“The fiery bird has struck again at the city. The city is wrecked,” Charlie read again. “All the people are evacuating. The president is very mad so all his bodyguards are going there with guns to attack the fiery bird and capture the fiery bird and then put it in a zoo so more people can see it. But the zoo man had to put it in a giant metal box so he doesn’t melt through. But the president can’t get it so his bodyguards are very mad so they are killing themselves.”
Charlie looked at me when he’d finished.
“What do you think?”
I hesitated. It was a classic example of the writing of a dysgraphic, dyslexic child. Vocabulary and story content were good, but the written words themselves seemed to come from a foreign planet. Charlie wrote “apen” for “again,” “retk” for “wrecked,” “rea” or “r” for ‘are,” “vakuwede” for “evacuating.” Poor Charlie; I could almost feel his pain and humiliation. What must it be like to be able to use a word like “evacuating” and yet be unable to remember how to write a three-letter word like “are”? No wonder his story had guns and anger and killing, and I knew that sometime soon I had to try to explain to Charlie why he was having trouble in school.
“Well,” I said. “Your teacher’s right. It is an exciting story, and I sure couldn’t have figured it out unless you read it to me.”
“Yeah. I know. The teacher said spelling didn’t count. She just wanted us to write a good story. But …” Charlie stared at the floor. “Why is it like that? I mean, the other kids make mistakes, too, but not like mine. I’m the only one that has to read it out loud. I hate it.”
“I know. I don’t blame you. That’s one of the things I’m going to try to do – teach you how to write down some of the good ideas you have. Not just write them, but spell the words so that other people can read them, too, and then you can hand in your papers like the other kids.”
Charlie looked up from the floor and then moved his chair over toward mine, pushing his face close, too close for comfort, to my own.
“Listen,” Charlie said. “I’m not like the other kids. I know it. I’ve always known it. But I want to know why. What’s the matter with me?”
It hadn’t been easy for Charlie from the beginning. He was born six weeks prematurely; he was slow to walk, slow to talk, and subject to high fevers.
He was referred to me by the headmaster of Chapel School when he was eight years old and just finishing third grade. The hope was that a diagnostic educational evaluation would shed more light on whether Charlie should be promoted to fourth grade or repeat third.
It was a difficult decision. Charlie had transferred out of public school to Chapel in the middle of second grade. His parents hadn’t wanted to put him in private school. They believed in public education, but, as his mother had explained to me, “We had no choice. It was like Charlie was drowning. Every day he’d sink a little further. He was the one everybody else picked on. I don’t know why – maybe it was his glasses, maybe because he was clumsy, couldn’t seem to get the hang of how to catch or throw a ball. He couldn’t really read, he seemed to get things mixed up or backward. He was tall for his age, so maybe people, the teacher as well as the other children, expected more from him. Anyway, we knew we had to do something. We didn’t want to move. We’d been lucky enough to buy our dream house the year before. Charlie’s dad is an engineer, but I used to do some real estate and the agency I worked for let me know about their old estate that was coming up for sale. We made an offer on the stone studio cottage and a piece of land, and it was accepted. We absolutely love it, and we’d never be able to afford anything like it anywhere else.
“So, the only alternative was to put Charlie in private school, even though it was the middle of the year. He had trouble at Chapel, too, but his teacher loved him and thought that his difficulties were due to ‘lack of exposure’ and that he just had a lot of ‘catching up to do.’
“Now they’re not so sure.”
My formal evaluation showed the same uneven profile that had been noticed by his teachers. His full-scale IQ score was in the high average range. But while the subtests that measured reasoning, abstract thinking, and spatial relationships were superior, the tests requiring rote memory were very poor. Testing showed that Charlie’s intelligence was in the 90th percentile; his academic achievements were in the 30th and 40th percentiles. His reading was a good year and a half behind, and although his stories were imaginative, his handwriting and spelling were almost indecipherable. His speaking vocabulary was good, although he often talked in a circumlocutory fashion, calling a knob on a bureau a “drawer puller thing”; a hinge, “one of those thingamajigs that hold the door on.” He had difficulty pronouncing words such as “preliminary” or “circumstantial.” He was unable to skip, confused about left and right, awkward, and distractible, and he had a great deal of difficulty switching from one activity to another.
