I didn't want to write a novel in my first post, but I'll try to succinctly provide some details. Ds has always displayed incredible spatial abilities. At age 2, he could tell me which way to turn to get places---even when we were 15 miles from home, taking a different exit from the interstate, and coming from a completely different direction. It's like he carries a map around in his brain. He was never taught right or left--just figured it out at age 2. I honestly don't recall teaching him to recognize letters or numbers but surely we did a few times--anyway, he seemed to know them. His sight recognition of words is spot-on. He never forgets the visual image of a word--but if it's in a different font or capitalized--he doesn't recognize it as the same word. He started doing 500 piece puzzles around the time of his 4th birthday, and he's much better at them than I am. He can build lego creations and set up elaborate train tracks that are far more advanced than his age. He just knows how things work and fit together. His brain seems to be wired for visual learning.
On the other hand, his speech development has been slow, sometimes falling off the range of what is "normal." His articulation is not great for someone his age, but he has made progress. He still has to completely concentrate on what he's trying to say or he can't spit the words out. Language is just difficult for him--his sentences are very immature and often has words in the wrong order so we have to try to interpret what he's saying.
It's like he sees something, and he instantly "gets" it. But for 9 months, we've been singing a little song about the days of the week (he loves music). After doing this daily for 9 months, he finally got it. A couple days "off" from singing it, and he has no idea what the song is or the names for the days of the week. Eventually I'd like him to learn our address. So for the past month, we've been saying our street name. Multiple times a day, we say the name out loud (there's construction going on, so plenty of opportunity to throw it in when a cement truck or something grabs his attention). After a month, he's still clueless about our street name. He's listening--even repeating/singing aloud--but it's like anything auditory goes in one ear and out the other.
There's no doubt that he has a visual spatial learning style, but how do I know whether he has a problem with auditory learning? He's just 4.5 years old, so I'm not sure if part of it is maturity too. Thoughts?
Last edited by Staceyshoe; 09/21/12 09:44 AM.
