My daughter is in first grade and she is six turning seven. My first clear memories are of that age. I don’t remember much but I do have a number of vivid memories from my first grade year. Here are a few memories:

1) Jennifer Wolaver(SP) – Jennifer was the girl who chased all the boys around the playground. She was trying to kiss them. All the other boys ran, I didn’t!
2) Dyslexia – I really got that there was “something wrong with me” I couldn’t keep up with the other kids in class and I was being taken out of class for extra help. I remember feeling bad about these things.
3) Dominic Mastri – I was having such a hard time in school that my parents felt they should find a private school for me where the teachers could provide more direct attention to me. I went the visit the Children’s Learning Workshop, a Montessori school. While I was there I noticed a kid who walked on his toes and crossed his feet. I asked someone why the kid was walking that way to get attention. The other child explained that he couldn’t help it. I don’t think I was told that it was CP at the time. I became good friends with Dominic and we are still friendly today. He is a Public Defender in Scranton Pa.

I don’t remember too much else vividly but as I sit here writing these word I wonder what Haley will remember when she is 34 going on 35. I’m sure she’ll remember the book she wrote which will hopefully be available before the end of the school year. I think she’ll remember doing Saturday’s with Daddy and Haley which might become content for this blog. I hope she’ll remember this past weekend where we went to Snow Mountain in Ga and played all day.

What do you remember from when you were six? What do you hope your kids will remember?

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I had seen these video’s recently and was reminded of them today by my Rabbi’s Yom Kippur sermon. I thought they would be great to share here with my readers. Please enjoy! Also note – the website on the top of the video brings you to a sales page for something unrelated so don’t waste your time.

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I haven’t been posting as much as I would like to lately but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. I’d like to give a brief update of some of the going on’s around here.

1) Metzger Baby #3 is on the way. We expect to have a little boy here no later than Thursday October 8th. We are very excited and had the room completely finished before some flooding made us move some toys into the room while we fix the flood damage.

2) Flood – We did have some minor flood damage but are so very thankful that it wasn’t worse. There are so many people who lost so much and we pray for them daily to recover. We are getting a new roof , thankfully covered by insurance,  and replacing some carpet not covered by insurance.

3) You have seen in some of my recent posts that Haley was called weird at school. We have worked with Haley to write a book. I am now in the process of getting it published. It will likely be self published and available for sale on this web site in the near future.

4) Haley and I filmed an interview about her writing the book and I hope to have the video posted before the baby arrives.  The video is currently in the editing room.

5) Articles for Cerebral Palsy Magazine. I was asked to write an article for the winter edition of Cerebral Palsy Magazine because of my election to East Cobber father of the year. I’m very excited about this honor and have written 2 articles. I’m trying to decided which one I like better. I’ll publish the other article here on the blog once I decide.

6) I have started on another book project. I’m going to be crowed sourcing a book about Dad’s by dad’s. I’m very excited about this book. It will start with a questionnaire that is being developed that I hope to have over 1000 dad’s complete. As the questionnaire is completed stats will be published to this site. One of the questions will be do you want to be interviewed for the book? I’ll set about interviewing all who want to be interviewed and compile the stories into a book. I have no idea how long this project will take but I’d like to have it close to complete by my 35th birthday in May, sooner if possible.

7) I could not tell if my Blog Talk Radio program was very good. I do have some additional guests who would be willing to do interviews but I’m just not sure if I should continue with the program. I’d love to hear some feedback. Please let me know your thoughts.

Finally as I expect to be very busy over the next few weeks until after the baby get’s here I may not have much of a chance to blog. Please be patient with me and continue reading as I will do my best to continue posting on a regular basis as my life normalizes again after the baby arrives.

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A common problem with Cerebral Palsy is visual processing. Visual processing is the process of the brain taking in what it sees and turning that into information the brain can use. Additionally the brain will organize the information as it processes the intake. Haley has a visual processing disorder. It is not sever but she has been tested in a number of various scenarios and definitely had difficulty processing information. When she was younger this manifested itself when she was trying to navigate a room or find a toy. As a six year old in first grade these things are not as hard for her but she still has issues for instance we had a teach conference today and they said she can’t seem to find her snack on a daily basis in her desk. To see inside her desk she has to lean over (concentrating on balance), look into her desk sidways, and process everything. We as parents made a few suggestions to either find a desk where the top opens or use a basket that Haley can look in and see. Truthfully I’m very happy that the teacher and para-pro were so observant to see the difficulty she has been having with this seemingly easy task.

