(227) Mirror / L. Disabilities 15

                                              Learning disability      
-- This is a rewrite of Learning disability 1 - mirror --

A few months before my daughter started Year One, we moved into the suburb of Silver Spring. There I met a neighbour whose eldest child, Cassandra, was registered to enter the same school mine was going to join. Cassandra's mum readily agreed to fetch my daughter to and from school. In exchange for that, I offered to sit with and help the two girls do homework two nights a week.

Early on in that school year, as I walked out to chat with my neighbour as she dropped my daughter, Cassandra was weeping in the car. Later that evening I found Cassandra was distressed over having to bring some money to school the next day. She was supposed to pay her homeroom teacher something like twelve dollars and fifty cents and then use the remainder to purchase a few items from the book shop.

Instead of doing homework that night, I actually encouraged Cassandra and work out a way for her to carry out the errand with some help from my daughter. We role-played the two scenes, first with myself as the homeroom teacher and my daughter as Cassandra paying fee. Next with my son as the book shop assistant and  my daughter as Cassandra buying things. After that, we wrote down what Cassandra had to say, we helped her in rehearsing the two scenes a few times. The following day Cassandra was able to carry out what we taught her with a little assistance from my daughter.

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Fast forward twelve years. I was listening to a new friend, Cathy, telling me how she had "freeze", and as a result either refuse the purchase of a necessity or end up buying something  she had no earthly use of when faced with a fast talking salesman. I was really half listening to her. The other half  of my mind was running a search and match routine... Her distress was very familiar... I have seen that before... Ah! I have seen that in Cassandra that fateful evening in the car.

Could it be that my friend was like Cassandra, but she didn't overcome her minor learning difficulty in her childhood? Therefore as a grown woman, she was having problems handling a complex procedure involving multi-step decisions and negotiation?

Let us swing back to Cassandra. That little girl was a really smart child. Yet a little learning difficulty could drive her to tears. She dreaded facing two adults, having to handle money and dealing with time limit (with recess lasting twenty minutes).

* Post one was written more than a year back. Comparing the two versions, I took Elizabeth's advice to keep both so you would see the diamond from two facets.

* coral clock 3d screensaver-45155 from brothersoft.com