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.

Darwin is not Our Enemy

I am going to tread on dangerous ground by saying I am not against the theory of evolution. This is one of those areas that are really sensitive with homeschoolers and American evangelical Christians, many of whom are quite adamant about a literal, scientific approach to interpreting the Bible. Often I try to keep quiet when such subjects come up, in an effort to avoid a heated debate. However, whether one believes evolution to be true or not, I think it behooves our children to understand both sides of the debate because, like it or not, sooner or later they will have to wrestle with data that will contradict everything they've learned in school.

I believe our God is bigger than evolution, Big Bang, and everything else scientists can throw at us, because everything human can discover is merely something God has long created. Granted, sometimes scientists get it wrong, but we have to keep an open mind and examine their proofs and accept that perhaps this is the best explanation we have to date.

I took the boys to a Darwin exhibit at UC Berkeley--yes, I did. They had a wonderful time. Chee-Chee recalled every little thing he saw: the finches, the albatross, the beetles, the preserved iguana, and the giant tortoise shells. He also loved the dinosaur skeletons and prehistoric fossils at the Life Sciences building. Natural history is such an exciting subject for children if only we will allow them to see, hear, and test everything. It's a shame that few Christians get into this field because there is a void and a negative bias in our curriculum.

I wish there were more scientists like Frances Collins who can demonstrate to the world that no matter what scientific theory we have about the history of living things, we still need to put our trust in God.* I wish Christians would stop treating Darwin as a public enemy and displaying those silly car decals. I wish "Christian" science textbooks would stop sounding so defensive and just get on with actual data. I wish this debate will finally become irrelevent as in Europe.** I wish this post will not turn some people off, but it probably will.



* For an honest presentation of the subject, read The Language of God by Frances Collins. If you are intrigued after that, read Coming to Peace with Science by Darrel Falk. Both are written by evangelical Christians.

** Read C. S. Lewis and you'll find that he implicitly embraces the theory of evolution. Read also Alister McGrath, especially Dawkin's God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life, a rebuttle to the evolutionist atheist. You'll find that McGrath does not take issue with the theory of evolution, but the problem of trying to argue an atheistic position from evolution.

Here's Where Charlotte Mason and I Agree

I read a little about Charlotte Mason's methods a long time ago. Although I liked her philosophy, I really couldn't follow anyone's methods but my own. However, one point she mentioned did resonate with me all these years. She insisted that children should get a chance to go outside and enjoy nature everyday. Although this is hard to do from a practical standpoint, I whole-heartedly agree that nature is one of the best teachers for our children, and that love of and fascination with nature must be instilled early in a child's life. I know many adults who, having been brought up in the city and never given a chance to appreciate nature while young, cannot comprehend the kind of joy and satisfaction many of us feel when immersed in nature. Theirs is a kind of superficial acknowledgement--Yes, it's beautiful. Yes, it is wondrous.--but not a deep-felt joy and abandonment, the kind of love and appreciation that make you want to "kiss the ground" and wrap yourself in its folds. They cannot understand Thoreau and his Walden.

I am grateful my sons love nature, perhaps in different degrees. During our afternoon stroll through Yosemite Valley, Poly could not stop marveling at how the light of the setting sun accentuated the fall colors in the meadows and the trees. He responded by snapping numerous, striking photographs. Chee-Chee's way of loving nature was to rush headlong into the open fields and to pick up whatever caught his eye: a pebble, a dried up twig, a leaf. He wanted to finger the dirt, climb the rocks, immerse in the leaf piles.

I hope our week-long vacation in Yosemite will stay long in their memory. I hope it makes up for all the days we did not go out of the house when burdened by school work. I hope they will always cherish a beautiful sunset and take notice of fall leaves and cloud formations. I hope they will always feel at home, right here in God's canvas.

Another Homeschooler of Note

We are in Yosemite National Park, taking a needed family break from packing. Yesterday we stopped by the Ansel Adams Gallery at the Village. While the kids and I admired the artistry of the many poster and photographic prints on the walls, hubby browsed the autobiography of Ansel Adams. It turns out Ansel Adams was homeschooled. After unsuccessful stints at several schools, he was taken home and taught by his father and aunt. (Adams later reflected that he may have suffered from hyperactivity and dyslexia.) As a result, he received an education in the classics, and he becamed well-accomplished in music. Hubby remarks that Adams' writing is both eloquent and funny. Obviously, his lack of a "formal" education had not detracted from his ability to communicate.

Ansel Adams' life, his success as a photography legend, is a reminder to me that our children's career paths can take on their own unique shapes. Sometimes as homeschoolers we get so wrapped up in the academics: the ABCs and the times table and the historical dates of this and that. Yet, there are so many ways a person can contribute to the world without excelling at the traditional academic subjects. I am not suggesting that we do away with the traditional subjects for our children, but I want to remember that success in these things is not the only way to succeed in life. Not everyone will grow up to be lawyers and engineers and doctors--thank God for that! We need beauty and creativity and laughter and inspiration. We need artists and entertainers and wilderness adventurers! It's true that such lives can be less predictable, but what of it?

Watching Chee-Chee come alive in the trails, running, laughing, blabbering, climbing, and just being utterly uninhibited and happy, I know the wild is where he belongs. He might spend his life studying rocks and digging up bones. He might chase after beauty with a camera to the most inaccessible places on earth. In the end, it is the person I am cultivating, his curiosity and understanding, his character, his faith and moral responsibility. Everything else must take a distant backseat.