There was a topic my wife had been concerned about. Haley will revers her b’s and d’s and of course with my Dyslexia that can be a concern. I have been less concerned about it because I don’t see her struggling with it she just still get confused and I figured it was age appropriate. The teachers agreed. The bigger problem we all have seen is the difficulty she has with reading “sight words” Sight word are words that need to be memorized. The problem is that when Haley looks at the word she doesn’t always fully process what she is seeing. This is explicitly true at the end of the day when she is tired.

I think I’ve mentioned previously in this blog that Haley is an extremely talented auditory learner. She learned to crawl up the stairs by talking her self through it. Hand, Hand, Knee, Knee, Foot, Foot. Haley already knows all the letter sounds and most the letter combination sounds too but if she doesn’t see the letter because she hasn’t processed whats there she can’t read the words. So the other night I suggested Haley read each letter out loud to us before guessing at the word. As she does this her rate of learning the sight words has increased tremendously and we don’t have her guessing what a word is anymore. Yeah Success! Small steps make big progress over time.

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I was at dinner the other night with friends. We were talking about my web site and I was saying that I’m amazed that I hear from more people each day that are reading it and gaining some benefit from it. We then started talking about some people who have discovered late in life that they have ADD, ADHD or Dyslexia and I made a glib comment that probably came across as judgmental. I mentioned that people with ADD, ADHD or Dyslexia end up in the profession they do often to avoid dealing with their disability.

This is especially true of people who do not discover until late in life that they have a disability. Unfortunately many of the coping skills are not inherent and have to be learned. If an individual was allowed to grow up with out learning the skills or without understanding that there is nothing wrong with them they just have a different way of relating to the world then they tend to withdrawal and choose professions that allow for that withdrawal. Professions are typically chosen that allow the person to act individually, avoid writing, have minimal bureaucratic forms or allow for really individualistic and creative thought. Obviously these types of professions span a vast array of possibilities and provide an incredible amount of opportunities but as an individual with ADD, ADHD or Dyslexia you should be consciously aware that these factors when selecting a job.

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I haven’t written about my dyslexia/ADD in quite a while. As anyone who has regularly read this blog knows I tend to write about events that are current and related to my life now (this instant). Well today it’s time to writ about some difficulty I have with writing.

Obviously if you take the time to read this blog you can see that I am very capable of writing and sometime even capable of eloquency as demonstrated in the blog that won me Father of the Year. However this type of writing is free form, narrative, passionate, and streem of consiounious. It works well for this blog and I enjoy it tremoundously. I hope and believe that it benefits the reader.

Unfortunatly this form of writing does not bode well for business. Over the years I’ve managed to squeak by because of ability to verably communicate, think dynamically, negotiate, come up with strategic ideas and help the team come up with solutions, but my written work has always suffered from the way I think. My writing has always reflected my thought process. I was always able to do well when I was simply writing requirements because they are simple sentence structures and I always got group reviews, but as I’ve moved up in organizations and had to build more presentations and comprehensive documents I’ve had a harder time with my written communication. I can build great grand strategic thoughts but when it comes to putting them in a presentation I’ve always had to find someone to help me re-organize and pollish it. I truly believe that this has held me back from becoming a truly young execuative but I don’t want it to hold me back from becoming an execuative permanitaly. As such I’m working with some people who do excelent work to understand the strategies they use to organize and build their best work.

The first step is outlining. This is interesting. Of course we are all taught that we should always outline thoughts, but I’ve always been of the opinion that an outline should take 15 – 30 minutes. As of today I now understand that you can take days to build your outlines and the thought process allows you to organize how you want your ideas organized in the final written presentation.

I have no idea if this strategy will work for me but the people who are the best experts in the world say if you want to do something like someone else does it then you have to model how they do it. So here it goes. I’ll keep you informed. If it works for me hopefully I’ll have documented all the steps and you can model the same behaviors.

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This post is really just an update.

Please remember to look at our resource page as it is growing.

We have had some great interviews on the radio program and while the guests have been exceptional I think I’m getting better with each show. Check out the shows as there has been some great information provided.

I love feedback and comments so please don’t be shy. Sign in and leave a comment. I have finally gotten a spam blocker on my comments and it has worked tremendously well so I no longer filter every comment and they post immediately as long as they are not spam.

