I often find it informative to listen to people’s experiences about disabilities. Though the evidence is anecdotal at best, not scientific, it helps me to stay grounded, to keep perspective. On The Age (Australian news site) Imogene Stubbs provided a first person view of having a son with Learning Disabilities that served just this function.
Here’s her lead:
My nine-year-old son was excited when I asked him to help me with this article. But he didn’t want to have to write anything. After 30 agonising minutes and the promise of a baseball glove, this is what he produced:
“when I do riting and pariigrafs my brayn is uncunferdbl and herts and i get the writ word but wen it travls down my arm it disapeeurs befour it coms out of my hand and sumtymes im chrying.”
Ms. Stubbs touches on many topics—causes, characteristics, prevalence, educational practices—and other wonderful tidbids, sadly mixed in with some misinformation (e.g., focusing educational efforts on self-esteem), that make this article worth reading. Here’s a particularly sage observation:
What else have we done? We have leapt on every bandwagon going. We have chucked fish oils down his gullet; we have had him focusing on light-beams in dark rooms; we have encouraged him to walk backwards down a line, counting plastic frogs; we have watched him balancing on boards while catching bean-bags, occasionally between his teeth. It all merges into a slightly lunatic blur.
Maybe some things help, but then maybe so does changing the breakfast cereal. It is so hard to tell what is real improvement and what is part of natural development or simply your desperation to believe. Yet every new “solution” demands an expensive and time-consuming commitment.
Read this one. Hurry, though. The Age only keeps articles live for 10 days. Link.
Sphere: Related Content
The Division for Learning Disabilities is holding its annual conference, Briding the Gap between Research and Practice, in Charleston (SC; US) in November and I’m encouraging attendance. Yes, it is true that I had something to do with it. And, yes, I’ll be presenting a session there, too. That’s why this entry has the title it has. But, no, I don’t make any $$, £, ¢, ¥, or other ¤ (aren’t entities fun?) from the conference. 
Thanks for the conversation