"There's no such thing as dyslexia," someone abruptly told me recently and it didn't go over very well with me! Statements like that tend to bring out my stubbornness! (Ask my Dad, he still reminds me I'm a fighter!)
But, when I meet someone who has been living at the blunt end of those kinds of statements--that sends me over the edge! I've heard the 'no such thing as dyslexia' proclamation more times than I care to remember, and that's exactly what they said about my young friend 'J'.
Here's part of the story I learned when I first met J: Earlier, when he was about to start kindergarten and needed to complete a pre-school screening with his local school district, he had been asked to count from one to ten.
"Yee, uhr, sahn, suh...," he said.
What? The screeners were mystified. Instantly they decided J obviously couldn't count! How could he possibly be ready for Kindergarten...he couldn't count!
To top it off, the new to him testing-room had brought on quite a bit of anxiety causing him to feel fearful. In the end, receiving negative responses from the adults in charge, after he'd tried to impress them with his counting skills, brought the event to an end.
You see he wasn't trying to count to ten, he had counted to ten... in Chinese! Unfortunately, he was the only one in that room who knew Chinese! And after the adults reacted in the way they had---
He shut down.
For J the high in IQ part is correct. Even though the test was given orally, he was not able to overcome his anxiety and successfully give the adults the information they considered necessary for him to be a good candidate for their school program. When the idea of dyslexia was brought up, they had the 'no such thing as dyslexia' statement ready to go.
When he came to OnPoint Learning Center it was a different story. He quickly showed me his talents and Gift of dyslexia and I knew how to help him.
In the course of the 30-hour week of his Davis Dyslexia Correction Program this young man taught me more than almost any other client has every taught me.
Sometimes he used words and at other times he used clay.
Wait, I just realized what I typed: 'he taught me more than almost any other client'. Not bad for someone who couldn't complete a Kindergarten screening!
No comments:
Post a Comment