My Creative Quotient (CQ) Will Kick Your Intelligence Quotient’s (IQ) Ass.
Lots of experts have written lots of things about how poorly US students are performing against the rest of the world, academically speaking. They point to it as a worrisome trend and are trying to think of lots of ways to improve the test scores.
Frankly, this does not really worry me. I don’t know how long we’ve been comparing ourselves, standardized test-wise, to the rest of the world, but I have a sneaky suspicion that if we could go back and test our colonial forefathers and foremothers when they were teenagers, they wouldn’t have tested at the top of the world class, either. I mean, we were still building an education system hundreds of years after the most influential and deeply rooted academic programs had already been established in our European counterparts.
Alexis de Tocqueville, that charming and wily 25 year old frenchman with the shiniest and thickest black hair who toured America in 1831 and then wrote a rather insightful book about it,
Social authority makes them mistrustful and anxious, and they rely upon its power only when they cannot do without it. This first becomes apparent in the schools, where children play by their own rules and punish infractions they define themselves.”
To the rest of the world, we were crackpots. Hicks. Country Bumpkins. Uncivilized. So yeah, I think our teenage forefathers and mothers would have been pretty far down on the list of countries with high academic test scores. Because we weren’t producing strictly intellectuals. Back in that day, we valued something inherently different…free thinking. We were rebels, having just fought and won a daring revolution against the most powerful country in the world. We didn’t do things because that’s how everyone else did them…in fact, on principle we found ways to do things differently. It was just a part of our national character. We produced innovators in science, religion, philosophy, economics, politics, the arts, and technology.
We hopped on to the world scene, a new country still in diapers, and shook. it. up.
The other countries were probably all gathered at the coffee shop, watching us do our brilliant little breakdance down the street, going, “How on earth did these imbeciles manage to think of so many ways to improve the world? We didn’t see that coming!”
Intellectually, our country was started and filled by european minds. But somewhere along the line, in the freedom of the wide open space and unlimited potential of a new country, we developed something more. Something creative.
So, back to my original idea somewhere up at the top…before the breakdancing and the rebellion and the coffee shop…our ranking on standardized testing doesn’t concern me all that much, because that has never been the strength or focus of what we in America have created. Standardized testing doesn’t grasp the intangibles that transform book learning and memorization into something magically innovative and relevant. Something like clothes pins and dental floss and cotton gins and anesthesia and Ferris wheels and smoke detectors and zippers and velcro and cotton candy and remote controls and flashlights and assembly lines and airplanes and telephones and electricity and..and..and…
American Inventions before 1890
American Inventions 1890-1991
American Inventions 1991-now
This is just one reason why I am able to exist in my unschooling world without having my kids take standardized tests to make sure they are on track; a common concern among people I meet and some family members who wonder how I know how my kids are ranked according to their peers. Frankly, I don’t really want them to be ‘on track’ with ‘their peers’. I don’t like that track. Standardized, rote, repetitive, dull, boring, linear, with a value placed on right answers rather than creative questions. There’s nothing innovative or creative about that. It’s just memorizing. We breakdanced our way off that track as soon as I realized there was another way. I value learning through innovation and free thinking, with a strong emphasis on questioning.
Maybe they stop asking questions because they’re afraid to be wrong. I always get a kick out of the hypocrisy of a system that tells kids “there’s no such thing as a stupid question” on one hand while on the other hand they are grading kids which inherently implies stupidity with anything less than perfect.
There is a test I am interested in–it’s less a standardized test or IQ test, what it does is quantify Creative Quotient (CQ). It’s called The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) by E. Paul Torrance Torrance. It has three components:
1. Thinking Creatively with Pictures measures creative thinking using three picture-based exercises to assess five mental characteristics: fluency, originality, elaboration, abstractness of titles, and resistance to closure (i.e., openness, See NEO-PI-R).
2. The Figural TTCT contains abstract pictures and the examinee is requested to state what the image might be.
3. The Verbal TTCT: contains presents the examinee with a situation and gives the examinee the opportunity to ask questions, to improve products, and to “just suppose.”