If there is such a thing as a classic learning disabled child, Charlie was it. He could talk on an adult level, although he mispronounced the words or couldn’t quite find the one he wanted. When he read out loud, he omitted or substituted words and phrases, skipped lines and lost his place, reversed both letters and words – and yet, somehow, he could answer eight out of eight comprehension questions correctly. He could do analogies and solve complicated mathematical problems. Yet he scored poorly on math tests because his math facts were not automatic, and when he counted on his fingers he would be just slightly off, or else he would reverse numbers and write down 21 when he meant 12. He could talk at length about the solar system, but he couldn’t say the months of the year in correct order. He was gentle, appealing, and affectionate, but he was also disorganized and distractible and had no friends his own age.
Charlie could easily have benefited from repeating a grade when he had switched schools. With a November birthday, he was one of the youngest in his class even though he was tall. But now he had been at Chapel for a year and a half. He was shy and thought of himself as “stupid” and “weird.” “Please,” he begged me, “don’t let them make me do third again. Please! The kids will really think I’m retarded if I repeat.”
In the end my recommendation that Charlie be promoted to fourth grade was based primarily on the feeling that “more of the same” wasn’t going to do it for Charlie. He could repeat third grade three times and still not know his multiplication tables or be able to hand in a legible book report. Charlie needed to learn new ways of learning. Most of all, he needed to learn to believe in himself.
I strongly urged Charlie’s parents to rethink the idea of moving. Several of the surrounding towns had good public school systems with excellent resource rooms, and I felt Charlie was going to need ongoing support, at least through elementary school. But the Hammonds couldn’t bring themselves to part with their house, and Charlie was terrified at the thought of moving.
“What I think is, I’d be even dumber in a new school. I’d be scareder and I wouldn’t even know anybody. At least here me and Sam can go exploring the woods after school.”
It was true that Charlie got great pleasure and comfort from his quiet, familiar neighborhood and from Sam, a six-year-old who lived on the next street.
Finally, we worked out a compromise. I’d see Charlie over the summer and twice a week during fourth grade. Charlie’s mother felt that she could handle the cost by once again doing a little real estate work.
Charlie had three major problems interfering with his learning. His auditory processing was exceptionally weak, although examination by a pediatric audiologist found his hearing acuity to be within normal limits. Try as he would, he could not match letters and sounds. He would make the sound of p when trying to spell “put” and then write a b, or even reverse the b and write “dut.” The differences between the short vowel sounds were too subtle for him to discriminate between them.
Second, Charlie became overwhelmed when too much material was given at once. If there were thirty math problems on a page, he might do th
e first one or two and then just push the paper aside. If four directions were given at once – such as “Take out your reading workbook; turn to page seventeen; read the top half of the page; and then use your green and red crayons to do the puzzle at the bottom” – Charlie either turned to the wrong page, or used the wrong colour, or had to go to the teacher and ask her to say it all over again.
Because Charlie was so unsure of himself, he had gotten in the habit of trying to forget his problems instead of trying to solve them. His teacher told me that he rarely completed assignments. When I talked to Charlie, it became clear that what happened was that he would “forget” that he had to read the book by the end of the month until two days before his report was due. Then panic struck, and he turned his household upside down while his mother tried to help him get it done.
Third, Charlie was lost in time and space. He could not remember the months or even which day of the week it was. He could not remember which was the right or left side of the football field. He could not judge the distance between himself and other objects, so he tripped over obvious obstacles and missed even the easiest of the balls that were thrown to him.
