Utilizing the ABILITY in Disability

Four years ago my son, a third grader at the time in public school, would come home with mountains of homework. Each evening led to tears and rants as we tried to achieve what seemed impossible: adding 3 digit numbers with addends.

One might think this would have been easy. This is very basic stuff and yet my child just didn’t get it. He was all over the place and very frustrated. He would add the middle numbers first at times or add from left to right. He had no sense of what the addends were or how to use them. We struggled for weeks because I didn’t understand why he didn’t get it and he didn’t understand period. Then it dawned on me– he didn’t know place value.

Over the next couple of months I discovered there were many other things he didn’t know like simple phonics sounds and punctuation. I couldn’t understand how he had made it this far without knowing these simple concepts. It seemed as though they had never been taught to him. He would say he remembers something about learning that but when he looked down at the paper he might as well have been staring at a Greek map.

I became so upset after months with no progress and never ending meetings with teachers that I did what I should have done in the first place. I got down on my knees and prayed. Over the next couple of weeks I began to notice things I’d never noticed before like how my son skipped through the text portion of directions and went directly to the pictures and how he constantly brought his eyes closer to things when he was looking at them. I also took notice of the amount of headaches he would get and when he would get them. After noticing all of these things I decided to figure out the root cause of it. You see, all along I thought my child was lazy. I thought that he just didn’t want to do his work; but all of these new realizations shed some light on my perspective.

Every day when he came home we spent so much time trying to do math that we never even managed to get any other subject done. Reading, spelling, science and anything else that was on that nifty little chart the teacher created was tossed to the side because I knew math had to get done. I purposed one day to do things a bit differently and see what I would discover.

I had him start with science. He loves science so I thought this would be a piece of cake. We turned to the chapter on molecules and he began to look at all the pictures and tell me all about what his teacher had taught him in regards to the subject matter. Yes! Slam dunk. “Let’s get this done then,” I told him. So we began science vocabulary.

Each word brought with it a recollection of what he had been taught by his teacher and he began paraphrasing what he knew to be molecules and matter. Then we got to protons. He missed one crucial part of the definition and so I asked him to read in the book where it talked about protons. He looked for a while and then told me he could not find it. This baffled me because I saw exactly where it was and he had been staring at that very page for more than five minutes now. I asked him to start reading at the beginning of the paragraph and he immediately became agitated. Without going into the messy details of the fiasco that ensued I’ll just say that it was that night that I learned that my child could not see.

Shocked? Yes. My son was reading short words at four and a half years old and so I didn’t understand why he was having problems now.

After a talk with a friend I brought him to an opthamologist. After three days of tests and exams she was ready to dish out her verdict. Her words cut me deep down.

“Your son is blind is his left eye. His vision is 20/800 to be exact. He has developed a learning disorder because of the slow deterioration of the eye.”

She said she suspected that for the last three years the eye had been deteriorating and the right eye was trying hard to compensate for the change but couldn’t quite get the job done. Most of what he had learned in his early education was from hearing. He could never see what was being taught so though he heard about place value he had nothing visual to relate it to. To make things worse his right eye was still trying to compensate and so we would have to begin a year of therapy to help him recover. He was immediately removed from public school and I brought him home to teach him myself.

The doctor had advised me to do many things that would make learning “easier” on Gevan. That included limited reading and writing as well as shorter work periods. That did not sit well with me. You see I knew how determined Gevan was. After all, he has overcome many other challenges in his life due to his height and condition. I wasn’t about to let that God given quality go to waste in this experience so I used it to his advantage.

I had discovered that Gevan was very intrigued by building things like robots, go-carts, and he also loved any movies about war. So I fed that interest. I bought the kits and sat down with him to build them. I would cover up the photos with post-its and make him read in order to put them together. We also watched movies about the various wars that have occurred and with each one Gevan had questions. So I did what I found to be beneficial to him– I made him read books on the subject matter to get the answers. The amazing thing is when it was something he wanted to read and something he wanted to do then he had no problem getting through even though it was still difficult. His desire to find out the information outweighed how uncomfortable he was doing it.

I made him read. In fact, I made him read four times the amount the doctor recommended I have him read. I know my son and I knew how to make him overcome this obstacle. Once he read enough that his right eye was now dominant and focused, then Gevan became comfortable enough to read on any subject whether he was interested or not. He had developed confidence.

He is now in sixth grade and was recently given a reading test to determine his growth since the discovery of his vision problems. He scored on a sixth grade eighth month level. That is pretty good, folks. Now math is another story. We are still working on that one but I know that if he can read that he can do anything. We’ll take those baby steps to getting his math on track and I’ll just keep thanking God for the ABILITY of determination that He gave to Gevan. That is what made him victorious in this experience.

What I have learned is that although we should carefully consider the advice of doctors and specialist, we should ultimately trust and consider the words of the one who created our children: Our Father.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
Matthew 19:14

Married to her best friend and “main squeeze”, Amy Bayliss is a 4th year home/co-schooling mom to three boys. She enjoys writing about the eclectic teachings that bring a glimmer of curiosity to the eyes of her sons. In addition to being the co-owner of Heart of the Matter, she writes for Internet Cafe Devotions. Be sure to visit her blog, AmyBayliss.com and her family’s homeschool blog: Integrity Academy.

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Tags: Ability in Disability, Adjusting the Learning to Meet Your Child's Needs, flexibility in homeschooling, homeschooling, learning disabilities, phonics, punctuation, reading, science

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