I am going to scream

Aah the ol inlaws thing.

Sometimes I wonder how much is a personal feeling of love and caring for their child,and how much is possibly an internal desire to cleanse thier sole of what wasn’t done for them when THEY were a child?

Don’t know about you,but at least 95% of my hubby’s family and 99% of mine are either LD,or Adders.

Just a curiousity and the knowledge that learning differences are hereditary. I also wonder how many educaors have this hidden agenda also? Let’s face it,there is just too much info out there,but in a lot of instances,the old”well I didn’t have this and I did okay” seems to raise it’s ugly head instead. Why do you think child abuse is a cycle?

Just my thoughts on the subject.

They love your kid,but they are not experts,or even close to it. But ALL have a hidden agenda….

Does this mean you are back in the US? My favoite is “learning disability… but he’s so smart” as if one was mutually exclusive with the other. I have a friend who keeps referring to her child’s advanced reading group at school as the “smart group” - what does that make my struggling reader?

For years my parents implied that if we had just told him to say Hi to people he would have. Oh, gee, I hadn’t thought of that. Why don’t I just inform him its time to learn to read now too.

I think with in laws/parents etc its somewhat generational. 30 years ago they were perfect parents and noone did OT. Just ignore them and hang in there. Your son is lucky he has you to be dependent on.

Oh, I have SOOO been there. What I have decided to do about it is this: I am sending my father a copy of Mel Levine’s “A Mind at a Time”. If I’m lucky, he’ll read it.

Andrea

Just to give you a little company thought I’d tell you about the worst comment my mother-in-law made. She works with kids at church who can’t, because of disability, go through regular sacramental preparation. My son, on the other hand, has successfully completed regular classes at our church. She is a patient wonderful person in many ways but tends to see a disability as a disability.

So one day she starts telling about the sexual urges that some of the boys she sees in class have trouble controlling appropriately when they get to be teenagers.She says she worries about my son!! I was so mad!

Well, I will worry too but no more than I will worry about my other son who is not LD!!.

Find the family members who either understand or can be educated and do your best not to discuss LD kind of issues with the rest. Believe me, I have tried educating my mother-in-law but her black and white thinking makes it impossible. My sister-in-law has a down’s syndrome child and my MIL thinks of these two grandchildren as the same. Don’t get me wrong—she thinks very kindly but doesn’t get how it is very different to have a child with a normal intelligence and significant LD and a child whose intelligence is not normal. However, I am fortunate because my sister is a clinical social worker who knows a bit but is also very interested in my son’s issues. She is a great source of support.

Beth

Makes you wonder if those people who have all that black and white thinking aren’t truely the ones with some intellectual deficits.

They can’t see the whole child. They need a label to define the child so they can conceptualize who he is.

They just don’t get it.

Who has the disability?

I agree that this sort of black and white thinking isn’t very sophisticated. In my MIL’s case, it is not confined to disability issues so I try to keep it all in perspective (as well as avoid certain topics of conversation). My sister in law once told me that “Mom always had her own sort of logic.”

Beth

Hey Beth— Very interesting—. My other sister in law is a social worker and I can tell her everything and she just gets it! She spent hours on the NLD website when I first told her my son seemed to me to be NLD (ed psych, OT and she totally disagree w/this because of my son’s social strengths…but it is not so black and white—and the spatial stuff is, I think, severe). She is just great.

Hey Karen, not back in the US yet—relatives visiting . We leave Thursday and arrive in your area on the 16th-

Thanks everyone for posting — I felt better after writing and so much better after reading your responses.

By the way, my sister in law has told me that she knows her children (none yet) will be just brilliant–hmmm….what do you say to that? Socks?

Thanks again.

I realize I’m a bit late here - but my father (whom I adore and always have) told me I was giving my son “too much” because he won’t be able to live that way as an adult because of his disabilities. Sending him a copy of Mel Levine’s book is a good idea! ;)

Lil

About your sis in law, sit back and laugh your butt off when her kids come out like everyone else’s, or even better, like OURS!!! I wouldn’t trade mine for the world, even if I do sometimes feel like running away from home!!

I have a friend whose mother had dyslexia, not dxed until she was an adult. Her two siblings had photographic memories and I guess were treated as ‘the perfect ones’. Anyway, they treat my friend and her dyslexic sister as the dumb kids of the dumb sister. It really ticks my friend, especially since she has no ld’s and has her b.s. in math education. That and her sister learned to read very well and now reads Russian literature for fun. That old saying, you can’t pick your relatives.

I think you will be there to lend your experience and comfort,because when she finds out this isn’t the case,she will need you to help her.

Move over, I’m with you. It’s like my friend whose son is autistic and screams. People tell her she should spank him for such behavior. I’m with Linda, WHO has the mental deficiency?