<p>I wanted to quickly pop in and say that I have been reading up on visual spatial learners, and I can see that there are other things about my son that I did not consider. </p>
<p>For example, my son has beautiful cursive writing, but when his print writing is terrible. One article said that printing is left brained, whereas cursive is right brained, and visual spatial learners are basically right brained. The mother also said in her article that her sons could spell well orally, but would not be able to do the same on paper. She noted that her sons were perfectionistic, and that her sons would think of elaborate sentences, but that their ability to write those words down was be overwhelming.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www3.telus.net/giftedcanada/wrtout.PDF[/url]”>http://www3.telus.net/giftedcanada/wrtout.PDF</a> </p>
<p>She also discussed that her children could do mental math even though they had difficulty with showing their process. </p>
<p>She also talked of her sons problems with writing utensils, which I found interesting, because yesterday my son told me that his hand hurts when he writes. I told him that everyone’s hand hurts after they write for awhile, and I thought to myself “Geez, he doesn’t like to be put out for anything!” But now I wonder if I should have given it more thought. </p>
<p>The mother also says timed tests are a problem. That has been one of the teacher’s complaints about my son. She said that one day, he had answered 1 question on his science test in 50 minutes. But when she came around and noticed it, he got cracking and answered the other 9 in 15 minutes. He got a 90. This was again attributed to “behavior” and “he had the book in front of him, he just had to look it up”, but his answer to me was “That first question was hard”. </p>
<p>One thing that my son has done that has caused me to be annoyed is that he doesn’t take his math problems one at a time, but actually notices the problems at the bottom of the page that he thinks that he cannot answer. I have actually gotten mad and told him “focus on the first problem, worry about that one when you get to it”, because I felt that if he at least completes everything else, he’ll be ok. But maybe this is part of how he is, that he sees everything at once, processes the problems, and then gets hung up on the problem and never gets credit for the easy stuff that he could have done.</p>
<p>Another article said that many visual spatial children have a concurrent auditory processing problem. I have been reading that such children tend to be very physically and emotionally sensitive, and there is a genetic component. My daughter has an auditory processing problem (a neurological disability), was diagnosed. She also had a very bad speech problem. She spent her early years getting speech and AIS services, but then in the 7th grade she won the spelling bee, her grades were in the high 80’s-low 90’s, and they discontinued it. After puberty, I noticed that her speech would degrade again during PMS. She was very good at math. When she went into AP and Honors History/English classes, she took a VERY LONG time writing her papers. Poor organization was one factor in her disability. But when I went to the guidance office to tell them that we thought that her auditory difficulties had been aggravated by puberty, and that perhaps she should get a 504 Plan before going to college, the school psychologist said “Her grades are too high”. My daughter’s grades at the time (Freshman/Sophmore year) were only low 90’s. Now she works her tail off and is sleep deprived, but she gets high 90’s. I can’t help but think that my daughter may have done better all along if given the proper support, whatever that is.</p>
<p>Sometimes I have thought that I might be a high functioning autistic. I think that it is pretty obvious from my posts that I have no language issues (in fact, my career is research and writing intensive). But I do have some issues of my own. I have an intolerance to learning by listening. I think that I only noticed in because I was in college and the work was much harder and I had so much at stake. It was there that I realized that I needed to write down/type everything that the teacher said to retain it. I also rewrote what I read in my books. And developed formulas. Also, to this day, I am very sensitive to light and certain sounds. In college, I had to wear earplugs for tests because I almost failed once because of someone’s gum chewing. Heels clicking on floors, basically soft repetitive sounds. I actually saw a psychologist about this 15 years ago, it was so intrusive to my life, but she had no answers. I now think that this may have been caused by my amblyopia. Basically, I was nearsighted in one eye, farsighted in the other, so my brain shut down vision to my weaker eye. Since the brain basically rewired itself, and there is no cure. They say that you have to get to it really young and patch the strong eye to stop it. My problems with noises started when I was about 5, which would have been about the age when the brain would have been rewired for the ambylopia. I wear earplugs at the dinner table and to bed. I’ve also gone through periods during pregnancy where my skin was intolerant to touch. </p>
<p>About estimating. Back in the days when you had to actually key in prices, I was a cashier. It was a pain to “void”, so when customers would tell me how much they had, I think that’s when I started adding things in my head to avoid going over. So I started adding in my head, and I’d be breaking that down into functions of 10 and the easiest numbers as I went along. Even adding something like 1.63 + .49, I’d just think of it as “1.63+.40=2.03+.09=2.12”. I’m sure that there are people who can actually visualize numbers lined up to add and subtract, the way they teach you on paper, but I’m not one of them. But with this method of seeing things in 10’s, knowing the basic times tables 0-9 cold, and addition and subtraction 0-10 cold, I was eventually multiplying double digits times each other in my head. To this day, I can eyeball my shopping cart and can tell how much is in there within a few dollars.</p>
<p>Anyhow, my conference is tonight. I am going to read more on visual spatial learning, and I think that maybe I should focus my discussion on the conference on asking the teacher to try to read up on this as well and implement some techniques with him.</p>