We don’t have to wait around for an education reform before we can start changing the plight of education and learning in this country. It has nothing to do with IQ, and everything to do with CQ. So let’s get creative. Let’s introduce fun, problem solving, innovation, free thinking, and exploration into the lives of our kids. In the long run, this creativity is what will serve them and the world better–not something they learned for the purpose of a state test.
Video Game Appreciation
I haven’t spoken of my undying love for video games in a while, and that’s a shame.
I like to speak out on this subject because video gaming tends to be vilified in the press, by moms, and by schools, to name a few. There’s this stereotype that video games are junk food and gamers are lazy. Not to mention the broad strokes people use to describe the games as ”violent” and “wastes of time”.
Yeah, there are violent video games, but the volume of violent movies/TV shows far exceeds them, and no one is making a rukus over that. It’s just accepted, and the offending movies are easily avoided.
I’ve found video games to be integral to our unschooling life, especially with right brained thinkers…really creative, out of the box kids who get bored easily. Video games excel at exercising higher level thinking skills, problem solving abilities, and fostering learning in a dynamic environment. My kids have developed math, history, critical thinking, and science all through video games.
There are many studies out there to support this, currently I’m in a rush to get into a pool to escape this record breaking heat wave we’re having in So. Cal and so don’t have time to link to everything. But if you are interested in some, leave a comment and I’ll email you.
Naturalist and I are loving this video all about appreciating video games and supporting the right to play them. She thought it would be a good idea to share it on the blog…spread the word. So, consider it spread!
Viva la video games!
This special episode of Zero Punctuation is a public service announcement brought to you by the ESA and the Video Game Voters Network.
Click through in the link below to get to the video–sorry, I tried to embed it but my limited internet knowledge plus the thought of a cold pool waiting for me has kept me from figuring it out!
via Zero Punctuation : Video Game Voters Network.
read more2e Tuesday::Geography With Puzzles.
Geography in school was really hard for Naturalist. All those lists of State/Country names that she’d then have to either repeat from memory or write down on a sheet of paper. This was difficult for her…her quick mind would get bored from the rote memorization and her visual spatial skills would be unused, leaving the entire learning process dependent on her weaker left brained, sequential self.
When we started unschooling, we left curriculum behind. However, her geography skills haven’t suffered at all. Play is a big part of our learning life, and nothing says play more than puzzles! (OK, actually, lots of things say play more than puzzles, but puzzles are a lot of fun, so go with me on this!)
Here’s what we’ve been puzzling around with for a long time:
There’s Latin America, Middle East, and tons more puzzles from Geopuzzle through this link.
What I love about these puzzles is that each country/state is cut out in it’s own shape, so you really get a feel for the size and shape of it (pun totally intended!). It makes it easy not only to learn each location, but also to place it next to it’s neighbors in a very intuitive way. It makes learning geography very kinesthetic, visual spatial, and right brained fun!
Just one way that fun + play = learning!
read more2e Tuesday::The Highs and Lows of a 2e brain.
I’m passionate about getting the word out about something called 2e, or ‘Twice Exceptional’ as it relates to people and learning. I refer to kids and adults like this as “Out of the Box Thinkers” because our brains are wired so completely differently it boggles the mind and often creates a person who relates to things in a totally unique way.
Oftentimes, this rewiring includes a gifted learner who also has LD, or learning differences. These can be things like dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, CPD, or anything that affects the ability to input/output information.
I wrote a blog about what exactly 2e is, here.
In our current overstandardization of public education, which values cookie cutter learning over embracing individuality, divergent and unique learners are often mislabeled and misunderstood. Because these kids are able to perform at a high level in some areas, they are called ‘slackers’ when their performance falls in other areas. They have a high level of frustration trying to work through their varying levels of aptitudes, which if gone unheard can lead to “anger issues” and “behavior problems”. They can look “unmotivated”, “ADHD”, “inattentive” and be called “a problem”, “lazy”, “stubborn”, “unteachable”, and “difficult”. None of this is true, but it all certainly applies without the proper understanding of what’s going on.
