Disability doesn't mean excuse

Little Man has been in guitar lessons for a while now. A few weeks ago he had to change to a different teacher in the same school due to scheduling difficulties with his previous one. Silly me had assumed that the head of the music school had explained to the new teacher about his difficulties, as she had the old one.

After slow progress the last couple weeks I worked hard with him this week and realized he was having one heck of a time following where he was on the page. Some of his numerous challenges include visual-spatial perception (where something is in relation to something else - things like tracking words across a page and orienting his writing on a line are extremely difficult), dyslexia, motor planning (making his brain get organized to tell his muscles what to do and then making his muscles follow through) and processing issues.

When we met his teacher for his lesson today I told her that he'd been working hard and that we'd found some things to help him. Things the occupational therapist recommends. I told her we cover up everything but the song he's working on at that moment and point to the note he's on as he plays it. I explained he has dyslexia (the thing people are most likely to be able to understand) and these things work best. She basically pooh-poohed my suggestions saying she doesn't like the kids to get used to that.

Amazing thing though, when she walked him out of his lesson she told me how much better he did when she pointed to the note. Imagine that - you work with the disability instead of trying to make a child fight it on his own and wonderful things happen. Just because things need to be done differently for some people doesn't mean they're being lazy or not trying. Our little ones who were created from a different mold just may be the ones who teach the world as they grow.