Is Your Child Defective or is it Your Perspective?

The other day as I sat and listened to a mom talk about her child and his unique learning difficulties, I was shocked when she said that it had been suggested that her son had an evil spirit.

Why?

Because her son’s eyes would glaze over partway through the lesson.  He would then disconnect with what she was trying to teach.  In an effort to help her son learn, she discovered various methods for getting her son to open back up so that she could impart some other little tidbit of learning into him. Things such as tapping her fingers on the table or tapping him on the forehead.

This boy to the outside world looked broken.  He needed fixed and worst of all some thought he needed to be delivered from a Devil.

This mother who loved her son as much as any of her other children…

This mother who was determined to help her son read…

This mother who understood how her son’s mind worked enough for her to find ways to get the information he needed to learn into his head…

This mother who was probably as much confused about what to do as how her son was feeling in learning was made to think her son was a broken and defective vessel.

Have you ever felt this way about your child?  That he/she has got the problem?  That if only they were like their sibling, or someone else’s child, everything would be better.

Stop!

Your child is not broken.

Your child is:

Unique

Gifted

Creative

Just as there are no 2 fingerprints the same, there is not another child that has the gifts and abilities that your child offers.

He was made in the image of God who has so many creative attributes and who is so amazing that over 2 billion people later, we are all unique in our features one to another.

Can we really say God made something defective?

Or should we look at things from a different angle. Put on different glasses to view our child through. Change our perspective.

Truth Pizza writes about seeing things from a different perspective.

The simplest example of this is the literal one. If you look at a room from a different position, you will see different things. Some things that were hidden in one view become visible in another, and arrangements of things may be easier to recognize from one perspective than another. Viewing a baseball game from the outfield gives a very different impression of a fly ball than viewing it from behind home plate. Viewing a forest from a cliff above it provides very different understanding than viewing it from the ground among the trees.

To gain understanding of a problem, we must look at it from a new angle. Albert Einstein says the following in regard to science but it is just as fitting for the rest of life.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science. – Albert Einstein.

We can see that when we focus on a problem, we tend to always look at it from the same angle.  But what if we view our child’s situation from a new perspective and ask the questions, who, what, when, where, why and how.

• Who says my child is learning the wrong way?

Do these people really know how children think? Do they think outside the box when tackling problems in life?  Are they creative problem solvers or do they just “go by the book?” My guess is they tend to not approach problems creatively but are dogmatic in their approach even if what they’re doing doesn’t work.

• What would happen if I changed the way I teach my child?

Maybe the curriculum you selected is not suited to your child. What if you tailored the curriculum to suit the students learning style?

• When did the public school system become the authority on my child’s style of learning?

The public school system does not have the freedom you as a mom is blessed with in teaching a child one-on-one.  They have 15-30 kids in their class that they must teach to.  They cannot slow down for the child who is having difficulty.  They must all progress at the same pace. What this means for you as a mother is that you do not have to teach they way they do.  They do it to suit their needs but we have already seen your child’s needs are different, so we must come at this from a different perspective. Right? 🙂

• Where do I start to get help?

This is one of the biggest hurdles for people because the idea of traditional schooling and learning has been so engrained that we can hardly break free from it.  It is only when we realize that our child is their own uniquely designed and gifted individual that we can start to appreciate them and find the encouragement and help we need. Books are your best friend in this case.  Start with these authors: Dr. Raymond Moore, John Taylor Gatto, Charlotte Mason and Lucy Jo Palladino.

• Why is my child having so many problems in his school books, but in other areas is so amazing?

Aha! Such an excellent question and one you should definitely ponder. There’s a reason.

• How can I help my child overcome the obstacles in his/her path?

There are solutions to your child’s problems. You as the teacher must search them out.  Do not give up on finding an answer because you have a vested interest in your child. You care more than any other person on this planet. (I agree that there are some teachers out there that are truly exceptional, but for many teachers their hands are tied, too.  They must teach to the test. They must teach to a certain style of learner.) If you read books by the authors already mentioned above, they will give you the start you need. They will change your view of learning forever.

When I say that we must appreciate the child for who they are, I want to be clear on the fact that I do believe they need to learn things that are difficult for them.  But we must not think the only way for them to get that knowledge is the way we learned.  When we realize that our child is not broken but is who God made them to be, we can appreciate the differences in them.

There will be differences but these same differences are what makes our world grow.  These children bring to the table abilities that the child who is your traditional book learner can never bring because their gifts and talents lie in another direction.  It all works together beautifully in the end.

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalm 139:14