To generalize giftedness in people, it is the ability to input more information than the ‘norm’. Giftedness is often accompanied by asynchrony, which means that while gifted people can have a high performance level in one area (reading, for example), they will often lag behind in another area (writing, or math, etc.). So, giftedness doesn’t necessarily mean the person is genius at everything.
2e, or twice exceptionality, takes this asynchrony and compounds it. There’s a great article here, about the phenomenon of having a kid who is so bright at some things but struggles so hard in others.
I didn’t know it for a long time, but I am a 2e learner. Until college, school was agonizing. I knew, within myself, what I was capable of doing (the giftedness) but without an understanding of asynchrony I felt frustrated and stupid when I couldn’t do it (the LD). I’ll show you what this looks like in black and white, thanks to a box I uncovered while taming the beast of a mess known as my basement of doom.
I came across some test results from 5th grade. Because of what I’ve been through with Naturalist, I read them in a totally new way.
This test ranks your results according to your grade equivalency. So, for example, in 5th grade, my spelling was at a level of someone in 10.8 grade…or, 8 months into their 10th grade.
I’m not writing that to brag, although, we can stop for a moment to acknowledge my spelling awesomeness if you want. I mean, I was in the 98th percentile!
Also pretty awesome: my reading comprehension (10.9), and my language expression (10.9).
But note, I’m not at that level in all areas. For instance, math computation is at a 5.6 (or, 6months into my 5th grade) and reference skills are at 5.5.
In those instances, I was performing right at grade level. To the school, I was fitting in to the average ability of the normal 5th grader in math. To myself, accustomed to being able to perform at a different level in some areas like reading, it made me feel ridiculously stupid that I couldn’t perform at that same higher level when working with numbers. It was frustrating and confusing to feel my mind go so quickly and easily over anything reading related, and feel it slow down when it came to math.
When Naturalist was tested, her results were even more asynchronous. Because of her dyslexia, things were all wonky. For instance, her word recognition was at the 2nd percentile, but her reading comprehension was at the 98th percentile. How can a person understand 98 percent of something when they are only reading 2 percent of the words? I have no idea. These kids are quite astounding!
Another test I took, this time the IOWA:
That dip in results is a classic example of 2e. High abilities in some places matched with a drop in ability in others. The bigger the ‘dip’, the higher the frustration.
This is one of the single most important ideas to understand when working with 2e, or out of the box thinkers, especially if it stops the harmful labeling like the terms I listed above. These kids (and adults!) need understanding and accomodations, not labels and incentives to ‘work harder’.
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A fan-freaking-tastic article on asychrony in kids, here.
A compilation of all my 2e posts is under the “Out Of The Box” category, here.
read more2e Tuesday::Look Ma! No Spelling Lessons!
I have the advantage, being an unschooler, of trying radical things that the rest of the public wouldn’t dream of doing. Like, not having any spelling lessons in our day. At all. Anyone who has spent time with their child working on endless spelling tests, spelling workbooks, spelling drills, and countless spelling induced temper tantrums has fantasized about doing just that. Spelling curriculum is the bane of many school kids and parents existence. However, spelling is one of the foundations of the school system. Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic…and spelling is a huge part of writing.
It’s such a big part of writing that it causes panic attacks to think about not having spelling as a part of the school day. Even when we left public school and homeschooled, I found spelling curriculum so I could import the spelling test pain into our lives every day. No one was forcing me to, it was in my control, and I bought in to the idea that if we don’t make our kids write random words down 10 times a day for a week, then they won’t ever learn to spell. And then they won’t write coherently. And then they won’t give a good application to colleges, which will lead to them not getting into school, which means unemployment, which means a horrible life full of grief and misery.
