Monday, September 29, 2008

Super Memory

My oldest son has this super memory, and it's not even memorized on purpose. It's like he just memorizes things word for word from the 1st time and even only time he hears something or reads something.

I used to find it very interesting when he would bring home these speech homework sheets and he was supposed to read the story and then tell me back the story in his own words. He couldn't do it--that is, he couldn't summarize. He would have only read these little stories once, and then not even glancing at the paper, he would word for word recite line by line the 2,3,4 paragraph little stories. It just blew my mind.

I remember him (well, and still now) reading these super science fiction or fantasy novels with hundreds of pages and then having someone ask him about what he's reading with me waving my hands NO NO behind him. Why? Because he will tell you in detail chapter after chapter and chapter and it might take an hour of your time when all you were looking for was an "it's about dragons" answer.

I write this post, because just yesterday as we were sitting at the dinner table going around asking about what we learned at church, as we do on Sundays, he once again astonished me.

He had read some scriptures and he was quoting me word for word this super long scripture. I asked him if that's what he did in class--memorize the verses, but he said no, they just read through it once!

How can he do that? It's almost as if his brain is like some kind of a computer database that can just recall exactly any information that it is given. It's amazing. It really is.

Monday, September 15, 2008

The Gifted Child with Asperger's

So, our #1 was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome a couple years ago. For those of you who are not sure what it is, just say it's like smartness, but with quirks. Actually, the reason we went to have him all checked out in the first place was by direction of his teacher and the school.

#1 was so so smart, but when he went to talk or write it was just terrible. He knew all the answers, but he couldn't get them out. He couldn't write fast or clearly at all, and when he spoke it came out in repeated phrases almost like a stutter, but in sentence chunks not just syllables. His motor skills were awkward, he walked on his toes, tripped alot, seemed oblivious to our talking to him sometimes.....

This was a long drawn out process to figure things out, but in the end we discovered that #1 might be genius as they test, but he can't process the information fast enough. It's like you can ask him a question and he'll raise his hand to answer, but when you call on him it takes his brain an extra minute to process it to make it come out in words. Or, if you want him to write the answer it takes extra time to process to come out by handwriting and even then it is almost unreadable.

SO---what does this mean? It means you've got a super smart boy who can't express himself and may appear stubborn, lazy, or even dumb at times.

We met with his new teacher early this year and gave her this great guideline we found on the web for teachers at
http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/teachers_guide.html

Anyway, all is great to have a smart kid, but how will he live up to his full potential when he can't write fast enough or neat enough, or he can't respond quickly enough, or keep up in class? It's not because he's not smart. It's this whole processing delay and a lot of other things (many social misunderstandings, not able to cue in on things, etc)....but what do you do? What can you do?

Everyday is a new battle to see what will work or not for him. It's just so tough to see how smart your kid is, but wonder if the world will ever be able to see it too.

For more insight on our struggles with Asperger's Syndrome, we've created another blog at www.ourlifewithaspergers.blogspot.com