Posts Tagged hyperlexia
I mark the years in tennis balls
I remember the first developmental pediatrician we ever saw; she was the one who gave C three diagnoses to add to the zillion that came before: high functioning autism, hyperlexia, and developmental coordination disorder. “Get him into team sports,” she said. “He needs the socialization. Soccer, maybe.” This was after I said I was thinking about karate, which I’d always heard is good for kids with autism.
We tried both soccer and karate, with varying degrees of success ranging from marginal to disastrous. Soccer was a special needs league. It was like a field of kittens with puppy buddies trying to help the kittens play on a team. It was all sweet and good, but it was useless for learning much of anything. In the team picture, which I look back at with a mix of bitter and sweet, not a single kid was looking at the camera. I took that as a true reflection of the delightful insanity that was that soccer season.
Karate, however, was a nightmare. Movements and sequences that were way too hard were combined with 25 kids in a loud gym and an instructor so strict and uncommunicative that C had no idea why he ended up in time out halfway through the first session. We made it through exactly three classes before we forfeited the ridiculous amount of money we paid for that semester and never looked back.
Team sports have now given way to individual ones, and tennis and golf seem to be of interest. Now, in our third fall in one place, C is taking tennis lessons for the third year. He has always had but one goal: to hit a ball over the fence. He couldn’t even come close the first year, and last year wasn’t much better. It wasn’t until tonight, in his second lesson of his third year, that he proudly and solidly sailed a ball right over the fence and into the likely rattlesnake and scorpion infested bushes.
I suppose that tennis ball is a metaphor for C’s amazing growth and progress in the last few years. If I were the type of Mom who revels in these things, I’d see all kinds of not so hidden parallels between all these years of effort and the ultimate achievement of such a lofty goal. I’d get teary eyed with the thought of how hard C had to work to get this far. Instead, I gladly ventured into those bushes to retrieve said tennis ball, all the while sneakily wiping non-tears from my eyes.
6 comments November 10, 2009
Dizzy
Right after C’s first day of kindergarten, the principal caught up with me in the parking lot to tell me he thought C should just skip K and go right into first grade because he was so smart. We’d had an extensive meeting with the school team before starting C in order to convey to them our concern not with academic issues, but with social ones. Hadn’t this guy heard anything we’d said? In hindsight, that was the beginning of the end of “The Terrible Montessori Experiment,” (see here and here) which came to its final, and extremely painful, end a scant few months later.
I’ll never forget some of the principal’s parting words to us. “C will never qualify for an IEP anywhere. He doesn’t belong on one. He’s too smart.” (Nevermind that he’d already been on one for three years.) It was all I could do not to send this idiot a copy of the full IEP C ended up on at the public school 15 minutes up the road – along with the full IEP he’s had ever since at yet another school. The principal’s complete misunderstanding of not only hyperlexia, but high functioning autism/asperger’s, was a rude awakening for us that has made us skittish ever since. That caution has fortunately been unnecessary as since we left that charter school nightmare we have worked with people who actually know what they are doing.
Now, however, it has come full circle. As C prepares to enter third grade, his end of year IEP meeting brought a bit of a surprise. Two of the members of C’s team, and arguably two of the ones who know him best, feel we should consider having C repeat second grade. We are starting to see some comprehension issues coupled with challenging social issues as the maturity gap between C and his peers continues to grow. The thought is that perhaps with younger children, C will emerge as a leader in his class instead of struggling to make connections and friends. It’s not a bad idea, and it’s one Husband and I have considered extensively since that meeting, although we have decided not to pursue it.
Yet I find it almost amusing that we have gone from someone wanting C to skip a grade to potentially repeating one in just two short years. It reminds me how important it is for parents to listen to their instincts when it comes to the people with whom we trust our children. Clearly I should’ve listened to those bells going off in my head that first day of kindergarten as it became obvious to me that the principal had no clue how to deal with a child like C, and that skipping him ahead a grade would’ve been a disaster given his social challenges and maturity level. My only regret is that we even bothered to return to the school on the second day and didn’t move to C’s current school that much sooner.
8 comments June 16, 2009
C-isms, XV
After telling C a friend of mine died…“Mommy, maybe you should call that person and see what Heaven’s like!!!!”
“Mom, where’s the back of your head???”
“G’s day was just like Alexander’s. He had a ‘terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.’”
“Mommy, if John F. Kennedy, hadn’t been assassinated, he’d still be alive.”
“Mommy, could you give me some snuggles? Because some tears are about to fall out of me.”
