Taking the Scenic Route

At the baby shower I discovered that one of my cousin’s children, who is around 8 years old, has similar issues to Zane.  Poor Zane…he hardly had a chance.  He has these issues coming from both parents.

I think the main problem is that he is the extreme end of a visual spatial thinker.  You have heard the song “A picture is worth a thousand words”.  Turn it on it’s head to “It takes a thousand words to describe a picture”.  I think that is why he is having problems.  He thinks in pictures and it is hard to put into words.  

When he was entirely pre-verbal and throwing a massive tantrum, I would give him crayons and take him to the kitchen floor.  (he drew there a lot because it was easy to clean for me and I couldn’t afford to keep him in the amount of paper he would have required)  He would start out almost stabbing the floor, making big angry strokes.  As he drew, he would look up at me to see if I was watching, and would continue drawing.  Eventually the angry strokes would smooth out and the colors would change to brighter shades, and his mood would improve.  We totally connected, but certainly not in a typical way.  I think it is experiences like this that make it so much easier for me to understand him than most people can.  I can almost see the pictures he has in his head, almost hear them.  It is a way of thinking that is very comfortable to me.  It is like going home, and the world of words is one where I have to work a bit more.  I have always worked to give words to his world, but I fear that I didn’t do enough because I understood his world too well. 

I don’t even know if I am making sense here.  The words are getting in the way of the pictures in my head.  lol.

Back to what I started with (before the tangent).  Now that I have a better idea what to look for (since my stack of books arrived from Amazon and many hours of googling), I see a lot of ways he has compensated for some of his weaknesses, and why I missed some of the things.

The big physical thing I missed was a delay in fine motor skills.  The question they use to weed that out is “can he draw” type questions.  Well, yes, he is way ahead of the curve on the drawing.  However, if you hand him a piece of paper and a pencil, he would work to get you to draw for him.  (and get really upset if you don’t)  If you hand him some sidewalk chalk and a large area, he will have a ball drawing.  He has a rougher time with drawing the smaller the drawing instrument is.  This is true for writing the alphabet too.  Given a large enough space to draw, he can form the letters quite easily, and has been able to do so for a long time.  However, you limit him to the small space of a writing tablet and he is toast.  A similar problem with puzzles.  His ability to happily put together progressively larger puzzles hit a plateau when I couldn’t find any more puzzles with big enough pieces.  It is all but impossible to find a puzzle over 50 pieces (and pretty tough over 35 pieces) that has pieces larger than around 2 inches each.  I think he would love a puzzle with a lot of pieces if I could just find one.

Now that we recognize that he is struggling with that, we are more able to consciously incorporate some play into his world that will work on his fine motor skills.  For instance, we got a few new Thomas tracks that are elevated, which means he has to get the tracks and supports all lined up right to play with them.  He is loving the new pieces and will spend a lot of time in deep concentration working to make the supports line up so that the tracks work correctly. 

I am also learning to use the books and flashcards (he has a fascination with the ‘baby einstein’ flashcards for some reason) in a new way that seems to be making a difference. I am hoping to find even more strategies when I get with the pros, but even this slight shift seems to be improving things.  I can sure see his brain working in a more productive way now that I am more aware of how he is perceiving the information.  

It is nice to be moving forward instead of treading water.  I could tell things weren’t quite clicking, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.  Now that I can see a bit better, I am able to help him more and it is rewarding.