I Found It!
I officially found something I'd lost and have been looking for now for over 18 years!
(G-d, if that doesn't frighten you, nothing will!)
It's a video. I stumbled upon this video when I was something like 16 years old. I figured out that there was seriously something wrong with the world when I could look at numbers and have absolutely no comprehension of either their shape OR meaning. These were sporadic episodes of complete number-amnesia, brought on by periods of high-intensity stress at this new thing called "work." Imagine the panic you might feel if you were manning a cash register with an insanely long line of impatient people, and when you looked at the display to give people their totals, it made absolutely no sense at all. It's like looking at your digital watch and seeing Mandarin Chinese or ancient Sanskrit written there. Interesting figures, but informationally devoid.
This weird experience sent me looking for various answers; among them, a trip to the Colorado Association of Learning Disabilities, where I discovered not only the innumerable permutations of dyslexia ("I can't be dyslexic, I can read just fine,") but also my strong LD/ADD family background. (Dad was simply the "bad reader," and we just knew it was "hard for him." He rarely, if EVER, read smoothly. He might read the occasional thing out loud, but it was always accompanied by lots of stops and starts and sounding out of words, and more than one round of spelling words out with the intention of asking for mom to translate. Still, I didn't think much about it. It's simply "how things were.") LD's are extremely hereditary.
While looking for references at the CALD, I ran into a video. I checked it out, the whole family watched it, and I was thrilled with it. FINALLY, someone explained for me what I hadn't been able to put into words. It was a video aimed at non-dyslexics, which gives a clue as to how someone with an LD actually functions and sees the world.
Well, I promptly forgot the title of the video, and the Association promptly became defunct. (This was, after all, in the pre-internet days of the late '80s, so it's not like they had a website I could look up!) The video was lost.
I subscribe to several listservs these days, and on one of them, someone was complaining about the symptoms their Kindergarten-aged daughter was having, and was it dyslexia? Someone lauded the idea of catching the "disease" early, so that the little girl could get "her brain re-wired more easily." Re-wired?!? To say that I was displeased with this comment is an understatement! Slightly rabid was more like it. "Disease?" Like what, leprosy? It's not the kid's brain that needs fixing, tinkering and altering, it's how they're presenting information to the kid! Sheesh! What happens when we decide that every variation in nature is a pathology and needs to be exterminated? This kid isn't going to be "cured" from the way she thinks...at best she'll learn how to cover the symptoms that distress her parents and teachers and attempt to sublimate feeling completely inadequate. At worst, she'll try faking it for awhile, then completely give up on all of it and drop out early, opting for any exit which doesn't require daily reminding of just how "broken" she supposedly is.
Teachers often make this mistake. Dyslexics are highly visual people; they tend to think in pictures and shapes. Abstract concepts tend to throw them. I remember high school being a bit of a schizophrenic experience, since some math and science classes I would literally fail, and others (like geometry and physics) I made honor roll with. Teachers could NOT understand how I could be making A's in math one semester, and be making F's the next. So I'd have teachers pull me aside in the hallway and say, "What's the matter with you? Mr. Smith says you're failing his math class. You can do better than that!" At the time, I had no idea "what the matter with me" was. Had I been able to, I would have looked the guy in the eye and said, "I'm a dyslexic who thinks in visual-spatial terms, and Mr. Smith's explanations are all deeply grounded in the abstract. Within five minutes of each class, I'm utterly lost. He might as well be speaking Arabic. I try to take notes, but inadvertently reverse my numbers, so when I try to go home and work it out myself, it makes even less sense than the Arabic gobbledegook that frustrated me six hours earlier. When I feel like I might cry, I close the books and go do something more pleasant. I come back to school the next day with no assignments done, no further understanding, and not much chance of getting it right in the future. I think that about covers it."
Anyway, I thought of that video again and wondered if I could find it online. And BEHOLD!! Through a lot of trial and error and wild guesses, I ended up emailing the spouse of the guy who produced the darned thing! It's called "How Difficult Can It Be?" by Richard Lavoie...if you deal with anyone at ALL with an LD, I highly recommend seeing it! Even our local library carries a copy, so it's worth checking into via that route.