For the radio program please let me know if you there is anyone you would like me to interview or if you have contacts that I can reach out to. While I have a pretty deep guest list it will only be deep as long as I keep stacking it so I appreciate any input or contacts.

Please tell your friends and family about this blog. I produce it for 2 reasons 1) It’s therapeutic for me and 2) I truly intend it to help others. I need to know the value it’s producing. I know this by the visits it gets and the recommendations from others.

Finally look for an article from me in the upcoming fall issue of the Cerebral Palsy Magazine.

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As I’ve mentioned previously I never really learned to read until I was eleven years old. Since then I have become a veracious reader however no matter how hard I try and no matter what courses I may take to try and improve the speed of my reading. I’m just a slow reader. It takes me about a month to read through a book and I read for at least 30 minutes every day. That would mean that I could only consume 12 books a year and quite frankly that way too few for my information appetite.

Three years ago I switched jobs and my commute grew to an hour each way. This seemed horrible at first even though I was taking on a new job at a much higher salary, I now had to spend 2 hours a day wasted in the car in Atlanta traffic. Anyone who knows Atlanta traffic knows that this meant I would be in the car for up to 3 hours some days. I had to make some form of valuable use of this time. Talking on the phone and emailing on my blackberry were quite frankly too dangerous. That’s when I found Audible.

After the second day in traffic I started searching the internet looking for something that would provide me better use of the time and I came across audio books on Audible. I love to consume information so I signed up. I have listened to over 100 program since signing up. I payed for the $149.95 plan which include 12 books per year and a free subscription to the Wall Street Journal. They have another plan which provides you 24 books per year and cost $229.95 and you can buy books individually.

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Due to this web site and the honor of being named East Cobber Father of the year I was interviewed by Norma Stanley tonight. Norma is an advocate and author and I truly enjoyed our conversation and was honored to be interviewed by her.

East Cobber Father of the Year Cover

You can listen to the program by choosing the play button below.

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Today was a great day. I started a new job and as far as I can tell I’ll be working for myself for the first time. It’s a job for a company and I don’t know how long it will last but I’m being brought on to do exactly what I want to do. I’m coming in to define the processes for the entire business help them find holes, and optimization opportunities. I’m starting by working with the sales department and helping to develop customer profiles we will then construct standard offerings that we provide a specific customer type. This will help shorten our sales cycle, and decrease the time until full integration. This of course leads to more revenue more quickly and I’m psyched to help my first client achieve this. So that’s how my day started.

Well it ended with reading to my daughter which I’ll get to in a minute, surfing the internet, Finding a blog about BADD – Blogging Against Disablism Day (May 1st) and deciding to finish writing this article for the BADD day. You can find out more about BADD at Diary Of A Gold Fish This site is linking back to all the blogs that wrote an article for today.

And Finally I get to my story for the day:

I was upstairs putting my daughter to bed. Every night when I put her to bed I read to her. As a dyslexic when I read out loud there are OFTEN times I read a word incorrectly. ie. Tonight instead of picnic bench, I read Pinch bench.

Well that started the giggles and the story we were reading was really getting funny right there anyway. It talks about a girl pushing a boy and then saying “it was the darnedest thing that boy he pushed himself.” Then the daddy sits down on the bench and hits himself in the head. The kids proceed to talk about how the daddy person has lost it and he now needs to call in backup. Well my daughter thought this was the funniest thing in the world tonight and couldn’t stop laughing. She was laughing so hard she got me laughing with her.

After reading through everything we went back and made sure we understood all the saying and funny words. Well to do that I had to do some demonstrations. For instance when the daddy person sits down on the pinch bench with a blank look and hits himself in the head I had to show her what it meant. She understood what was being said and why it was funny but she couldn’t come up with her own visual representation until I showed her one. As many who read this blog regularly know she has CP. One of the aspects of CP that affects my daughter is her visual perception. I’ve seen her perception come amazingly far in the last year but she still has trouble in the abstract. This is one of the areas my own “disability” provided me the experience to learn about learning styles and how to communicate so you could be understood. And it’s the ability I’ve developed because of my disability that has provided me my core strengths in listening and understanding which provide me the ability to earn a living and sometimes the ability to really help my daughter fully understand and get a concept.

It was a great day.

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