Hope's Story By Marcia Colpan
My daughter, Hope, has what I have come to know is a common learning problem, visual perception difficulties. Often mistaken for dyslexia or ADD, she has none of the more traumatic problems that are associated with those conditions. However, she does demonstrate consistent problems with discriminating between b and d or p and q. The number three will often be written backwards. Right and left have very little meaning for her. The face of a clock is a muddled mess. She has taken almost three times as long to integrate lateral and directionality skills as her classmates and has demonstrated problems in visual motor integration in such areas as copying printed material from one place to another accurately in a timed situation.
These difficulties produced almost insurmountable problems during first grade when she had to learn to read. The problems were further complicated by her extremely well developed auditory skills. Since she had learned long before we did that she could not trust her eyes, she had developed auditory skills that bordered on total recall. The teacher would read a story to the class prior to teaching them to read it. As soon as Hope heard the story, she had it down. She was able to hide her inability to read until almost second grade when the length of the stories increased to the point where she was unable to repeat verbatim the story. However, the recall was still so strong that she was able to recount 99% of the written material's substance when asked.
Since she was performing at an average level in school and was not a discipline problem, the school decided that remediation was unnecessary and allowed her to struggle on her own through sixth grade even though it often took her three hours to accurately produce twenty minutes worth of homework. Meetings and discussions with the teachers were ineffective. Either they discounted the independent report of the specialist or they simply felt that since she was able to maintain a C average without any extra work on their part that they had other needier students to assist. It was a difficult and frustrating time for all involved.
I had discussed the problem I was having with a friend that was a karate instructor. It was suggested that she try some basic karate and included relaxation exercises. The karate was not to her liking, but the relaxation exercises proved to be worth more than all the special instruction in the world. She would kneel on the floor with her hands palm down on her thighs. Then she would inhale slowly counting to ten and then exhale counting to ten. The first time, she sat for about one minute. By the time she had finished her lessons with the instructor, she was sitting for 15 minutes at a time. When she would finish, she would be relaxed, focused and totally calm.
The first time I noticed the difference in school was when I attended a special class where they were watching a presentation by the teacher. Every other child was moving, whispering, wiggling, and giggling. My daughter sat perfectly still with her full attention on the teacher's face and her hands laying relaxed in her lap. She was absolutely beautiful. She was serene and poised and everyone in the room noticed her. Later the teacher asked me what we were doing. Hope had always been particularly active during demonstrations of any kind. Since visual input was difficult for her to understand, she would become restless during presentations and become extremely active. All I could think of was the relaxation exercises that the karate instructor had taught her.
By fourth grade, Hope's grades had begun to improve. She was actually reading and had learned to harness the amazing auditory recall into a useful tool that worked for her instead of against her. The teachers finally admitting that there might be a problem began to ask her spelling questions orally instead of in a written format. Unfortunately, the greater emphasis on mathematics now became the enemy. If the answer was 56 she was just as likely to write down 65. If she did this in a problem where the five should be carried, she would of course carry the six. It became a new nightmare. We purchased math programs for the computer at home and she spent hours on drill teaching her fingers and her brain to work together. Whenever she became agitated or frustrated, there was always the relaxation exercise.
This year, Hope entered Junior High. She has learned to control her problem and to work with it to an amazing degree. She has learned to read a clock and has developed organizational strategies that overcome her shortcomings. She has discovered a high degree of talent as an artist that landed her second place in the first contest she ever entered. At twelve, her poise and abilities are often mistaken for a young adult of fifteen. She is on the honor roll and is carrying an overall GPA of 92.71. It wasn't easy, and it isn't over. I just look behind us at all the hurdles we've already overcome and see the ones in front of us as being small in comparison.
