Willow Tree

Well I Guess I Needed That!

I ended up sleeping for 12 hours last night. 12 hrs!!! I haven't slept 12 hours straight...well, I never slept 12 hours straight. Ask my mom. She use to leave food out for me by my bed so I'd stop waking her up at night. I guess I was a bit more sleep deprived than I was willing to admit.

In other news; I'm going to speak with my daughter's teacher tomorrow. Deep breaths, deep breaths. I made the appointment; there are some things I want to discuss, but I'm nervous anyway.

The Artist is dyslexic; the diagnosis was made by me but I have every reason to believe, based on my prior experience with my other children, that her odd learning gaps were not within the normal range of learning. For example; she counted and spoke quite early in life---but she couldn't name the number 7, written in isolation (as on a digital clock) unless she counted up to the number 7. Since the number was in isolation, or in fact along with other numbers in an unordered pattern, it was clear she understood the number, that it represented a concept of 7 somethings etc. etc, she simply could not recall its name. She had similar problems with naming other what should have been familiar noun words.

Similarly, I believe she might be ADD as well; she always losing things, can't organize herself at all, loses focus easily. I see myself in her as this was definitely me when I was younger. My teachers' main complaints about me as a youngster were that I wasn't living up to my potential and that I was always daydreaming. At least in this area I have an advantage over my parents; ADD was less well known when I was growing up and I don't know if at that period in time people realized that girls were subject to it as well.

Another advantage my daughter has is that she is not expected to do as well because she doesn't speak Hebrew well yet at all. While she understand much more than I believe the teacher realizes, her speaking ability and reading/understanding ability in Hebrew lags far behind the rest of the children in her class. That her mind might drift in class is to be expected when in fact most of what the teacher is speaking about is completely over her head in terms of simply understanding the language.

This second advantage is also a disadvantage of course as well; are some of the difficulties she is having in acquiring the language because she is shy, or because she is possibly (I would say probably) ADD? How much of an impact does her learning disabilities have on her acquiring a new language that neither her father nor I speak well at home?

So, there are many questions that I must pose to the teacher and just as many difficulties in trying to make this form of education work for my daughter; scores on the report care being much less important than her overall sense of well being. And I will have to do it primarily in Hebrew, as I'm not certain how well her teacher understands English. This is bound to be a rather interesting interview.

Posted by Rachel Ann at October 30, 2004 09:57 PM