Living with Learning Disabilities

We have been working with various specialists to help Chee-Chee with his learning disabilities. In the process we have learned much about how complicated our brains work, the visual, auditory input and processing that must work in sync to do such simple tasks as memorizing a set of numbers or remembering a sequence of instructions. I know Chee-Chee is a smart kid, but until he can learn to do the things other people take for granted, he will always be made to feel dumb by others and his harshest critic, himself.

These past six months have seen us taking a detour into the land of alternative therapies: funky exercises, eye patch and ear plug, strange eyeglasses, massages, etc. Although I do not understand the rational behind some of these things, I accept that there are fields of research I know nothing about, and the most important is that my child can benefit from whatever people have learned rather than grope in the dark, feeling left behind, as many children have done in the past. (Both my brother and my husband had been disparaged by teachers, peers, and even their parents as children for their dyslexia and/or other learning disabilities.)

I praise God for leading me into homeschooling even before I knew anything about Chee-Chee's learning disabilities. God knows all about my children and what's best for them. Today, with Chee-Chee's newly fitted, blue-tinted glasses, I heard him read, smoothly and easily, for the first time--the way a book is meant to be read. Like a miner taking a deep breath when coming out of a dark and soot-filled tunnel, I sat there letting this bright and fresh realization wash over me: my Chee-Chee, at the age of almost ten, is reading--really, truly, finally reading.