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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.
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.
Today I went to lunch with a few people from work. One of the guys was talking about some topic but using the wrong words to describe what he was talking about. We were joking about it when he said he thinks this has something to do with his dyslexia. Then I realized, I do it too! I do it all the time! I’m talking knowing perfectly well what I mean and what I’m saying but I’m using a wrong word so everyone around me who doesn’t know me thinks I’m out of my mind. This discussion is a little abstract so let me try to give an example.
“I just love the flame broiled hamburgers from McDonald’s.” Everybody would think I lost my mind McDonald’s doesn’t make Flame broiled hamburgers Burger King does. The funniest thing is I thought I was talking about Burger King the whole time. I never realized I said McDonald’s. I never even thought about McDonald’s. McDonald’s was just the word my brain grabbed to say when I was thinking about Burger King.
Now I owe the above example to my friend because he used it to explain how he thought but as I said this happens to me all the time. I suspect that the reason for the mix up has to do with how our brains associate meanings to words and how we categorize the words in our brain’s filing system. Anyway it’s always neat to learn something about yourself.
I was diagnosed with dyslexia at 6 years old. I didn’t learn how to read until I was 11 years old in 4th grade. My handwriting is still practically illegible.
Here is my advice to anyone who has a child with this type of problem.
Buy them a computer… (paraphrase get them interested in something)
I was 11 when I convinced my father that we needed one. After all I wouldn’t have to worry about spelling or my handwriting if we had one. That was back in 86′.
In my professional life as an adult I am an avid reader and have work for IBM Global Services as a consultant in the computer industry, UPS in the computer industry and Sage Software. All because I thought it was cool that I could make a computer do neat things if I typed the right things on a keyboard.
By the way the computer always gave me positive feedback.
So was it the computer or just something that I took an interest in… I don’t know but I recommend finding out what your kid’s interests are and integrate learning with their interest. See what they can do. I promise they will surprise you. For that matter find out what your interests are. Understand what you you enjoy doing and take the steps necessary to do it.
My 5 year old daughter with Cerebral Palsy manages to surprise me every day just by keeping her working on the things she is interested in.
Most recently Hanna Montana. She and I dance to it all the time. WOW Physical Therapy is FUN.
