Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion DD's writing style - visual spatial??

When DH and I first met the psych. who gave our DD9 her WISC, we showed her a Microsoft Word. doc. that DD has created at age 8. It wasn't just a story - she had gathered together crazy fonts, colors, pictures from the internet and created this kaleidoscope of a document. Rarely was anything vertical or horizontal. The psych. couldn't believe that an 8 year old had created it. Currently, DD produces numerous stories and graphs on Word and PowerPoint (I think she did 6 or 7 this holiday weekend), and they don't look like anything I see coming from other kids. She's in a writing club, and while the other kids write in a linear fashion, DD's always look rather crazy and her characters have these wild viewpoints - all the while it's color and shape and tilted sentences. I will also point out that a lot of it seems disjointed. Her one character will yell something and then something else will happen, and it's hard to keep track sometimes of the story, but the story is so visually beautiful...

So, I wonder how to help her pull coherent stories together without losing the wackiness factor that is so fabulous. I won't get any help from the school right now (sadly). It's all boring worksheets. DD's Perceptual Reasoning was her highest score on the WISC (matrix reasoning highest). Am I correct in that indicates a visual spatial kid? And would strong visual spatial skills account for out of the box writing? Another thought just came to me - how is this going to play out in school? Right now the teacher ignores her multi colored, extravagantly designed essays and just grades the content. DD insists that she just can't write in black and white.
Oh, other point is that she has ADHD inattentive type if that means anything. It accounts for her horrible spelling (which she will fix if she has the time).

DD9 was the same with the WISC (matrix reasoning was a 19) and she writes the same way. She's more interested in incorporating graphics into her papers than what she's actually writing. Even her handwriting is that way...she wrote the word "blood" with a red marker with red drops literally dripping out of the word. I'm sure the teacher appreciated that. The word "green" was of course in green. All kinds of crazy fonts and backgrounds and photos stuck into papers. Her science presentation on water had wallpaper that was water droplets. I'm not sure where she even learned how to do that. The organization of her writing stinks, on the other hand and it doesn't always make a lot of sense, jumping from one thought to another. She also has ADHD.
The psych who assessed her actually wrote in the report "visual spatial learner" based on her WISC scores (PRI was 99.9th percentile and VCI was lower but still 99).

First, I love that she writes visually! Our #2 (also visual spatial, not ADHD) does something similar, to a less extravagant extent.

Secondly, yes, high PRI usually means visual spatial kid. Both high matrix reasoning and ADHD are associated with creativity/divergent thinking.

At some point, she will probably have to learn how to evoke the visual, spatial, and sensory images she currently portrays concretely using words to generate the experience in the reader's head. I would not be surprised if she becomes an effective writer, retaining some of her unique energy, as she learns more sophisticated perspective-taking. (Creating the wackiness internally for the reader, rather than externally.)

Graphic organizers are also likely to play a big role in her written expression development, as a transition/stepping stone to words that teachers can appreciate.

green lotus, your description made me laugh and nod in equal measures. If hyper visual-spatial DS10 actually wrote paragraphs, I am sure they would look just like what you describe - he's a total PowerPoint addict, and loves to put each word or thought into its own shape/ colour/ font/ direction/ size/ effect.... well, you definitely know what I mean!

We're currently playing with Inspiration, to see if it can help us harness these tendencies for the power of good. It's visual mapping software, that allows you to do all that kind of crazy stuff in a web map - pull in pictures, draw connections, effects, et al - and then with a push of a bottom, it turns the whole bewildering mass into a structured presentation and/ or written document outline.

Too soon to say if it will help DS get to a better written product in the end, but he's enjoying it, and it seems to aimed at making it easy for him to use his strengths (like visual relationships and patterns) and using them to kick start him to the places where he's weak (organized and detailed written output). He should be done his first school-based project using Inspiration in a week or two - I will update if you're interested.

Here's a good video to show what Inspiration does. Two warnings: (1) it's not cheap for what it is (but I found it constantly recommended for serious VS-types with writing challenges). And (2) the fonts look ghastly on my beautiful Mac screen, alas.

www.inspiration.com/themes/inspiration/video-player.php?nid=639

Your child and mine are definitely alike in many ways!!! I so love the "blood" word. I bet that I see that in DD's stories at some point! I too am in awe at how DD has managed to figure out how to do this on the computer. She seems to instinctively find these sites, fonts, what have you, to create her "art".

I thought from my research that DD was visual spatial - it make a lot of sense! I think I have a book on my list to order about the topic (one of many books to read!!)
If she can manage to harness her imagination and propel those images into a reader's head - well, that reader will be in for a magic carpet ride....
The school principal listed graphic organizers as part of DD's accommodations in DD's 504. I am eagerly waiting to see one come home. In fact I just sent an email to the principal since the teacher hasn't yet bothered to provide one for DD (insert grumpy tone here).

Yep - we see the same addiction here! Some kids like soccer - some like Power Point!!!!
As soon as I close out here I am checking out Inspiration!!! Please give me an update - hopefully we will have tested it out by then. DD heard me yelp when I read your post (she's supposed to be sleeping!!!) so I went in and told her about the site. She is not sure about something like this. Needs to see it herself!

These are actually two different skill sets and there is no reason why working on the less developed skill set has to retard the better developed one. I also think that using a graphic organizer typed approach will help her develop more coherent writing. By 4th grade, that approach should be fairly familiar as our schools begin teaching it by 2nd grade. Perhaps you can reinforce it at home?

It's great that her teacher is not penalizing her for producing a product that may depart from the guidelines. Fortunately, by middle school, multi-media projects are fairly common although students are still required to write well-supported paragraphs in "black and white" as well as within the multi-media products.

I have not had your exact issue with my kids, but I have noticed something somewhat related with my twins since they often have the same writing assignments. My artistic DD tends to favor form over substance in her writing while DS is the opposite. Both form and substance are important and I end up praising DD's form and reminding her to bolster the substantive content and praising DS' substantive content but telling him to improve his form.

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This exactly! DS6.9's spelling test has every word in action. Yesterday, the word adventure had the "a" and "d" wearing a hat, while all the other letters had feet, following the "a" and "d" on an adventure. Pull has "l"s that are ropes pulling the whole word over on its side, figure had a pie chart inside the "g" while the "e" had a thought bubble, figuring something out. The word twist, is obviously all twisted up....I could go on for hours. His hole spelling notebook is in action. Oddly he has one this since he was 3 and learning to write.

I don't know how VS DS is. He is really good at sequential and auditory learning, but he is also very in tune with patterns...he learned how to transpose any song on the piano into every major and minor key in a matter of two weeks. That just screams VS to me. But he also loves to learn through audio, so I don't know if he leans one way or the other.

Anyway, just had to reply to the putting visual life into words.