But how was I going to explain all that to Charlie? He still had his face close to mine, and he was breathing hard. He peered at me from behind the foggy lenses of his glasses. The only thing I was sure of was that I had to be honest.
“There aren’t any windows in your head, Charlie. I can’t look in and say, ‘Ah hah! There! That’s the spot that makes it difficult for Charlie to spell things right. And sure enough, that big area over there is why he can reason and think things out so well.’ Someday soon there will be instruments that can see inside our brains and report back just how we learn –”
“Well, tell me what you know now,” Charlie interrupted. “You must have found out something after all those tests you gave me. And you’ve talked to Mom and Dad. I got a right to know, too.”
“Okay. First of all, I know that the troubles, the failures you have in school, are not because you’re dumb. You’re plenty smart enough.
“Also, I know you’ll remember things better if they make sense to you rather than just strings of unrelated words and numbers – and that you remember what you see better than what you hear, and you’ll remember best of all if you see it and hear it and then say it out loud or write it. We call that multisensory learning.
“Next, I know you learn better when things are presented to you a few at a time, so you can digest them. Your brain sort of goes on overload if you put too much in all at once. Like, say you have a TV, a toaster, and a microwave oven on the counter in the kitchen all plugged into the same circuit. If you turn them all on at once, you blow the fuse and none of them work. If you turn them on one at a time, they’re all okay.
“And I know you get mixed up about right and left and which way is which, and that you will have to teach yourself to be constantly alert for clues to give you the right signals.”
Charlie took a deep breath. “But why? Why me? What happened to me? Is it like when kids used to get polio?”
“No. It’s not a disease. Educators like me call it a learning disability, or dyslexia, if we’re forced to put a label on it. A friend of mine who’s a pediatric neurologist – that’s a doctor whose specialty is studying children’s nervous systems and brains – doesn’t think there are any good labels. She says it’s due to a lag in neural development, and then she describes it like this: ‘Everything’s fine in New Jersey and things are all okay in New York City, but there’s some kind of tie-up on the George Washington Bridge.’ I like that, because I know you can always use the Lincoln Tunnel as an alternate route.”
Charlie smiled, and his body relaxed a little.
“It won’t get any worse,” I said. “In fact, if anything it will get better as you learn new ways to learn. I don’t think anybody knows for sure exactly why it happens to some people and not to others. I could pretend I did, but I don’t want to pretend with you.”
Charlie nodded. “Yeah. I know. I don’t want you to, either.” He shook his head. “It sure is confusing, though.”
“Well, Charlie, remember we do know this. You’re smart enough to learn whatever you want to learn. There are reasons for the failures you’ve had, and something can be done about it, but you’ll have to work longer and harder than some kids because you have to make the imprint on your brain very clear and very strong so you can remember whatever it is you need to remember.”
“Well,” Charlie said, pushing his chair back, “I guess maybe it’s worth a try.”
It was decided that I would see Charlie twice a week beginning the first of July. Summer vacation would have to wait this year.
“Thank you all for coming in,” I said, nodding at Charlie and each of his parents. Charlie sat behind the desk; I sat beside him. June and Jim Hammond sat on the chairs in front of the desk.
“I’d just like to go over what we’re going to try to do this summer, and I think it’s easier if we all talk about it together.
“We’ve been through Charlie’s evaluation, and Charlie and I have already had a teaching session together. We know his strengths and weaknesses. We also know that he’s going into fourth grade in the fall and that there’s a lot to do to be ready for it.
“I’m going to talk for a few minutes and tell you what I think we need to work on, and then I’d like to get your ideas.
“First of all, Charlie has to get organized. In order to do good academic work, you have to have a good workplace. A fine woodworker has his workbench and tools in prime condition and order.
“It’s the same for you, Charlie. You need a desk in your own room, a good light, a supply of various kinds of paper, index cards, paper clips” – I stopped as June Hammond reached for a pad, took a pen out of her jacket, and began making notes – “pencils, pencil sharpener, pens, a digital clock or stopwatch, bookshelves, coloured tape, a book bag, a notebook, and an assignment pad.”