From writing journal with prompts provided…
Outer space….”is a crayon color. Outer space is a place where space men live. The planets are Neptune, Mercury, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Ploto, Moon. There is Saturn and there is even constillations. There is black holes. There is 16 moons on Jupiter. There are astrodies. There is a milky way. One of my favorite games takes place in space and it’s called Galaga 88.” (By the way, this is EXACTLY how C talks.)
In the future…”is something different.”
A museum…“is where things that are old. A museum is a magnificent place. Some museums have dino bones. Some have old-fashined things. Some have fun stuff. Some museums have art. Some museums have pitures.”
A kitchen in a farmhouse…“would be funny.” (Think on that one, readers. You’ll get it. It took me awhile.)
A dream…”is in you when you sleep.”
3 comments May 21, 2009
A light at the end of the tunnel
In the midst of preparing for C’s upcoming IEP meeting, I’ve quite suddenly realized that the end may be in sight. Since his first IEPs, which were all about his challenges, to his later ones, which seem to be mostly about his strengths, I’ve hoped for C’s graduation from special education. When we first started down this IEP/IFSP road at 9 months, we anticipated C would enter kindergarten without his IEP tagging along. That was back in the day when we hadn’t really quite figured out he had a real diagnosis other than prematurity. Yet kindergarten came and went, with many struggles along the way to indicate the necessity of future special education interventions.
Now I’m having conversations with his team about ways we can keep his IEP for the next couple of years while we wait to see what happens in C’s progression. We’re talking as if it’s a given that he will be IEP-less by 5th or 6th grade. It’s the first time we’ve had a potentially realistic end to his involvement with special education. Frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, it’s an indicator for how well C is doing. The child is astounding. It’s a time for kudos for all of us on C’s team, past and present, who have helped him become the amazing little dude he is.
At the same time, I know hyperlexia generally includes some academic downfall at some point during the school years, and while we’re seeing bits and pieces of that in terms of reading comprehension, I’m not sure how big or how bad it will get. My sense is that he will struggle as schoolwork becomes more complicated and they move on to more subjective work. As evidenced by the writing section on his most recent standardized testing, where they were asked to write about why the early people didn’t know much about what was in the sky (which was the subject of the previous questions on the test), C summed it all up in just two, brief sentences at the very top of the entire blank page. “The early people didn’t know much. They didn’t have books then.”
As is usual in C fashion, he hit the nail on the head. it’s hard to argue with his logic. Unfortunately, it was the right nail, wrong head – for standardized testing, at least. We’ve been down this road before with C’s grouping of an apple and a banana together not because they are fruit, but rather because “red and yellow make orange.” Now who can argue with that?
So as we come to this “Y” in the road, I’m cautiously encouraged. And I’m hoping that someone out there in C’s future academic experience will look at him as a delicious challenge of interesting proportions – someone who can appreciate and capitalize on the inherent truth that red and yellow do in fact make orange.
4 comments May 13, 2009
Taking the C out of C
In our yearly struggle for the appropriate educational placement for C (which is part of why he went to two preschools in two different states, two kindergartens in the same town followed by a move to another state for 1st, and now 2nd, grades), I often fight the impulse to just yank him right back out of line and take him back home in the mornings. Most of the time I want to avoid for him the meanness from some of the other kids, but sometimes it has everything to do with his education.
I have to say, we’ve been mostly pleased with his education so far. Yet I can’t help but wonder sometimes if we’re educating the very essence of C right out of him. As he struggles to carry and borrow in his math homework, I realize he’s taking far longer to do the same problem on paper that he used to be able to do in his head in mere seconds. I have no problem with him doing the math in his head – however it is that he does it – but will he be able to do it when it’s 10,322 minus 9,999 instead of 56 minus 48? Are we wrong to try and teach him the “right” way in the hopes of well-serving him down his educational road?
As I continue to evaluate how he’s doing on a yearly, monthly, and even daily basis, I hope I’ll recognize the signs if and when it becomes clear he needs something beyond what traditional public education offers. There’s no doubt he’s a square peg; what’s not clear to me yet is if all the holes in school are perfectly round or if there’s a few that might accommodate his somewhat different shape.
7 comments January 5, 2009
War….what is it good for?
