Grasshopper New Media Presents...

My son turns sixteen in a few days, and the admiration I have for him is boundless.

Let me tell you a story: I fell in love with my wife just about 8 years ago, when her divorce was being finalized. Among other things that resulted from her first marriage was the conception of two beautiful children. The oldest was a very likable lad who I was drawn to instantly (they both were, but this story is about my son). However, when I arrived on scene, he was eight years old and not doing well in school. Unfortunately, his father is not exactly one for vision or long-term thinking, and had basically given up on him. To be frank, allow me to quote him - After a few moments of being unable to teach his son how to use a fork and knife when the boy was three or four, my wife’s ex-husband said, “Well, it’s clear he’s not college material.”

And it got worse. When I showed up, the boy was not doing well in school. He still couldn’t read, and would get greatly frustrated if the slightest task became difficult. I did my best to work with him, sitting with him every afternoon or evening, attempting to walk him through Hooked On Phonics. But it just wasn’t taking.

Undaunted, I set about researching this, taking the boy’s symptoms and seeing if I could find a fix. Eventually I put all the pieces together: He was dyslexic.

Now, I’m not a professional, so we brought him in to a specialist, and the following happened, and I’m not making it up:

My soon-to-be wife, my soon-to-be son, and I sat down in the specialist’s conference room and began the Dyslexia consultation. At first it was chit-chat and a few questions, clearly adult talk. The boy got bored (rightly so) and asked if he could draw on the big whiteboard in the room. We adults continued our boring talk and the eight year-old began to draw a simple basketball hoop. Except instead of drawing it from the standard viewpoint of either straight ahead or straight from the side, our little lad drew it as though he were looking at it from above and to the right. Our specialist looked over at the drawing, blinked, looked back over at us and said, “I don’t need to hear any more, he’s Dyslexic.”

So we gave him to the specialist, where they did a solid week of intensive, one-on-one Dyslexia training. And as if by magic, a change occurred in this little boy that none of us expected. He’s just turning sixteen and a few days ago we received a letter from the high school, informing us that he’d made honor roll.

It turns out that Dyslexia is a gift.

(*tune in next week for Part Two, where we learn why Dyslexia is a gift)

by Stu Mark

[tags]parents, parenting, kids, children, Dyslexia, gifted, school, education, reading, learning disability, birthday, reflection, growth, pride, admiration[/tags]

Photo graciously provided by jbelluch, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved