Something's Not Right: One Family's Struggle With Learning Disabilities

Rating:
Summary: This book is an award winner!
Review: "Something's Not Right" is the winner of a Parents' Choice Approval commendation. The Parents' Choice Foundation commented, "It may well lay the groundwork for seminal scholarship in the field of learning disabilities." Reviewed positively by many, including the National Middle School Association: "This is a very well-written book [that] poignantly reveals how children with learning disabilities often put overwhelming demands on family life" and "I found this book hard to put down."

Rating:
Summary: It's Mostly Right
Review: Reading this book as part of a class on the lives of people with disabilities, I enjoyed the book. The only thing that I would take it out of the context of the "everyday" experience was the tremendous resources this mother had for her children, three of the four with learning disabilities. (Nearly all of them went to boarding schools, while she stayed at home with them before they went away to school.) Not too technical, but a honest mother's story.

Rating:
Summary: It's Mostly Right
Review: Reading this book as part of a class on the lives of people with disabilities, I enjoyed the book. The only thing that I would take it out of the context of the "everyday" experience was the tremendous resources this mother had for her children, three of the four with learning disabilities. (Nearly all of them went to boarding schools, while she stayed at home with them before they went away to school.) Not too technical, but a honest mother's story.

Rating:
Summary: An Incredible Journey
Review: The National Institutes of Health estimate that 15 percent of all people have learning disabiliies. I suspect that the number is actually closer to 40-50 percent, if you include difficulties in a specific area (just in reading, math, sequencing or spatial problems). My estimate is based on how many people have trouble performing in one or more areas, even after many years of schooling and effort. For example, about 35 percent of the people in our state read in English below the 8th grade level in proficiency.

Yet as a society, we tend to act as though everyone learns easily and effortlessly. That makes life tough on the parents and children who are having problems learning. They find that they do not always get the help and emotional support they need. Once discouraged, one can end up accepting performance below one's capability.

If you are not learning disabled or do not have anyone in your family who is, this book will be a real eye-opener. In one family, three of four children have serious difficulties. The fourth goes on to excel at Harvard. Yet with great determination, endless effort, enormous imagination, and unending commitment, a mother is able to make progress. Some will discount her progress because she obviously had lots of financial resources. This book should be a wake-up call to all of us that we need to do more to support such families, especially when they do not have these financial resources.

If you or someone in your family does have learning disabilities, this book will be poignant. You will feel the pain more directly. On the other hand, I hope you will grasp the book's encouraging message: Someone out there can help you or your child. But be prepared for many backward steps, side steps, and delays.

The book mostly focuses on Brian's problems, because he was the most severely affected. As a young child, he had trouble saying words in recognizeable form. With endless energy, he was a nonstop buzz saw. He was constantly hurting himself by running into things, and creating disasters. He was slow to learn almost all of the standard motor skills and to toilet train. Learning was almost impossible for him.

Eventually, Brian's mother comes to learn that he has no peripheral vision, has trouble conceptualizing except by touching things, needs physical sequencing to grasp order, and requires having things broken down into their simplest elements. She stays the course until these diagnoses are made, and Brian goes to the right school (after many somewhat right and many wrong ones).

In this book, you'll encounter the independence, tradition, wishful thinking, bureaucratic, communication, disbelief, and procrastination stalls. Nancy Lelewer proves to be a champion stallbuster, and the family goes on to prosper. After he children were older she learned to develop educational games, do learning research, and write this book, despite some learning diabilities of her own. Unfortunately, her marriage did not survive all of these difficulties the children experienced. I suspect that that is not uncommon.

The book ends with some sound prescriptions for making progress: Early diagnosis; understanding; appropriate remediation; concrete, practical tools; encouraging/reminding person to help; and possibly medication. You will also find a list of organizations that may be able to help.

I hope everyone will read this book. The awareness the book creates will help open our eyes to the need for more individualized diagnosis and instructional methods if we are to tap the full potential of everyone!

Rating:
Summary: The Power of a Mother's Determination
Review: The National Institutes of Health estimate that 15 percent of all people have learning disabiliies. I suspect that the number is actually closer to 40-50 percent, if you include difficulties in a specific area (just in reading, math, sequencing or spatial problems). My estimate is based on how many people have trouble performing in one or more areas, even after many years of schooling and effort. For example, about 35 percent of the people in our state read in English below the 8th grade level in proficiency.

Yet as a society, we tend to act as though everyone learns easily and effortlessly. That makes life tough on the parents and children who are having problems learning. They find that they do not always get the help and emotional support they need. Once discouraged, one can end up accepting performance below one's capability.

If you are not learning disabled or do not have anyone in your family who is, this book will be a real eye-opener. In one family, three of four children have serious difficulties. The fourth goes on to excel at Harvard. Yet with great determination, endless effort, enormous imagination, and unending commitment, a mother is able to make progress. Some will discount her progress because she obviously had lots of financial resources. This book should be a wake-up call to all of us that we need to do more to support such families, especially when they do not have these financial resources.

If you or someone in your family does have learning disabilities, this book will be poignant. You will feel the pain more directly. On the other hand, I hope you will grasp the book's encouraging message: Someone out there can help you or your child. But be prepared for many backward steps, side steps, and delays.

The book mostly focuses on Brian's problems, because he was the most severely affected. As a young child, he had trouble saying words in recognizeable form. With endless energy, he was a nonstop buzz saw. He was constantly hurting himself by running into things, and creating disasters. He was slow to learn almost all of the standard motor skills and to toilet train. Learning was almost impossible for him.

Eventually, Brian's mother comes to learn that he has no peripheral vision, has trouble conceptualizing except by touching things, needs physical sequencing to grasp order, and requires having things broken down into their simplest elements. She stays the course until these diagnoses are made, and Brian goes to the right school (after many somewhat right and many wrong ones).

In this book, you'll encounter the independence, tradition, wishful thinking, bureaucratic, communication, disbelief, and procrastination stalls. Nancy Lelewer proves to be a champion stallbuster, and the family goes on to prosper. After he children were older she learned to develop educational games, do learning research, and write this book, despite some learning diabilities of her own. Unfortunately, her marriage did not survive all of these difficulties the children experienced. I suspect that that is not uncommon.

The book ends with some sound prescriptions for making progress: Early diagnosis; understanding; appropriate remediation; concrete, practical tools; encouraging/reminding person to help; and possibly medication. You will also find a list of organizations that may be able to help.

I hope everyone will read this book. The awareness the book creates will help open our eyes to the need for more individualized diagnosis and instructional methods if we are to tap the full potential of everyone!

Rating:
Summary: An Incredible Journey
Review: This book was an eye-opening read to the world of learning disabilities. Since reading it several years ago, I have become acquainted with the author, who is an incredible person! The calendar she wrote about is available from her, and I have one in my first grade classroom. The children enjoy finding out what we're doing next by looking at the little Teddy-bear pictures. If you are the parent of young children or a teacher of pre-school through first grade, contact her for the calendar. This book is great!