As long as I was looking at the guy's stuff, I found several more things. Among them was a book titled, "It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend," the premise being that LD kids have a harder time of it socially than they might otherwise have. Most of it focuses on those with way, way more serious symptoms than the ones that I have...the complete inability to read facial gestures, for instance. It does have its salient moments, though. One of the most hilarious was its discussion on organization. This has never been one of my...er...strong points. And yes, the world is full of tips and hints and systems and books and heaven knows what. "This is a tall order for those with learning and attentional difficulties. Unfortunately, the organizational techniques contained in most books on the topic are generally unsuccessful for those with learning disorders. Due to my own ADHD-related organizational difficulties, I have spent significant time, energy, and resources attempting to integrate these "anti-clutter" strategies into my lifestyle--with minimal success. The techniques that are so effective for most people (e.g., date books, electronic calendars) simply do not work with many people with attentional deficits. We lose the datebooks and forget to buy batteries for the electronic devices!
Amen!
These techniques fail because ADD people view the world in a unique way. We tend to be very visual and need to see something in order to remember and organize it. Therefore, elaborate filing, categorizing, and storing systems are doomed to fail. If it is out of sight, it is literally out of mind. That is why people with ADD tend to be "pilers"; we place all of our important and necessary documents and materials in piles that can be easily and readily accessed. For years, my office at school featured a conference table with innumerable piles of papers, periodicals, memos, and documents."
Doug laughed manically. I don't know if he was thinking of my reading pile on the end table; the bills, mail, and phonics piles on the kitchen table; the cooking, coupons and directions pile on the counter under the radio; the soon-to-be-recycled paper piles on the living room desk; the LLL paper pile on the floor of the dining room; the notes on Adobe software DVDs and new releases on the floor of the bedroom; or perhaps it was the (no kidding) foot-high stack of graphic design-related material on my desk.
This house suffers from a bad case of CHAOS. (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome.)
(G-d, if that doesn't frighten you, nothing will!)
It's a video. I stumbled upon this video when I was something like 16 years old. I figured out that there was seriously something wrong with the world when I could look at numbers and have absolutely no comprehension of either their shape OR meaning. These were sporadic episodes of complete number-amnesia, brought on by periods of high-intensity stress at this new thing called "work." Imagine the panic you might feel if you were manning a cash register with an insanely long line of impatient people, and when you looked at the display to give people their totals, it made absolutely no sense at all. It's like looking at your digital watch and seeing Mandarin Chinese or ancient Sanskrit written there. Interesting figures, but informationally devoid.
This weird experience sent me looking for various answers; among them, a trip to the Colorado Association of Learning Disabilities, where I discovered not only the innumerable permutations of dyslexia ("I can't be dyslexic, I can read just fine,") but also my strong LD/ADD family background. (Dad was simply the "bad reader," and we just knew it was "hard for him." He rarely, if EVER, read smoothly. He might read the occasional thing out loud, but it was always accompanied by lots of stops and starts and sounding out of words, and more than one round of spelling words out with the intention of asking for mom to translate. Still, I didn't think much about it. It's simply "how things were.") LD's are extremely hereditary.
While looking for references at the CALD, I ran into a video. I checked it out, the whole family watched it, and I was thrilled with it. FINALLY, someone explained for me what I hadn't been able to put into words. It was a video aimed at non-dyslexics, which gives a clue as to how someone with an LD actually functions and sees the world.
Well, I promptly forgot the title of the video, and the Association promptly became defunct. (This was, after all, in the pre-internet days of the late '80s, so it's not like they had a website I could look up!) The video was lost.
