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IS THE DANDELION A FLOWER?
REFLECTIONS ON CHILDREN WITH LEARNING DIFFERENCES
Sam Goldstein, Ph.D.
I grew up in
I remember my mother taking me as a young child to
our neighbourhood park. Often the park grounds were seemingly littered with
button sized yellow flowers that overnight turned to powder puffs - dandelions.
Their bright yellow petals reflecting the sunlight in a sea of ratty green that
was part grass, and part who knew what. At least it wasn't asphalt or concrete.
It was a place to play. A place when you fell down your knees were green but
not skinned. I liked dandelions. I picked them for my mother. They were the
flower I knew best.
It wasn't until my early twenties that I learned the
truth about dandelions. I enrolled in graduate school and moved from the city
to share a house with a group of other students in suburban
So what does this have to do with children? In this
month's article I want to introduce you to Maria, a nine-year-old
"dandelion."
Maria was referred to me by her paediatrician a
number of months ago. Maria is the eldest of her parents' two children. She is
a nine-year-old fourth grader struggling in school. An attractive, actually
beautiful, child who has come to believe that she is not very smart and not
very appreciated by teachers and classmates. Maria presents with a classic
pattern of skill weaknesses leading to basic achievement problems in school. As
a preschooler she struggled to learn labels and make appropriate associations.
Learning the names of colours and associating the correct name with the correct
color was difficult. Not surprisingly, this same process with letters and
numbers has been an arduous struggle. Maria has experienced problems with
sequential skills. She struggled to learn her phone number, address and even as
she began to master sound/symbol associations she struggled to put sounds
together to make words and words together to make efficient sentences. Her word
retrieval skills are weak as well. All of these are key skills necessary for
basic academic achievement - learning to read, write, spell and perform
mathematics. Maria also experiences orthographic weaknesses, struggling to
remember and make visual associations of letters and numbers, another key skill
in mastering academics. Maria's basic intellect is average. If she could
decode, she could comprehend. But because this fourth grader's decoding skills
are at a second grade level, despite intervention and support, she struggles to
comprehend as she reads. Not surprisingly school is becoming increasingly
difficult as other students have begun to read to learn and Maria is still
entrenched in the midst of learning to read.
Maria doesn't suffer from
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or other serious psychiatric problems.
Her parents are devoted to her. A working class family, their discretionary
income has been directed at providing out of school tutorial and support for
Maria. Though Maria has benefited from this support, she simply can't achieve
and master academic skills at a rate that is consistent with her peers. Thus,
despite support she continues to fall farther and farther behind, even though
she also continues to make progress. But slow progress is not fast enough in
our educational system. Slow progress makes a child conspicuously different in
an educational system valuing homogeneity over individuality.
Maria currently receives
two hours per day of special education or resource services. She has told her
mother she doesn't like going to resource because she misses activities she
enjoys in the classroom, and although she acknowledges the resource education
is helpful, she is concerned that the price of being different may be more than
the help is worth. As my colleague, Dr. Bob Brooks, has pointed out, going to
"special education" some how doesn't make children feel special or
appreciated.
Following the evaluation,
Maria's parents and I decided it would be beneficial for her to meet with me a
few times in an effort to attempt to shape her mindset and perception about
herself, her capabilities and thoughts about the services she would continue to
require at school.
Maria explained to me that
she would go to tutoring after school every day but didn't want to go to
resource. When I asked her reasons, she responded, "People who go to
resource aren't good at anything. I want to be good at something."
How would you respond if
as a parent, educator or mental health professional a child said this to you?
For most of us, our first response is to intellectualise away the
interpretation of the child, to explain that people go to resource to obtain
help and that the criteria for special education service doesn't require being
poor at everything. Yet, I was certain that Maria had heard this before from
other adults, including her parents and teachers, time and time again. On this
day, instead of attempting to convince her this was a good thing, I empathized
with her concerns and simply listened - sometimes the best course of action.
So now you wonder why I
equate this child - a child like all others - a human being with strengths and
weaknesses - with dandelions. Think about it. From the earliest incorporation
of schools on this continent over 200 years ago until the latter part of this
past century, children with learning, emotional, behavioural or any type of
difference that set them apart were seen and treated as the "weeds"
of the next generation. Why bother educating them since they were clearly
defective. Somehow like dandelions, they would survive and many did. If you
have trouble believing what you have just read, consider that it wasn't until
legislation was passed a scant forty years ago that the American educational
system was mandated to provide appropriate education for all children, not just
those who behaved well or were easiest to teach. If we truly recognized and
accepted our responsibility to prepare all children to become functional
members of our society, a process that is essential to maintain our species,
then we would have been providing educational services for all children before
legislation and the courts told us we had to and threatened us with punishment
when we did not. But if you believe that legislation can change hearts and
minds, you're mistaken. If we viewed dandelions as flowers, if we accepted the
responsibility to nurture and support all children as a means of educating them
rather than as a convenient activity, easy to implement when children
transition through school well, but an afterthought when they struggle, Maria
wouldn't be sitting in front of me viewing herself as someone incapable of
doing anything well; someone unintelligent, someone the teacher would prefer to
have educated elsewhere.
As I have written, there
are two ways to create an artistic masterpiece. Each may be equally valid in
the art world. One can start with a large piece of stone and chip away, a
process that requires great effort. But if one chips too far, the product is a
pile of rubble. This process clearly is ineffective in our educational system.
Yet this is the educational process we have embraced. Children view us with
chisels in hand, chipping away at them every time we interact. One can also
create an equally beautiful piece of art by starting with a lump of clay and
building up. It is a more flexible, adaptable approach, one that would make for
a better mindset in educating children. To an appreciation of an artistic
analogy, I have now added gardening. Gardening and raising children is an
analogy that has been made many times before but one worth repeating. Provide
plenty of care, nurturance and support through difficult times. Provide a
framework for stress hardiness by creating a resilient mindset in the hearts and
minds of every child. But most importantly, remember the joy and pleasure you
took as a young child with dandelions. Picking them as bright yellow flowers
and blowing them into the air as cottony powder puffs. Think of Maria. In our
educational system her learning disabilities will continue to make school
difficult. She will continue to be a dandelion, but in our hearts and minds
will she experience true appreciation, acceptance and appropriate education
blossoming into a flower or come to believe she is a weed?
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