Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Out of Balance

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Slide1I have recently gotten too focused on intervention improvement at the expense of joy-of-the-moment.

I try to mask my strain, but my kids feel it and reflect it in their actions and lives.

You may skew to the other direction.

See the heart?   It is supposed to be divided equally—half of my everything doing all I can, and half loving as we are right now.

John has two occupational therapists (both are O.T.R.s), and they know a lot.  I have leaned a bit heavily on them for help, and they have generously contributed great peace to me with their ideas.

So, thanks to Alma Liotta and Rosemary Slade.

I share with you my mom vulnerability and regret.  I hope to encourage you to seek “extra” help from good, wise people, even if it isn’t exactly their niche.

If we don’t ask, no one knows.  It is in the showing of our sadness, our seeking, our imperfections, our vulnerabilities, that lets others help us.   To get back to this balance:Heart

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So That’s What Your Everything Feels Like (TED – Chris Milk)

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empathyYou have heard of virtual reality, right?  How about that as a tool to help communicate and thus improve learning differences?

“Inside The Box” (Time, August 17, 2015), in an article about virtual reality (VR), talks about Jeremy Bailenson’s (founder of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab) vision of VR as an empathy machine, and Chris Milk’s (music-video director, artist) extensive work in the arena.

As Chris Milk says, “There’s something about sitting on the same ground someone else is sitting on that changes the way your brain registers their humanity”.   Here is Chris Milk’s TED Talk: “The Ultimate Empathy Machine”

So, what if VR could be used to help communicate what it feels like to have the wide spectrum of learning differences, sensory overload and cognitive overload?

And what could we all do together to help ease those areas we do not directly know of?

So we reach out to them, thank them, and ask to be part of their research.

Peace to us all,

Gayle

(P.S.  Thanks to PowerPoint for access to this image.)

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Why Would I Want My Child to Fail?

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We love to protect our kids.  So, it is against everything we believe in, to back off and let them find themselves via failure.

I watch my son hang wistfully on the fringes of social play, watching stronger boys play ball.  I try to hide my fear that he will be rejected, left out.   I smile and watch the play as a spectator myself.   John sort of follows the pack, up and down the court.   Some days, he works up the courage to worm himself into the play.  Other days, it is strictly watching from the edges.

What matters is that day when he will be in the play because he wants it enough in all the little ways that have to come together to make something happen.

We wait for the magic of Self-Directed Learning (SDL), which leads to intrinsic motivation and readiness for independence.

Self-Directed Learning can only start when we fade our prompts, and back off.  Our kids have to fail, feeling loss and pain, to become motivated to use their grit.

They can surprise us with their abilities, and we must not underestimate their strengths.  We bleed while we wait and watch.  We want to rescue.

But John doesn’t learn anything when I rescue him.

Not quite in on the play

Not quite in on the play.  Today.

 

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Serenity Now?

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Tonight I cried, as I often do when I think about the sensory nightmare that my kid and each of our kids must be enduring through.    I was lucky to still be in the car, my best place to weep and grieve.

I hate that I have to be such a strict mom.   For I am.  I have been trained to be that.  It haunts me that his impulse-control choices will only have larger and larger consequences.

At the end of a 7-hour school day, my son pines to decompress like this.   I wait until he says he is ready to go.  It’s quiet freedom, bleeding off everything that accumulates.   I watch quietly, sharing in the pain and victory from afar.  He sometimes wants an audience to appreciate his new tricks.

So, honor your children when they try to show what they need at the end of an endurance.   How they find their serenity now.

They are our heroes, braver than we are.  And we think we are pretty brave ourselves.

Serenity Now

Best,

Gayle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Why I Love (and get peace from) Platform University

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As a mom of learning differences, I have learned to find an expert, get wise advice, and then implement.   Don’t argue, analyze or rationalize.   Do It.   My young son, currently with special-needs, has greatly benefited from this, and so has my peace of mind.

I heard about Michael Hyatt and found Platform University.   Very quickly, I felt great peace.   I love his simple, step-by-step, always-cheerful, multi-modal instructions.

In addition to a new site/blog/project, I also now have a stand up desk .   I even seriously considered sleeping while standing up.  Hope

Platform University’s team has the bugs already worked out. The forums are full of very wise people who freely share with no evidence of “what’s in it for me?”   I have started increasing my small stale platform, adding new pieces, and going deeper and wider.

For those of us who might feel like we are drowning, not knowing what to do—-now that is over because we get great Platform counsel on what to do.

Then we just do it.

Here is your link:  Platform University

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Living with Learning Differences

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Hello.   Glad you are here.   My name is Gayle Fisher.

Do you learn differently?   Does someone you know and care about learn differently?  If “yes”, then that’s a lot to talk about together.

My answer is “yes”.   It’s my son.   He’s 8 right now, getting older (and bigger) by the day.   So, like you, I really never stop thinking about learning differently.

I will share back and forth with you so that we can help those we love and care for.

So that we can find peace.

Glad you are here.

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