these, the questions arise and the slow internal combustion begins: the quickening beat of the heart, the dizziness, the blurring vision. I am scared. And the words seem to flow out of me in these moments when I would otherwise burst.




But I am not always scared.

In fact, I mostly feel very confident and I am always delighted to be your parent. This post is nothing if not heartfelt, but you should know that my heart does not always feel heavy. 

When I look at you, you are so complete and wonderful and will no doubt bestow upon the world something great. If the world could just advance us a little something on the way.....

Or the government, but then that is a whole new post.

Love Mum
  xox

More About Music

Dear Kate,
It went like this:

Round 1
Me: tone: Overly casual. 
       words: What is it like when you listen to music?

You:  expression:  None.
          word, in a nutshell:  Ugly.

Me:  emotions:  Shock, incredulity, return to calm.
        thoughts:  Interesting, a visual descriptor!
        words:  None.

Round 2
Me:  words: What does music look like?
        thought: Could you interpret music as colours or emotions?
You:  facial expression:  What's your game, lady?
         words:  Like a radio.

Me:  thought: Hmmm, not so colourful.


Round 3
Me:  words:  What does music feel like?
You:  another nutshell:  Nothing.

Me:  echoes in my head:  "Nothing, nothing, nothing, ugly, nothing."
        diversionary thought:  What lovey legs you have! Lovely, lovely, legs, lovely.


Round 4
Me:  words:  Does any music sound better than other music?

You:  words:  The Beetles and Pink.

Me:  word, of the singular variety: oh
        thoughts....gradual: Simple melody and rhythm + overflowing with angst and out to kick the world's  arse. That is something and not nothing.
        
That was how it went.

Love Mum

Einstein's Fish

Dear Kate,
You are Einstein's fish.  Does that sound a bit tacky, twee or maybe like a bad song lyric?  It is simply what I thought when I saw this quote by Einstein:

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid"

This is the reminder I needed, to attend to your gift, not just your disability.

I will start now!

*At 6, you had the working memory of an 11 year old.
*You are exceptional at mental arithmetic.
*You have determination and the power to endure and succeed.
*You are the kindest person I know.

You can do ANYTHING you want to do!  The educational psychologist told you that after you practically inhaled the WISC-IV and spat out a phenomenal result.  If only that one statement was powerful enough to undo the layers of anxiety and self-doubt that school has built upon you.

On the last day of school in 2010, I picked you up and felt the thick sludgy layers of stress slide off us both.  The  tranquility of the school holidays seemed surreal.  I could see you slowly recharging.  But then it was New Years Eve and a fresh onslaught of frustration and humiliation was visible to us both.

I sweated for three weeks and I know that you did too. 
I wished for the millionth time that I didn't have to haul you through another torturous term.
I yearned for your preschool years.
I wished I didn't have to watch you suffer. 
I wished I could feel calm and happy.
I wished I had space in my head for something other than you.

Then miraculously, the neurons that had neglected to fire over the last three years, did, and I connected the fact that homeschooling exists, with the knowledge that I was absolutely capable of doing it!

So, if you feel that you are a fish, I can't wait to watch you swim. And you don't need to climb any trees. Unless of course you want to.  And then I will stick a tree in your ocean or build a dam around your tree.  Whatever it takes.

Love Mum