I, actually, am a fantastic speller. I found proof in my basement of doom that in 5th grade, I was at a high school spelling level. I have, like, a photographic memory for words. Which is weird because otherwise, my mind is a sieve. Things come in and flow out almost instantaneously, which accounts for my childlike glee. I feel like I see things for the first time no matter how often I’ve heard or read or seen it. Except words. They stick in there like they have velcro on the back of them. I’m like a wordy Rainman!
To me, every spelling mistake that I come across in my day leaps out at me like a scream. I previously supposed that spelling errors were the sign of a weak mind. Because spelling was so easy for me, I figured that it was easy for everyone…so how lazy could you be to not spell something when you could just see it in your mind.
Well, along came Naturalist. And to put it clearly I’ll do an analogy… Naturalist :: spelling : Me :: staying organized. It was confusing because I knew she didn’t have a weak mind, but she also couldn’t spell. Hell, she couldn’t even use vowels in her words. And this was in 3rd grade.
We discovered that Dyslexia had a lot to do with her spelling mistakes, so for a while when we homeschooled I thought that meant that I just had to make her practice and drill even harder. This was wrong. Let me repeat, THIS WAS WRONG. As wrong as suggesting that a person in a wheelchair just needs to get out of the wheelchair and try walking more often.
If you have a kid with either a learning difference like Dyslexia or is extremely right brained, let go of the spelling lists. I only say that because I’ve done just that, and in 2 years I’ve seen a remarkable difference (for the better!) in everyone’s spelling. Here’s what we do, and why it works:
1. Encourage passion and interest! For Naturalist, this interest was on birds and wolves. Any interest will lead into some form of expression. For her, she would write novels, biographies, and comics about birds and wolves.
2. Encourage internet use! There are ways to safely protect you and your child from negative scary internet-y things, so take those steps and use it. Naturalist would use the internet to search on birds and wolves to eventually find the words that she needed to use in her chosen forms of expressions. Because it was important to her, she would remember the spellings much easier.
3. Encourage more internet use! Naturalist is on a variety of chat rooms and forums like Spore, Indigo Forum, Dyscalculia Forum, Deviant Art, etc. Again, use caution and common sense and discuss proper internet safety measures with your kids, and then let them go. Using words to communicate to other people is a huge incentive to write correctly. And on those forums, usually someone else will correct the spelling in a reply, and this provides a concrete example to follow. It’s important to get ideas across, so these corrections are remembered much easier.
4. Encourage computer use. Spell check on the computer is fabulous!
5. Allow them to ask you how to spell words without answering back, “Look it up!”. Don’t do it. Just spell the word, as many times as they ask, as much as you can.
6. Trust that your kids want to be competent spellers and will find a way to do so when left to their own passions. Really trust this. Especially with a kid with LD who also is gifted who also is right brained. For instance, Naturalist cannot use a dictionary. It’s so hard for her. But this is what she does: She reads books. She remembers words on a page that she doesn’t know how to spell. Later, when she’s writing or drawing or needs to use that word, she remembers what page she saw it on and goes to that specific book to copy the word down properly. So, to get it straight, in her mind it’s easier to remember every word on a page of every book she’s ever read than to use a dictionary. It boggles the mind, does it not? But that’s how she rolls. Not being forced to “do” spelling, she’s come up with a way to spell words properly. Not for a grade, not for a test, not for a teacher, but because she just WANTS TO. She wants to take control of her dyslexia and prove that she can do things in spite of it. She wants people to understand her. She doesn’t like the slow spell check process of having to stop and figure a word out all the time, so she remembers better.
7. Get Scribblenauts!!!!
Based around 2D side-scrolling action and word play, the premise of Scribblenauts is simple; quite literally, anything you write, you can use and reuse in the game. Players use the DS’ touch-screen and the in-game notepad/keyboard to help their character, Maxwell, as he moves throughout 220 increasingly difficult levels on his never-ending quest for the star-like “Starites.”
