I have been all over the place trying to find someone-anyone! who knows what I’m talking about.
My son was recently diagnosed as a gifted visual spatial learner. The last two years of school were absolutely disasterous. The teachers did not understand how such a verbal and precocious child would have such a difficult time with basic math facts, and they were sure he could write a story properly “If he’d only try harder”. His behavior went completely downhill as he would attempt anything and everything to be removed from the classroom to avoid looking “dumb” in front of his peers. The teacher tried to then pin him with the ADHD lable (which he is NOT). The giftedness has pretty much allowed him to compensate for his learning disabilities to a point, and the teachers would not give him any accomodations.
We are now in a new district. I am totally new to being an advocate and what to look out for. We have since had him tested, and so have that piece of paper that tells the district what he needs.
My husband is also dyslexic and going through university to get his second Master’s degree. I’ve been supporting HIM by proof reading all his papers. (even the 30 page totally academic ones)
In the midst of supporting these two, I’m left feeling a little overwhelmed. Is there anyone who can relate?
Gifted visual-spatial learners
Got a whole house of ‘em! I am the sequential one! Linda Silverman has a new book on visual spatial learners. The following website has a whole host of free downloads that will help you and the school.
http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/VSL/VSL_List.htm
Cheers,
Karis in Vancouver
school and its problems
I think my own son with learning differences will be fine in life. It’s school that creates the problems.
I can certainly relate to your struggles. Teachers have the job of getting a group of children from Point A to Point B. When a child or a few children don’t move with the group, many teachers simply don’t know what to do or even how to handle that situation. So they start saying ” Johnny doesn’t try”.
It only gets worse from there cause when teachers latch on to that phrase - their brains shut down completely and they babble “Johnny doesn’t try” over and over in every circumstance. I engineered my own LD son through school with one idea - we would do everything we possibly could to make it impossible for them to say about him “Johnny doesn’t try”.
So I put a smile on my face and held it there for 12 years until he graduated. Every night I did his homework with him and what he couldn’t do - I did. Together we made sure that every single bit of homework (no matter how ridiculous it was) got done the very first night it was sent home. We had long term projects in by the end of the first week.
They never caught on and they never could say “Johnny doesn’t try” cause these days - school is all about homework. We’d type up everything and I’d tell them he typed it as they would praise him for his typing efforts and I’d put in a few mistakes so it would look like he’d typed it.
I wish it wasn’t like that and I sincerely hope your school experience is different than ours. My son and I survived it but it’s left scars.
Good luck to you and your son.
Check out this listserv: http://purcell.xc.org/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=gt-special
There you will find many parents of gt/ld visual spatial learners.
Andrea