C’s new obsession is guns and war. He discovered both this year with his very patriotic teacher who has talked about the war a few times. Yet his interest is not in the traditional “I want a toy gun” vein, but rather the “Guns scare the poop out of me” way. He wants to know all about wars and guns, and fear is behind the questions. We try to answer them, because we know in the greater picture of this obsession, he’s trying to sort out bad guys and good guys and all of that. He’s finally decided that perhaps Nerf guns might be acceptable after repeated assurances that they won’t kill anyone, but he was worried about the glue gun I used on a recent craft project. “Does it shoot bullets?” he asked. No, but the burns I suffered are apparently okay by him. As long as it doesn’t shoot anything.
Once C found out Husband used to be a park ranger/law enforcement officer, it about sent him over the edge and took us with him after the zillion questions he asked. “What are bullets made of” “Do guns weigh a lot?” “I never want to touch a gun. Do I have to someday?” “Is every person that has a gun mean?” “If you have a gun, do you have to go to war?” “Why do police officers carry guns?” All good questions, and ones I felt I had to answer as calmly and succinctly as possible so as not to arouse additional stress, concern, worry or obsession.
We see, however, the obsession spilling over into fear. Everything that is scary now involves a gun. He wants to know which movies, video games and TV shows have guns. There’s a surprising amount of violence in even seemingly benign Disney movies (Ratatouille caused the latest “run screaming from the room” incident), and I believe he may never truly outgrow this fear. I don’t really care if he never gets past Thomas the Train movies and into Batman, but I suspect he’ll take some heat from the boys on it eventually.
So when he screamed for me last night, at 2:15 in a particularly frantic voice, I figured it had something to do with guns. He’s had a bad dream, he said, and could only tell me there was a gun in it. I asked him if it was a purple dream, had polka dots in it, or if a giraffe was walking through the dream, and that seemed to calm him down. But I knew that wasn’t the end of it, and sure enough today, in the middle of his daily barrage of questions about guns, he used his power of logic to solve the problem. “I know,” he said. “when I’m grown up, I’ll just make them all cost so much that no one can buy them.”
Best idea I’ve heard all year.
9 comments December 22, 2008
The Developmental Roller Coaster
Years ago I stopped consulting the developmental charts. For a long time, it worried us terribly that C didn’t catch up. Given his prematurity, we operated under the premise that he would catch up by age two. Two, and then three, came and went with no catch up in sight. Eventually, I’d see the little poster in the doctor’s office with the milestones and when they should be met, and I’d chuckle and know we needed a completely new developmental chart for C. It would probably look something like this:
Walking: Oh, sometime around 20 months. But there should be no toddling around. Don’t wait for that first, tentative step followed by lots of bumps and bruises as the skill is perfected. One day, he’ll just stand up and walk, and that will be that.
Talking: Well, in theory that should happen shortly after walking. The all-knowing developmental therapist feels sure that C can only “work” on one thing at a time, and right now that’s walking. Surely he’ll do it right after he learns to walk. Or perhaps a couple of years later.
Nodding head “yes” and shaking head “no:” Don’t know about that one. C’s still trying to figure out how to do that. The developmental charts put that skill at around 19 months. Apparently it’s in fact sometime around 8 years old.
Reading: Oh, that’s easy. He will learn that all by himself before age 3. It won’t be obvious, because he doesn’t really talk, but before long it will become clear he can read every word he can say, and then some.
Running: It won’t be pretty, and actually will be fairly entertaining to watch from behind, but he’ll be able to do that fairly soon after learning to walk. It may never be a normal gait, but it will get him where he needs to go.
Sequence counting: He’ll amaze people in lines by counting by 12s and 13s long before he should be able to. He’ll also be able to say the alphabet backward faster than should be normal.
Walking down stairs properly instead of using a “step-together-step-together pattern:” I dunno, maybe never?
So thanks anyway, What to Expect books and posters at the doctor’s office, but I think I’ll stick with the “C Developmental Milestone Chart.” On that chart, everything C does happens Right. On. Time.
8 comments December 17, 2008
C-isms, Part X
“Mommy, I love ya’ from here all the way to the Highway 70 in Utah.”
“Hurry up and give me a snuggle! My brain is dissolving!!!”
(From class writing work) I wish I were better at…tennis because it is fun. Next week I might hit the teacher again.
“Someone forted at school today. Oh, yeah, it was ME. And it was FUNNY. And it’s spelled f-o-r-t with an e-d at the end of it.” (It took me several moments to figure out he’s finally learned the real word for what we call “tooting.” But leave it to him to put his own spin on it…)
“Mommy, I do NOT know ANY cow language at ALL.”
10 comments November 19, 2008
