Recently my daughter, Lovely Little Girl, was sitting at the kitchen table coloring when I walked into the room. My wife handed me a new book LLG had brought from school. With a sly smile, she asked me to have LLG read it to me.
Sure enough, my just turned 6 year old read the entire book to me. It wasn't very difficult, and it had pictures, but only a few times did she stumble over the words. I was amazed at how fast she had started picking this up! I thought, maybe they've read it a few times at school and she'd memorized it. (She has an amazing memory. Try telling her that we'll get ice cream the next time we go to the mall, and see if you get out of that mall without getting ice cream. Even if it's two months later.)
Well I just happened to email her teacher about something, and asked her the question straight up: Was she actually reading, or had she just memorized it from all the times she had heard it being read. Her teacher wrote back almost immediately to say that they do read it once together, but that's it. Her teacher (whom we love!) told me that she even took LLG to other teachers for her to read to them. (Either as bragging, or to show them that they shouldn't be afraid of children on the Autism Spectrum. If you give them a chance, they can do just about everything a neurotypical child can do.)
So my little girl is in fact reading. She's even picking up visual cues from the pictures in the book for words she might not get right away, which is great! I'm very proud of her, as this will open many doors for her, and let her little imagination soar. (She'll end up like her mummy on this one I think, a bit dreamy with an active imagination and a hunger for books. G-d help me when she discovers Jane Eyre.)
Basically, this is me once again calling those people who rejected her idiots. The teacher who told us that we needed to lower our expectations of our daughter: Go pound some sand, lady. The school that had her for 2 days and then said she wouldn't work and that an Autism only school would be best for her? Yeah, you guys can go jump in a lake. The school that made us pay for tests only to say no, even though they admitted the tests weren't going to be usable? [redacted]. (And please forgive that last one. Even though I didn't really write it, I meant it and that's really bad of me. However, in my defense, I really loathe those people.)
Also, last night Lovely English Lass had both of my children at their swimming lessons. They waited for the lesson to begin, and while doing so a little neurotypical girl broke a bottle of perfume. While they sat quietly and patiently waiting for the class to begin, this child immediately had a huge meltdown. Crying an screaming and hitting out at her parents. After she left, they had to cancel the class due to lightening, and both of my kids, who supposedly have problems with transitions, got up and walked to the car without a peep. Amazing really!
Sometimes you have to give a child a chance. I'm never going to forgive or forget those that never gave my child that chance and immediately ruled her out because they thought she couldn't handle it. All it has done is show them to be small-minded people that shouldn't be educating children in the first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment