I wasn't going to try and post tonight, but as soon as I read my friend Cindy's wonderful post about family I thought no, I have to share that. Cindy's two adopted girls have been home less than a year and she has made remarkable progress with them. She has also done great at instilling all her kids with a solid idea of what is a family, and why is it important. Amazing the insights they have.
We watched the best movie tonight, and we didn't quite finish it, but it's fascinating. It's an HBO movie, but I don't get HBO. We ordered it from Netflix. It's called Temple Grandin. Temple is a real person who has autism, but is able to get along very well in the world, and is a respected veterinarian. Watching the film illustrate how she visually learns is just fascinating. Even if you don't know anyone autistic [I don't] it's just a wonderful film.
Maybe it's because I come from a family filled with teachers [my mother, grandmother, two uncles, etc.] I am fascinated by how people learn. Michael learns through listening. I can read him a chapter out of his science book and he will make an A on the test the next day. Since I started reading to him at night, his reading comprehension has just soared. He listens to me, but he follows along in the text, too.
Michael also comprehends abstractions quite easily. We were reading tonight and I read that Shakespeare posited that events are not themselves good or bad, but people assign those labels to them. He immediately got it, and made me stop reading so we could discuss it. I shared that I think few things in life are black or white, morally, but there are many shades of grey. Makes life challenging.
Alesia is just the opposite, a visual learner. It's also very frustrating because she's a concrete thinker and cannot go anywhere abstract - the future is an abstract concept to her, which I suspect is partly to blame for her current adventures away from home. She won't think about tomorrow because it doesn't exist for her. I have wondered at times if she is a tiny bit autistic.
I think I think visually, but that's how I understand abstractions. I see the days of the week in my mind, in a chart. Ditto for months of the year. I taught myself arithmetic because I count points on the numbers - for instance, 4 has 4 points, and 8 has 8 points. I worked that out as a kid. When I learned multiplication I saw the numbers on a line, is the only way I can think to explain it.
My brother can learn almost anything from a book. He taught himself home plumbing and other repair work from a book he found. My dad was the same, he learned from reading. He took a course as a young man in speed-reading and he told me once he could speed read like nobody's business. I believed it.
I don't know how my mother learns, but she has a giant IQ. One year bruce bought her an entire set of books about all the great philosophies of the world and she read it just for fun. She used to read in class and if the teacher asked her to repeat what was said mom could do it. She can read and listen to something else at the same time and understand and remember both. She used to wait and study for a test the night before, crack open the book for the first time, and she made top grades.
Leave a comment if you would like to share how you or someone you know learns. It's fascinating to me.
Michael got his school picture today and I was delighted with it. I guess it's probably one of the last pictures of him without glasses... He already looks so grown up and handsome, at least to me.