Attaining them requires Maxwell to solve spatially oriented puzzles. To do this players describe objects via the notepad/keyboard, which in turn appear on the game screen and facilitate the starite making its way to Maxwell. There are literally thousands of items in the game, both utilitarian like ladders, ropes, cars and buses, to the outlandish items, such as invisibility cloaks, pirates and black holes.
The game is all about experimentation, imagination and endless replay value as players open their minds to the nearly limitless possibilities that are sure to make Scribblenauts unlike any side-scrolling platformer they have ever played.
So, that’s our spelling suggestions. My kids haven’t done a spelling lesson in almost 3 years, and they’re better spellers because of it. Try it, you’ll see!
read more2e Tuesday::multisensory learning
I have a big mix of friends that read this blog; some homeschoolers, some public schoolers, some private schoolers…some dudes, even…of course, all are awesome. One thing I know is that if you have a 2e kid–creative, right brained, divergent thinking, gifted with significant learning differences–regardless of where they go to school, you are a homeschooler. You have to take their homework and then reteach it so they understand. You have to work, hard, with them to help it make sense and stay relevant. They may go to school every day, but the real learning probably only starts once they’re one on one with you.
With that in mind, here are my favorite resources for learning with this particular learning style. All these have been tried and tested chez Child’s Play, and all are in continual use…some for the last 5 years pretty solidly. Even though we don’t divide our day or ‘homeschool’ into sections (thus, we are unschoolers!), I will here for some clarity, and to help out those that do!
English and writing:
probably one of the most stressful things for a 2e kid and parent to work through–writing for a visual thinker is torture. I love the following resources because it allows kids to think in visual mind maps, type it out, and then with a press of a button it will take the mind map and put it into an outline. With another press of a button, it will take that and form it into a paragraph! These programs can be used across every subject. I started out with this when Naturalist was still in public school (3rd grade) and even though we don’t do ‘school’ anymore, my kids still use this program…it’s that fun!
elementary and middle school:
Kidspiration 3
The visual way to explore and understand words, numbers and concepts. For K-5 learners, Kidspiration develops thinking, literacy and numeracy skills using proven visual learning principles. In reading and writing, Kidspiration strengthens word recognition, vocabulary, comprehension and written expression. With visual math tools, students build reasoning and problem solving skills. Across the curriculum, students express their creativity and thinking with pictures, words and numbers.
for middle school and up:
Inspiration 8.0
Inspiration® 8 is the essential tool students and adults rely on to plan, research and complete projects successfully. With the integrated Diagram and Outline Views, they create graphic organizers, develop ideas and expand topics into writing. As a result, students gain and retain a better understanding of concepts and demonstrate knowledge, improving their performance across the curriculum.
History:
This has the ability to be so FUN and imaginative, and it’s a shame that at school it can be so boring (if it’s taught much at all–the state testing has decreased the time spent talking about art/history/science/music and focused more time and attention on math and english). Multisensory history can be supplemented with lots of things. Puzzles, for one!
and don’t forget all the History board games
I wonder if, instead of boring essays, teachers would ever accept a completed puzzle instead?!
For video/computer games, you can’t go wrong with Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution
Basically, go to Amazon or google, and type in whatever point of history you/your kid is studying, and add the word ‘game’ after it…it’s amazing how many fun things there are to do with history!
Science:
For the most epic science game ever created, look no further than:
Spore
You start as a single cell, and then spend the game evolving into more complex creatures until you are exploring and conquering the universe. It is amazing, and highly playable even though it touches on just about every kind of science imaginable.
Also, if you have a naturalist (like I do!) run and get Zoo Tycoon 2: Ultimate Collection
And again, don’t underestimate the power of science puzzles!
Math:
I kind of covered all this here!