“You know,” June Hammond said, “I’m as anxious to help Charlie as anyone. Maybe more. But I have to tell you that he has never studied in his room in his life. Whatever work he’s done has been on the floor of the den with the TV on full blast. Isn’t that right, Charlie?”
Charlie nodded, eyes down.
“Look,” I said. “Let’s not waste time talking about the way it used to be. We need to plan for the fall.”
I turned toward Charlie. “I’m going to give you between fifteen and thirty minutes of homework each day this summer. I won’t give you any once school starts. Do you think you can handle that in your room?”
“Yeah. I think so. Can I play my radio?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. What you’re trying to do is train yourself to concentrate. I think you’ll do better without any kind of noise while you’re studying. Later on, if you want to try some music without words, you can.”
I explained that Charlie needed a large, well-made book bag. He also needed a special place to keep it. I asked Mrs. Hammond to help Charlie mark out a large square on one of his shelves with brightly coloured tape. Any time Charlie wasn’t studying, his book bag and his books were to be inside the square. This was to avoid the last-minute scramble that I was sure happened in Charlie’s house: “It’s gotta be here. I saw it just a minute ago …”
I talked for a few more minutes, answered a few questions. It wasn’t until after they’d left that I realized Mr. Hammond hadn’t said a word other than good-bye.
Mrs. Hammond called the next morning. “I’m so sorry to bother you so soon again, but there are two other things I wanted to talk to you about and I didn’t want to mention them in front of Charlie.
“First of all, he lies constantly, and it’s getting worse all the time. It’s not just about his schoolwork, but outright lies about things he’s seen and done.”
“I know what you’re saying,” I said. “Every once in a while I get a child, usually a boy, who has to make everything bigger, brighter, louder than i
t is. Try to ignore it for now. Let’s see what happens. You said there was something else bothering you.”
“Yes, but I’m not sure you can do anything about it. I love Charlie so much, but he is so aggravating. I took him shopping yesterday to get the things for his room – you know, the things you said. Well, I was a wreck by the time we got home. First he fell over a perfectly obvious chair, then he knocked a lamp off a table. Fortunately, it didn’t break, but it certainly was embarrassing. And then while I was getting my charge plate, he asked the sales-clerk for something to drink. I mean, he acted as if he was a four-year-old, and a dumb one at that. I’m sorry to sound like such a witch.”
I smiled into the phone. “You sound just fine. But what you’ve described to me is as typical of many dyslexic children as the Fiery Bird story Charlie brought in. Just try to remember he doesn’t do it on purpose. He honestly doesn’t judge distances correctly – that’s why he has a hard time catching and throwing – and he hasn’t assimilated social amenities. We have to try to teach those, too. Now, can I ask you something? How does Mr. Hammond feel about all this? He was very quiet at our conference yesterday.”
There was a pause. “All I can really say is that he wasn’t entirely in favour of your tutoring Charlie, but he says he’s willing to give it a chance. Anyway, Charlie loves all his new stuff. I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but at least it’s the happiest I’ve seen him in a long while.”
Charlie was still smiling when he arrived at my office the next day, a navy backpack across his shoulders. “What do you think? Is it okay to use this for a book bag? I got the assignment pad inside.” Charlie’s straight black hair was every which way across his forehead, but his black eyes were shining through his glasses.
We did a quick run-through of the best thing and the worst thing that had happened to him since I’d seen him last – a perfect opportunity for Charlie to indulge in a few exaggerations. His best was all his new stuff, but his worst was that he’d been attacked by three high school kids when he was walking home from Sam’s last night. This seemed highly unlikely to me, considering Charlie’s neighborhood, but I let it pass without comment and paid fifty for the best and the worst.
A Safe Place for Joey Page 20