DS9 chatting with same-age cousin: "Depending on how you look at it, 1+1 is either a really easy mathematical question or a really difficult philosophical question."

It's been forever since I was on here, but today's... um... quirky anecdote was fairly epic.

DS 8yrs has ASD, and doesn't follow fiction all that well, especially when the storytelling is kinda touchy-feely. Lately, he's been having a heck of a time even figuring out which class he's in. Science? Math? English? It all seems a bit murky... and the staff aren't getting it that a kid could actually be having trouble guessing, so they tell him just about anything EXCEPT what the heck is going on (this is how I came to be in the classroom today)

In any case, social studies starts, and the teacher reads a book that keeps talking about the colour of taxi drivers. The book is about a conversation between a mom and a kid about systemic racism, but it never mentions racism or discrimination by name. DS didn't follow.

The teacher was very polite about DS's comment about the reflectivity of black versus white, though, so DS thought he was on the right track... and it was about taxis... moving vehicles and colour, right? He knows where this is going...

DS now explains Doppler shifting to the third grade.

Teacher looks confused.



(I later explained it wasn't science class, and DS came up with some good solid stuff about incarceration rates...)

Fabulous vignette, Michaela, thanks for sharing. As your story illustrates, context exerts huge influence on our interpretation. How difficult for those lacking contextual cues! So glad you could provide context... and enjoy watching his paradigm shift in response to that.

DD12 is an obsessed artist and writer spending hours on brush stroke, shading, etc on her computer art tablet. Somehow she finds the time to inhale politics and history as well. I occasionally wonder just how these varied interests will be used in her future career.

The other night she and I watched a black hole documentary on NOVA. She raced off after the show to pull up a periodic table which I assumed would lead to some science research. I found her hunched over her desk writing furiously while she intently studied the elements. When I asked what she was doing she excitedly stated she was tweaking all the element names so they could be used as character names in her next book.

Future science fiction author??

With gorgeous illustrations!

Definitely!!

LOVE the element names as character names!

DS6 may have an interesting thing going on with visualization... He has said before that he sees everything in his head, and I’m starting to think it’s true. Today, he asked me if I could help him zip up his c-o-a-t. I said “That’s some pretty good spelling, DS6.” He is learning French at school, not English at the moment. He replied: “Yeah, I just picture the word in my head and I see how it’s spelled.” And he gave me the example of window, and he was basically gesturing as though he were looking at an invisible screen. Is that a bit odd? Has anyone else experienced this with their DC?

My five-year-old used to fake cough, then mutter c-o-u-g-h, then cough again.

RRD, that's what my boys and I do. I believe it is good visual-spatial ability.

One of my parents and one of my sibs visualize words for spelling as well. Actually, both of them can visualize books. Ask what happened (or even for a quote) at some point in a familiar or recently-read book , and if they can't name it off the top of their heads, they mentally "look" at the page and re-read it. Which is why they both dislike new editions of old classics!

And yes, both of them have good visual spatial skills.