Overall learning:
I know there are a lot of people out there who really don’t like video/computer games, and certainly wouldn’t consider them educational. I am not one of those people. Video games were made by visual spatial thinkers for visual spatial thinkers. I love the intuitive way video games level the difficulty up, so you’re always on the edge of knowing what you’re doing but not knowing what you’re doing. That’s where learning happens…when you’re pushed to really think about things. We have the Wii
But my favorite favorite learning game is hands down Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
So, there’s the top of the top resources for us here at 2e Central. If you have anything to share that I haven’t mentioned here, give it a shout out in the comments…I’m always on the lookout for more!
read more2e Tuesday:: "Not Trying Hard Enough"
For my post this week (late! I know! I’m hopeless!) I’ll draw on something that happened this week to Naturalist in order to highlight the most frustrating aspect of being a 2e, creative learner.
2e, twice exceptional (exceptionally smart along with exceptional learning differences) kids are intense. They work hard, play hard, and think hard. These kids tend to be intense!
One of the greatest injustices of being 2e is that oftentimes their output doesn’t match up with their abilities. Or, rather, it can appear by looking at their schoolwork that they aren’t trying hard or paying attention or focusing. For instance, Naturalist is a beautiful artist but has horrible writing. HORRIBLE. Her penmanship is all over the place, capitalization mixed with lower case, slanted down the page, big and little mixed up. The physical act of writing is a weakness, and many 2e kids struggle with this. Putting her ideas down on paper is a frustrating process (visual, right brain thinkers are trying to process images into words and then into letters, which takes a while!), and she spends twice as long doing it than most kids.
It’s hard to accept the fact that a kid who has a 10th grade vocabulary would struggle with 3rd grade spelling words, or a kid with an encyclopedic knowlege about WWII would be unable to do simple addition. And so, lots of times the kids is blamed for not paying attention or not focusing.
Imagine struggling and working over writing something down…taking longer than anyone else and thinking harder about it…only to be told that it was ‘sloppy’ or ‘not good enough’ or only worth a ‘C’ grade. It would really burst your bubble. It would make an already frustrating experience even that much more painful. And to a kid with a highly developed moral code, it’s incredibly unfair.
This week, Naturalist told me that in a drama class she’s taking (my kids go to a program once a week where they can take elective classes through the public school system), she has written work to turn in. And that her teacher gave her back one of them and told her she didn’t try hard enough on it.
Looking back on her public school years, I think so much of her anxiety and depression came from comments like this. From feeling the discrepancy between knowing how hard she’d worked and then knowing that it wasn’t going to be good enough. I totally played into it. If a teacher told me she needed to work harder, or pay more attention to her worksheets, then that’s what we did. If I could go back, I would change so much of that. I would work something out with the teacher where Naturalist would spend a reasonable amount of time working on something, with a reasonable amount of effort, and the teacher would accept it in whatever form we sent it back…half finished, spelling errors, whatever.
One of the best skills I’ve developed over the last 4 years with Naturalist is the ability to respect and trust her. When she says she’s working hard, even if it doesn’t look like it to me, I back off. If she’s reading at a level that I think should be higher, I keep my mouth shut. If she’s frustrated by something that I *know* she should be able to do, I don’t say, “but this is so easy…”. I respect her learning style…not just the ‘gifted’ parts of it that put her at a higher level than her peers, but also the ‘different’ part of it that sometimes puts her at lower level.
A big part of that is also helping other people, like this drama teacher, respect that as well. Whether it’s through educating them on what a 2e learner is like, or standing up for her, or figuring out what accomodations would work best for her.
And the biggest part of that? Helping Naturalist herself respect it. Because going forward, if she doesn’t respect how she thinks and learns, no one else will either. So I have to keep a check on my frustrations, and expectations, and pressure if I want her to be able to keep a check on hers. Being 2e is a unique challenge–these kids know it and we know it–and our kids don’t need even more negatives from us to add on to it. They need us in their corner, accepting, encouraging, respecting.
2e Tuesday::Getting over it.
I started writing this blog because I felt kind of alone on this journey through homeschooling and learning about 2e kids. Kids that were so gifted at some things, but who struggled so much at others. This became my place to vent, to question, to seek out other people who understood. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of hours in the past 4 years on the internet…googling every phrase about education, child development, learning differences, giftedness, and reform. And now, in a full circle moment, google is sending other people searching those same things, here to my little blog. Which is why I love the questions and comments I read when I get on in the morning. A connection that makes me feel not so alone. So, today’s 2e post comes from a question and comment left for me–I thought it was such a good one, I’m bringing it up here to answer.
