Born in Boston in September 1951, the second child, of a WWII veteran.
I was a shy kid. Was I born this way or did I experience something that made me like this; perhaps it was both?
Three months after I was born, I developed whooping cough. The treatment back then was just fresh air, as antibiotics hadn’t been developed. In mid December, I was wrapped up in blankets, and placed next to an open window 24/7. It must of been pretty cold, regardless of the blankets. Mom said, she was sure I’d die. Did this make me fearful that life wasn’t a safe place? I don’t know.
Do you ever wonder what your earliest years were like, and how those experiences developed your character and personality? I do. I’m just very curious…
My School Years
I started school at five years old. You attended school at five, if your birthday was in September. I’d likely have done better in school if I was a little more mature, but I doubt it would have stopped the events that came to pass.
When I was twelve the public schools told me parents that I was retarded and would not be allowed to attend junior high school. I knew what retarded meant and I was pretty humiliated to hear this. The threat of going to “the class for the retarded” was terrifying. It was a small class of kids who lined up, holding hands to walk through the hall to lunch! Some wore helmets, others shuffled, rolling their heads around. They were totally isolated from the mainstream kids. My thinking this was my future, well, you can only imagine my angst.
Mom wrote the superintendent of the schools saying that no testing had been completed! It was simply a idea that I was retarded. Later, I learned that many teachers felt that I was not comprehending my lessons and honestly, this was true. As there were things I just didn’t get. Like sentence structure, spelling, nouns, verbs, commas. It all baffled me. I’d been in the slowest reading groups from early on and even my parent had accepted that – I was slow, but retarded kind of threw them.
A school psychologist was assigned to come to our house to do some testing on me and my two brothers. It was kinda fun! The tests were all verbal. I thought the questions were ridiculously easy. My final memory was overhearing the psychologist telling mom “Carol is not retarded. She says, she can’t read.” I’d made it through 6 years of school without being able to read! How? The testing indicated that all three of us kids were “pretty smart”, scoring above average, with me having superior + intelligence! Ok, if this isn’t a dichotomy, what is? How does a twelve year old, process that I’m retarded, no superior +?
I was sent to Children’s Hospital for neurological, psychological, and medical testing with these guys coming back with a diagnosis of dyslexia, which meant nothing to me! “Dyslexia is a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds, and learning how they relate to letters and words (decoding). “Also called a reading disability, dyslexia is a result of individual differences in areas of the brain that process language.” https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/dyslexia/symptoms-causes/syc-20353552#Overview. Dyslexia is called a disability, which is a negative label. As are many other syndromes that children are labeled with. Which means at an early age, kids are often labeled at “dis”abled… according to Websters Dictionary Dis is a verb, which speaks disrespectfully to, or criticizes. Not good for a child. How about we re-label differences as just that, human differences, not disrespecting or criticizing anyone, leaving emotional scares on kids that last for a life time. Just thinking out-loud here.
“Societal interest in people with reading difficulties probably began in 1878 with Adolph Kussmaul, a German neurologist. He had a special interest in adults with reading problems who also had neurological impairment. He noticed that several of his patients could not read properly and regularly used words in the wrong order. He introduced the term ‘word blindness’ to describe their difficulties. In 1887, a German ophthalmologist, Rudolf Berlin, was the first to use the word ‘dyslexia’ in place of word blindness. The condition was described as ‘dyslexia’, from the Greek meaning ‘difficulty with words’. The first case of developmental dyslexia was reported by Pringle-Morgan in the British Medical Journal on the 7th in November 1896. Pringle-Morgan, a general practitioner, and Hinshelwood, an ophthalmologist also writing at the turn of the century, speculated that such difficulties with reading and writing were due to “congenital word blindness,” and for many years the dominant view was that dyslexia was caused by visual processing deficiencies. In 1925, an American neurologist, Dr. Samuel T. Orton proposed the first theory of how specific reading difficulty arose. He placed a great emphasis on the dominance of one side of the brain. Teaching strategies he developed during his research, are still in use today.” (Dyslexia-aware.com) One would think we would have come a lot further in working with a brain disorder since then? Buy sadly, this isn’t true, as best I can tell! As my dad’s sister reported, not so long ago, that her granddaughter was diagnosed with dyslexia and her teacher seemed not to understand her issues and was not providing support to her! Criticism for an uncontrollable reality is one of the worst things someone can do to a child.
To date brain research has not been able to determine if left and right side brain processing, logical versus creative, controls one’s thinking. The brain is a very complex organ which perplexes science. I doubt scientists are able to delve deeply enough into brain processing to know much about its capabilities.
I believe that Dyslexia may be more than just word blindness. Taking the statement from above stating, “The dominant view was that dyslexia was caused by visual processing deficiencies” in the brain. If it causes a form of word blindness, might it also cause other forms of visual blindness? Today there are more questions than answers about a brains functioning.
Treatment
I attended extra classes at school, further adding to my embarrassment of being different. I went to after school classes and on weekends, which I simply hated. The effort was well placed but how can you make someone see what they can’t see? Dyslexia is not curable. Whoever has it, has to figure out how to function in this world while having it. Reading challenges affect everything a person does; like dialing a phone, reading a label, a recipe, directions, maps, charts, stories, lessons… There’s no pill, no program, no escaping your reality. Thus, I never wrote on the board in front of people because I can’t spell! It’s a terrible malady. I never read out loud in public, as not to humiliate myself. Yet, I made speeches, lead seminars, even was a magazine publisher! How, curiosity and drive.
A the end of my 6th grade school year, my folks excitedly shared that I was very, very lucky! Out of over 1,000 applicants, I had been selected to attend Boston University PhD summer program! Oh whoopee! The program had PhD students, who were doing their thesis in special ed! I would have a one on one relationship with a PhD student, as they attempted to teach me on how to read! Now, does this sound like fun to you? Right, and it didn’t sound fun to me either! A summer of schooling in Boston? Mom took me to the city, via train (about a 45 minute ride). We’d grab a trolley at North Station, to Park Place, changed trolleys at Park Place to go to B.U. She took me three times and then I was on my own for the rest of the summer! A tiny, kid of 12 years old, from the Boston suburbs, rides an hour and a half to Boston/B.U. alone, every day for the summer. Originally, arriving at B.U. in her Sunday best, wearing her breakfast. I loved the train ride, as the conductor would occasionally let me it in the cab with him on the ride to town. But the subway, at rush hour, when I could barely see past the people to get on the right train, not so much. Mom’s would sometimes grab me on the trolley’s to protect me, which eased my fears of getting lost, missing my stop or getting on the wrong train.
Special Note
In defense of my parents letting a little girl navigate Boston alone at twelve; well they grew up just outside Boston. Taking trolleys was a common practice for them, as all children did this in the 30’s. Not sure how old they needed to be to do so. But there’s a family story about my dad dragging in his shoes, holding on to the back of a trolley in the winter for fun.