I subscribe to several listservs these days, and on one of them, someone was complaining about the symptoms their Kindergarten-aged daughter was having, and was it dyslexia? Someone lauded the idea of catching the "disease" early, so that the little girl could get "her brain re-wired more easily." Re-wired?!? To say that I was displeased with this comment is an understatement! Slightly rabid was more like it. "Disease?" Like what, leprosy? It's not the kid's brain that needs fixing, tinkering and altering, it's how they're presenting information to the kid! Sheesh! What happens when we decide that every variation in nature is a pathology and needs to be exterminated? This kid isn't going to be "cured" from the way she thinks...at best she'll learn how to cover the symptoms that distress her parents and teachers and attempt to sublimate feeling completely inadequate. At worst, she'll try faking it for awhile, then completely give up on all of it and drop out early, opting for any exit which doesn't require daily reminding of just how "broken" she supposedly is.
Teachers often make this mistake. Dyslexics are highly visual people; they tend to think in pictures and shapes. Abstract concepts tend to throw them. I remember high school being a bit of a schizophrenic experience, since some math and science classes I would literally fail, and others (like geometry and physics) I made honor roll with. Teachers could NOT understand how I could be making A's in math one semester, and be making F's the next. So I'd have teachers pull me aside in the hallway and say, "What's the matter with you? Mr. Smith says you're failing his math class. You can do better than that!" At the time, I had no idea "what the matter with me" was. Had I been able to, I would have looked the guy in the eye and said, "I'm a dyslexic who thinks in visual-spatial terms, and Mr. Smith's explanations are all deeply grounded in the abstract. Within five minutes of each class, I'm utterly lost. He might as well be speaking Arabic. I try to take notes, but inadvertently reverse my numbers, so when I try to go home and work it out myself, it makes even less sense than the Arabic gobbledegook that frustrated me six hours earlier. When I feel like I might cry, I close the books and go do something more pleasant. I come back to school the next day with no assignments done, no further understanding, and not much chance of getting it right in the future. I think that about covers it."
Anyway, I thought of that video again and wondered if I could find it online. And BEHOLD!! Through a lot of trial and error and wild guesses, I ended up emailing the spouse of the guy who produced the darned thing! It's called "How Difficult Can It Be?" by Richard Lavoie...if you deal with anyone at ALL with an LD, I highly recommend seeing it! Even our local library carries a copy, so it's worth checking into via that route.
As long as I was looking at the guy's stuff, I found several more things. Among them was a book titled, "It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend," the premise being that LD kids have a harder time of it socially than they might otherwise have. Most of it focuses on those with way, way more serious symptoms than the ones that I have...the complete inability to read facial gestures, for instance. It does have its salient moments, though. One of the most hilarious was its discussion on organization. This has never been one of my...er...strong points. And yes, the world is full of tips and hints and systems and books and heaven knows what. "This is a tall order for those with learning and attentional difficulties. Unfortunately, the organizational techniques contained in most books on the topic are generally unsuccessful for those with learning disorders. Due to my own ADHD-related organizational difficulties, I have spent significant time, energy, and resources attempting to integrate these "anti-clutter" strategies into my lifestyle--with minimal success. The techniques that are so effective for most people (e.g., date books, electronic calendars) simply do not work with many people with attentional deficits. We lose the datebooks and forget to buy batteries for the electronic devices!
Amen!
These techniques fail because ADD people view the world in a unique way. We tend to be very visual and need to see something in order to remember and organize it. Therefore, elaborate filing, categorizing, and storing systems are doomed to fail. If it is out of sight, it is literally out of mind. That is why people with ADD tend to be "pilers"; we place all of our important and necessary documents and materials in piles that can be easily and readily accessed. For years, my office at school featured a conference table with innumerable piles of papers, periodicals, memos, and documents."
Doug laughed manically. I don't know if he was thinking of my reading pile on the end table; the bills, mail, and phonics piles on the kitchen table; the cooking, coupons and directions pile on the counter under the radio; the soon-to-be-recycled paper piles on the living room desk; the LLL paper pile on the floor of the dining room; the notes on Adobe software DVDs and new releases on the floor of the bedroom; or perhaps it was the (no kidding) foot-high stack of graphic design-related material on my desk.
This house suffers from a bad case of CHAOS. (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome.)
posted by Kelly at
11:44 PM
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