Referring to the fact that now I understand different learning styles for my younger kids, but had to learn the hard way with Naturalist, Krishna Leela asked:
Tiffany, Let me ask you one other thing. Now that I work in a completely different way with Swetha and when I see how nicely she responds my heart really goes out for Siva. I really wish I could have done it all with him. Even though I have tried every thing I could do to cover it, I wonder will he ever able to forgive me. How is it for Naturalist . Did she get over it ?
I have those feelings, too. Things are so different in our house now that Naturalist has blazed the way, and there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t wish I could start over with her, knowing what i know now. I watch how expressive and open my other two are, I see how supported and respected their ways of thinking are, and feel so badly that Naturalist didn’t have any of that for such a long long time. I have huge mother guilt over it. However, here’s what Naturalist (13 now) has taught me:
* kids don’t blame as much as we do. Did you do the best you could with what you knew? And did you continue trying, the more information you gathered? That’s the most anyone can do. No one’s perfect, especially parents! We don’t get a nifty manual with our kids, darn it. We just get intuition and lots of love. It’s not for him to forgive you, it’s for you to find forgiveness from yourself. And, when I asked Naturalist if she blamed me for anything, she said, “No, I blamed myself for being so stupid”. Which makes me feel even worse than if she’d have just given me all the blame, actually.
* it’s no use looking backwards. Do I wish I could go back and have a do over with Naturalist? yes, all the time. But all I have is today, and tomorrow, and all the tomorrows going forward. I can use what I know now to make them the best for my kids and myself. I can be present in her life today, and give her all the love, support, encouragement, and positive reinforcement that I didn’t give her for so many years before. It’s all we can do, and it is enough.
* I asked Naturalist if she’s ever gotten over it, her time in school and her time feeling so isolated, stupid, and inferior. She said, “I don’t think you ever get over something like that, but you get past it. You get through it. And you can accept it. I’ve accepted that I’m not as stupid as I thought I was. In most ways I’m smarter. And some things are still really hard, but it’s not because I’m stupid. I just think differently. And that’s OK.”
I asked her specifically what she’d say to you and your worries, and she said:
“Someday he’ll see what was happening then, and compare it with what is happening now, and he’ll appreciate how much you changed just for him.”
I hope we answered this well enough for you, thank you for the question!
read more2e Tuesday::Dancing With Words.
Don’t you hear it? she asked & I shook my head no & then she started to dance & suddenly there was music everywhere & it went on for a very long time & when I finally found words all I could say was thank you. –storypeople
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I’ve had this post in my head and in my heart for a long time, but sometimes I just have to sit and stew with the ideas for a while…either to let them form completely or because they bring up some pretty strong emotions in me that I’m not ready to deal with yet. I think because when I talk about Out Of The Box Thinkers I’m talking about my kids mostly, nothing gets my heartstrings all bunched up like good ‘ole Mama love. And also Mama fear, and Mama anger, and Mama confusion. All of which apply when speaking about kids that don’t fit into any mold or pattern or curriculum or…or…or…well, just don’t seem to fit, period. I have a feeling that if you’re reading this, you know what I’m saying. If we ourselves remain in the box, then all we see is the many ways our kids aren’t fitting in. If we can get out of the box ourselves, then it’s possible to see that the world our children can create is something so blindingly unique and valuable, it’s something to be encouraged and treasured. Protected, even.
I’ll take a specific example from Naturalist, and her writing. In school, writing was a source of constant trauma for her. Hell, for both of us. I would sit there at night, watching her painstakingly work over writing down words and sentences and paragraphs correctly. And when I say painstakingly, I’m emphasizing the PAIN part of it. I wish I had some work to reference, but as I shared last week, I threw all of it away. But a good example of one of her sentences is something like this:
eny boDe wil wont! to Et choclt
which is…translated…
Anybody will want to eat chocolate!
