When you have a learning disabled child you often think about how that came to be. It's not worth thinking about because you can never know the answer --- you can guess, even in an educated way, but you're still guessing.
My daughter has certain skills in terms of memory, observation and other skills that are mostly verbally expressed. I think that she may have got some of them from me or maybe from her dad who has a prodigious memory, mostly for poetry.
Her sister tried to sell me an Indigo gift card for five dollars...she was looking for cash and thought she had a small sum left on it from a few weeks ago. I asked my additional needs daughter what she thought the balance on her sister's card was and she said fifty three cents. I called up the 1-800 number to find out the balance --- guess what, it was fifty three cents. How can she do that?
My eldest daughter can also recite "In Flanders Fields" by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae and has remembered it for every Remembrance Day since I can remember, since she was in Grade 1 anyway. She only ever recites it when I ask --- two or three times a year but it's always there. She also remembers where she saw things; very handy for finding keys or a misplaced earring.
I can remember phone numbers and that's all. I know a lot of them, but they're all I know. My husband remembers poetry: long Robert Service poems or beautiful Robert Frost poetry. Neither one of us can find our keys to save our lives!
We will never know how or why our gorgeous, chatty, curly-headed girl came to be the way that she is...we don't care. We wouldn't change a thing --- she is our remembering, noticing, poetry-reciting girl and we love her.
My daughter has certain skills in terms of memory, observation and other skills that are mostly verbally expressed. I think that she may have got some of them from me or maybe from her dad who has a prodigious memory, mostly for poetry.
Her sister tried to sell me an Indigo gift card for five dollars...she was looking for cash and thought she had a small sum left on it from a few weeks ago. I asked my additional needs daughter what she thought the balance on her sister's card was and she said fifty three cents. I called up the 1-800 number to find out the balance --- guess what, it was fifty three cents. How can she do that?
My eldest daughter can also recite "In Flanders Fields" by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae and has remembered it for every Remembrance Day since I can remember, since she was in Grade 1 anyway. She only ever recites it when I ask --- two or three times a year but it's always there. She also remembers where she saw things; very handy for finding keys or a misplaced earring.
I can remember phone numbers and that's all. I know a lot of them, but they're all I know. My husband remembers poetry: long Robert Service poems or beautiful Robert Frost poetry. Neither one of us can find our keys to save our lives!
We will never know how or why our gorgeous, chatty, curly-headed girl came to be the way that she is...we don't care. We wouldn't change a thing --- she is our remembering, noticing, poetry-reciting girl and we love her.
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