Did I Just Not Teach Him Well Enough?
No one believes me when I tell them something is up with Shane.
But something is up with Shane.
Since no one has come up with any kind of new “disorder” or “learning ailment,” I have been on my own, trying to figure it out. I have taken the Asperger’s quizzes online about two dozen times, because Shane’s “issue” so closely mimics Asperger’s – in some ways.
Asperger’s is high-functioning autism, and ADHD is on the autism spectrum. And I know the “spectrum” runs in the family. So when I hear Shane talking or thinking in such a literal manner, I think, it MUST be Asperger’s.
And he’s a synaesthete – he experiences letters as colors. This is a trait that is much more prevalent in people with autism-spectrum disorders.
In other ways, it seems impossible for Shane to have any “disorder.” He’s functioning beautifully – except when he’s utterly baffled by something that is so obvious to other people.
Did I just not teach him well enough when he was younger?
I thought I’d nailed it with “Nonverbal Learning Disorder.” But there are symptoms of NVL that he doesn’t have – just enough to make me wonder.
Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that he’s got very serious challenges understanding subtext, or body language, or reading between the lines. For years, he identified people by the color of their hair – and didn’t realize they had different faces. More than anywhere else, this is going to hurt him socially.
So since no one believes me, and no one else (except his kindergarten teacher who helped to diagnose him with a vision processing disorder) seems to notice the issue, I am always on my own.
Then I got an email from Shane’s English teacher. Shane had gotten a C – which is a very low grade for Shane – on his quarterly assessment. When I asked why, this is what his English teacher had to say:
I went back and analyzed Shane’s test response and identified two areas of weakness:
1.) Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different context, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading.
2.) Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Simply put, Shane needs to first and foremost understand figurative language. From both his test and my classroom observations, Shane gets the overall picture of what the text is about, but can’t quite explain clearly how he came to the conclusion. … Inferencing is also an important skill to work on and he can accomplish this with the more he reads and THINKS about the reading.
Inferences, figurative language – this all relates back to Shane’s overwhelming ability to be literal. Whatever it is, he needs to work on it.
So I’m trying to “train” him through – of all things – YouTube. I’m finding videos related to each little piece of what might ail him.
But it’s incredibly frustrating. For the first time in my life, I find myself without any ideas on how to help my child. Maybe this is why I spent so much time concentrating on how to help Dylan – because ADHD is so well-studied and documented.
I ran into an old friend one day who said that she’d just found out that her son has Asperger’s – at the age of 32. Asperger’s wasn’t a “thing” when her son was younger, but now that he’s 32, he’s finally able to be diagnosed and properly treated.
I sure hope I don’t have to wait until Shane is 32 to figure out how to help.