Her dyslexia made it a struggle to remember spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and even word order correctly. She is an extreme example of this, but any creative, right brain kid…even if not dyslexic, will struggle with this.
If you are dealing with someone that thinks visually, in pictures, then their thoughts are not in words. When you give a writing prompt about “Think about a time you were at a Fair”, then the verbal, left brain kid will think and write in the exact same form…
“First I walked in and ate a pie. Then I saw a big horse, and next I rode on some rides. It was fun!”
Visual kids don’t think like that. If you have them remember about a time they were at a fair, they see it all in their minds eye. Vividly! It’s not a sequential though process, it’s more like a snapshot or a movie…they can taste the pie, smell the horse, feel the bumpy ride, hear the laughter. How do you order a picture? How do you get all the detail of a movie down on a blank page? It’s overwhelming.
I can always tell a visual thinker from a sequential thinker by watching their eyes. If you ask a visual thinker a question, they tend to see it in their mind and then you can watch their eyes track what they’re seeing. So, they tend not to maintain direct eye contact but look around a bit before answering the question. A sequential left brain thinker doesn’t have a picture in their mind to ‘see’ so their eyes don’t move around that much. Sometimes my visual picture is so strong, I start gesturing and pointing in the direction the image is in my mind, even though no one else can see it.
So how to protect this kind of thinking, because I’ll tell you, Naturalist became anxious and depressed when she had to write. She grew tired of getting back ‘zero’s’ on her spelling tests, and low grades on her homework for misspellings, lack of punctuation, and very little form to her sentences. She began to shut down at school, and would rather get yelled at for not doing an assignment than trying 1,110 percent and getting it back marked up with red corrections and a low grade.
However, at home she was a very expressive kid. She was always writing me poems, notes, and stories. I was so tired of working with her on her homework, that when she did stuff at home (full of errors!) I didn’t have the heart or energy to correct her. So, I just let her create without saying anything about the technical parts of writing.
When we stopped public school and started homeschooling, we followed a curriculum for writing (since I felt I had to get her to ‘catch up’ with all the other normal kids she was so far behind, right?! right?! It makes sense!). I drilled and tested and tried to force her to learn all the spelling and punctuation rules.
It didn’t take long before I realized that she had stopped all forms of writing…even the illustrated poems that I loved so much.
When we started unschooling, the writing lessons were the first to go. Slowly, her writing passion returned. Like so much about these kids I noticed a dual nature to her. I realized that while her visual thinking made the act of writing extremely difficult, it also had the opposite affect and made her a fantastic author. For the past 2 years, she spends the time at night when she’s awake while everyone else is asleep (also another indicator of an OOTBThinker…wacky internal clock) writing fiction. She’s written hundreds and hundreds of pages of fiction by this point. Currently, she has a story that has taken on a life of its own, and she writes probably 4-5 hours a day, plus whatever she writes at night. It’s a novel. She prints off the Chapters for Todd and I to read as she finishes them.
Her spelling? horrible. Sentence structure? a little better, but still shaky. Paragraph form? not so good.
But the story? the characters? the development of the world in the book? Amazingly detailed, descriptive, and amazing. The worlds she sees in her minds eye are incredible, and the beauty she shares in them sometimes makes me cry….simply because I remember a time when she was so traumatized she never wanted to pick up a pencil again. All this expression would have been lost. Lost! And why? Because of spelling? rules? What a waste.
If it’s a question between expressing thought and feeling, or proper technical writing, always err on the side of expression. Whether in public school, homeschool, or whatever, protect your child’s freedom of expression. Work with the teacher or with yourself to give grades that can allow the technical, tricky parts not to count. It is a shame when these kids are silenced from sharing their own beautiful dance with words because rules, forms and conventions get in the way.
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Other stories and resources:
Stories of other dyslexic authors and their struggles here
Terry Goodkind, dyslexic author, bio here
read more
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