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| When Letters Turn Into Words |
I have lived with a most amazing storyteller for almost eight years.
Her stories started when she began to talk at the age of three. Included were the cutest little words like "Burr-Day" and "Dunkle Dave" and "lower it up". She told stories about baby elephants, playful puppies, giant fish and Snow Families. They were happy, fun and enchanting stories and we were, by choice, her captivated audience. She surprised us with beautiful descriptions and details that held us spellbound at times. I cannot remember anything but Happily Ever After
at that point in her little life.
Then "school" started. The stories changed.
My first memory is a mention in Pre-K of her teachers feeding her poop, stinky green poop, if you want the poop details-(most new parents do want those for some unknown reason). In Kindergarten, we all listened as she described her day in the Principals office for misbehavior, and not just any misbehavior: my quiet sweet daughter told her teacher off, yes with descriptive and less than pretty language (what teenager she learned those words from was named "Not Me" , you know that person in your house,too.
But, really, what was happening to my baby's stories?
The tide felt like it beginning to churn.
Then the current pulled us out to drift at sea, unexpectedly, one beautiful sunny Spring Day. It was the end of First Grade,
I waited for her at the bus stop and I believe she had Art that day because I remember hoping to see one of her pretty pictures when she arrived. However, she came off the bus in tears, telling me that she was Dumb.
I remember how hollow the word sounded.
She was defeated and silenced at six years old.
Defeated that she could not read the stories that were in the books because THE LETTERS were just letters to her. They moved around on the page. Still captivating us with descriptions,
she told us that they had little feet and they hid from her.
That was the truth for her, not a story!
Silenced, too, because she didn't feel like telling stories when "real stories" meant the author wrote the stories down.
That Night, after reading to her,
She looked up at me with tears still spilling out of her eyes and said
"I always thought letters were just letters, I did not realize that I would have to make them into words my whole life. I can't, I don't know how to, I won't be able to. "
Looking into those big brown eyes, my heart broke a bit. I had no idea what life could possibly be like for someone who could not make letters into words.
I had spent my whole life escaping into stories, and
she had spent her whole life telling stories.
It never occurred to me that she would not be able to write and read the cherished stories that she told.
Reflecting after she slipped into sleep, I realized that I had been writing her stories for her and she had been illustrating the pictures to go along with the pages. I thought that the day was just around the corner when she would take over and not need me to write for her anymore. I was wrong, very wrong, it was not right around the corner, at all.
Then, I did the
Only Human, Not Perfect Mom thing......I blamed myself.
I blamed myself for the wine I sipped when I was pregnant,
for the time I sat in the hot tub when I didn't know I was pregnant,
for not making her take her vitamins because she was so cute when she made up some story of how Vitamins do not like living in her belly and they are happier in the bottle.
HELLO, I screamed at the sky!!!!
Since when does an amazing storyteller not have the ability to be a reader and a writer?With three children doing above average in Middle and High School, I never dreamed that she would not be the same.
That is until I saw that defeated little face coming off the bus.
T
hus began the journey into Learning Differently and Neuroplasicity and Vision Therapy. Yes, we took detours that brought us to some specialists who threw around terms that scared my sox off, most of them involving the words neuro and optical "mass". Those specialist all shook their heads and said they thought we just had a child who learns differently. This website and that website became my best friends at one point. Life is often an unexpected journey without a map to help us forge our way....and a tiny child clinging to you, depending and relying on you....to figure it out.
That is when we met Mrs. Goldsmith. Remember I said I was doing a grand job of blaming myself; well I was waiting for the school to do the same: blame me. And there was one quack in the bunch who attempted to waddle all over me but then along came the woman who would change my daughter's life. Have you ever had a teacher that you just loved from the
moment that you met? This is Mrs. Goldsmith for us. Admittedly, I didn't want to love her at first, I wanted her to tell me that this was all just some confusion and my daughter was just fine and I was an over reactive mom.
What she told me instead was that things were not terrible.....but they were not fine and if we continued without any academic intervention then we might be in terrible trouble later. She
praised me for advocating for her, while I cringed inside at the unknown. Mrs Goldsmith and her Multi-sensory approach (that is what the school district calls her reading program-- I call it Wilson's Fundations) moved into my daughter's folder, into her school schedule, into homework time and eventually into that little storytellers head. Mrs Goldsmith also moved into my head, too. Surrounded by passive aggressive women in my immediate life, it was refreshing to watch something so different. She would strongly advocate, patiently teach, and she would always listen-with a time limit (teachers never really have a whole lot of time, they are so busy)- but the moments she listened, she did truly listen. My daughter and I both learned from her teacher this year, we both changed the way we think.... My daughter in the way she thinks about letters, words and sounds AND myself and my gut belief in myself as a parent. Leave it to a teacher to teach me still :)
And here we are a year later.
No sullen faces!
No references to being dumb.
No silence and LOTS OF STORIES---
told out loud and written on paper.
Our little story teller read a report about her Grandpa's life to a small group.
She read a book to her whole class at her birthday celebration.
The pictures above and below are her Thank You card for Mrs. Goldsmith.
I beam at that card!!!
The picture of the owl!!!!
Come on, how awesome is he?
And then the letter she wrote,( not me,) but her! Eh, so the words are not all spelled correctly. She is not a speller, she is a storyteller and a writer and when and if the spelling does come, she will have yet one more thing to thank
Mrs Goldsmith!
This life, it does not ever promise to be perfect, as much as we want it to be perfect for our kids, the fact is they are only human, too. Just like us!
And guess what, their story is going to be pretty amazing anyways.....not perfect, but better because it will be human. After all, those are the stories we usually end up relating to the most!
If you ever read this someday, Mrs. Goldsmith, know that I will always be, so very humbled that your first words to me were: " tell me about your daughter, I always listen to what a parent has to say....."
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| Homemade Art/ a picture is worth a thousand words! |
