Dillan is a non-verbal autistic who speaks through an iPad. Although the likes were in the tens of thousands, there were thousands of "dislikes" on the page here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMN2PeFama0&nohtml5=False, and comments had been disabled. Was that because of the cruelty of people who view autistic people as defective, or because of activists who find his truth, that "autism is hell", offensive? The former would make me sick, but the later do, also.
Most people don't know what autism, non-verbal autism, is. It has been portrayed in the media as frightening, in science as "lacking quintessential human qualities". This video shows humanity. I think that is a step above awareness, above acceptance. I think it is remarkable.
I'm turning over a new leaf. I think I'll start with the above. I have gotten so grouchy lately...and set myself up for some pretty rough times. But no more. That was the old Raggette.
The title says, "If you know any Italians who want to learn more about Dyslexia..."
I do closed captioning for Dyslexic Advantage because they give me hope. Big Hope!
I just got done closed captioning this video in English. I noticed it was available, closed captioned, in Italian. Some of their videos are available in Spanish, and in Japanese. Dr.'s Brock and Fernette Eide are very good people who work with kids with Dyslexia and other Learning Disabilities. Their eldest son, Kirstin, is also quite Dyslexic, and was homeschooled since second grade. He is an accomplished artist, at age 19, and only really began at age 14. Their daughter, Karina, was also Dyslexic. Sadly, she passed away, but they offer the Karina Eide Writer's Award in her memory. They are quietly people of faith, which I never knew until she passed. That's pretty unusual among scientists. She is a neurologist, and he is a M.D.
They started a clinic, and became inspired by the fact that so many of their patients parents also had trouble in school. But...it didn't seem to affect the parents because so many were very, very successful in their chosen professions. They figured there must be more to Dyslexia that just the "disability". There must be advantages. So they started looking closely, and figured some things out. Then they wrote the book, Dyslexic Advantage.
This You-tube video goes into some of the science that helped them to write the book. They are looking to prove that Dyslexia gives it's bearer decided advantages. They also attempt to ask parents and teachers to build up those advantages, those strengths---even over attempting to remediate the disability it is in school. It's the best way of looking at it I have come across. We have known over 100 years that intelligence was not affected...as evidenced from this quote from the first documented case of congenital "word blindness", as Dyslexia was previously called, in 1896 in the Lancet.
Hmm...
Here is a video that will welcome you, hopefully, as it did me, to a new way of seeing your child. I think it is a better way...and I am lucky to have met up, somehow, with the Eides. It has been over 5 years that I have been learning from them. This was the beginning...
I am kinda friends with an artist out of New Jersey. I just asked permission to put one of his pictures on my blog. I was complaining (YES, I know it's hard to imagine) about how science looks at Autism and Dyslexia, and he wrote back, "I am the biggest Dyslexic in New Jersey!!!". He told how an English teacher told him in 11th grade that "somebody is going to have to dig ditches". He even remembered her name. He told that, all through school, he just thought he was slow, or stupid.
Does this look like the work of a ditch digger to you? This isn't a photograph, he drew this by hand. I wonder if his former English teacher could do so well. Imagine if her intelligence was judged by her ability to draw...
Below is another drawing by a somewhat less talented person.
Do you see where I am going here? We are all wired different. We don't judge people by their lack of ability to draw, but we do judge them by their lack of ability to read. I see it as a matter of wiring.
We all have gifts in different areas.
Ben's godmother told me last time I went home, that she is Dyslexic. So is her grandchild...who is having a hell of a time in school. Mary is the most accomplished person I know. She made a fabulous wage working for NOAA, and she just retired from Homeland Security this year. She has always been a leader...she can talk people into doing anything. She is strong and loving.
"It's all yin and yang, Rose. When something is taken away, something more is given to make up for it." She quit school in grade 11, but it never occurred to me she made that decision because despite being a stellar athlete and class leader, she just couldn't do the type of work that was expected of her. Just like my son Ben who quit school in grade 9 because of Algebra.
"It's all yin and yang..."
Ben had a hell of a time in school. He would work on homework for hours every night....taking 4 hours to do what most kids did in 1/2 hour, according to the teacher that I asked for accommodations. She was willing to pass him without homework because she had a hard time in school, too. I should have taken her up on it. Then he wouldn't have spent 10 hours a day doing things he was bad at, instead...we could have done more hands on, craft type things. He never fought doing projects...it was something he was very good at.
He took a test that showed he was an introvert (versus extrovert), a senser (versus intuitive), a thinker (versus a feeler) and a perceiver (versus a judger). After reading the write-up below, I saw how it fit Ben.
It said:
Y'all hear that???? STEVE JOBS...known for his Dyslexia. He was also adopted, too, y'all...I'm thinking of the palace Ben's going to buy me in my old age...He's already promised me a pink Cadillac, when he was about 8 years old and going through his Elvis phase. The outline of the crafter reminds me so much of his birth mother, too, a quiet but brilliant woman.
When I was young, I was lucky enough to go to Europe. Before I went, I was told, don't bother taking any electric blow dryers or curling irons from America. Without an adapter, they won't work. Europe is set up totally different from America, and it begins at the plug in. Some kids go to school for years, never haven been given an adapter, and think they are stupid because they just can't work the same way. Look around you today, and notice how much of your world was created by designers, artists, engineers, animators....projects, one and all. And then tell me Dyslexics should be digging ditches. Try to imagine a world without the Dyslexic mind.
We'd still be living in caves. Because, it would be "good enough", and with no one to create or even think anything new...
All that is good, has come from the right mind, the Dyslexic mind. Clever people who do well in school are very good at clerical tasks. But give me the mind of a crafter, a creator, a crazy one who sees the world differently. That's the world I want to live in, the world I do live in! Thank you, Ben, for helping me to see. We live in a crazy world...thank God! Because that is where all the beauty and innovation come from...those who think differently!!!
You might be interested to know just how many of these great people had, or would have had, a diagnosis of Dyslexia. Steve knew what he was saying here....
