h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My wife is Dc as is a colleague at work. I am the opposite -- put me in a strange town or city and I can always find the centre. I can track the direction I have travelled on a journey.
It has failed me twice -- once in London and once in Dallas.

I don't know about London, but I wouldn't wish Dallas on anyone.
Lost or found.

Me too.
I've even been known rely on three year olds to tell me I've turned the wrong way.
The other night when we told our 9yo to put on some decent clothes and he asked "Why,we're only picking up Granny" Hubby said "Oh, you never know where we might end up."
The child's immediate rejoinder was "Oh. Is Mummy driving?"

Are you dyslexic?

(Are you 'joel'?)

Mmm, no, but my wife is.
Mmm, (yep).

Hence the 11yr old's problem...

Poor you. Do you find yourself having to supply words she's forgotten?
Or finishing the sentences when she gets lost halfway through?

She makes up in volume what she lacks in accuracy. That's why we are seeing a counselor next week.

The eleven year old's basic problem is that her teachers are encouraging her laziness so they don't have to do their jobs.
Many of them cain't spell fer squat!

The trouble is most of the teachers today were 'educated' back in the sixties when that silly ITA was fashionable.

My 10yo found mnemonics useful. Things like "There Her Enormous Ring Explodes" or "Sea Excites Auntie" and "See Elephants Everywhere". (The sillier the better - more memorable)
I know some dyslexic teenagers that have hundreds of them.

(Why not try earplugs? Gotta be cheaper than counselling)

Its the big 'un thats dyslexic and a nurse.
The little 'un is simply lazy.

Not quite clear on ITA.
I've often unfairly referred to some college diplomas as MRS degrees and unfortunately that seems to be the case with some o 'er teachers.

My basic problem is a highly selective memory.
I write notes all over the place and on my hand.

Ah, but counselling might be cheaper than an adjudicated separation.

Are you sure about the littl'un? It IS hereditary you know - and there are degrees.....
What's she like at catching balls? Or reciting tables while standing on one leg?

*Picks self up from floor*

They may not have had the ITA (Initial Teaching Alphabet) across the pond, but I'm sure they must have had some sort of trendy "let the little darlings express themselves without the constraints of proper spelling or grammar" system.
Poor lost generation.

My daughter once wrote "violin lesson" on her big brother's forehead.
All morning he was told by everyone he encountered "You've got a violin lesson!"
Unfortunately the novelty had worn off by the afternoon and he still forgot to go.

Would it need to be adjudicated? Couldn't you do it yourselves if necessary?

Y'see, I am a bit handicapped by the fact that they are both females, the spousal unit and the child.
I don't know what to expect in many areas.
The wife has many subtle and not-so-subtle medical and social problems.
The child is living in a world populated by idiots and her parents are just the ones she is sentenced to live with.

Yeah, there were a number of strange ideas running around like phonics and accelerated reading and color/concept coordination.
This is Texas and it's educational colleges and school systems live in a world of their own. The state even has its own textbooks, being the largest customer affecting the publishers. There is a lot of horse puck being disseminated in the curriculum, mixed with a sloppy sort of social work profiling and just generally 'tired of fighting' anti-rhetoric.

As regards the separation, we are engaging in counselling so that we can have someone to gang up on or someone to take sides. I don't expect it will do much good.
The spousal unit has been taught that thought hurts and is to be avoided early and often.

'fraid I can't offer any constructive suggestions - the only female I've ever known intimately was brought up solely by yours truly and is therefore about as feminine as John Wayne (but much prettier).

The thing is, tonsil, I was called lazy and careless all the way through school and so was my second child, till we discovered what was actually wrong when he was 13 (and I was 32). It would have saved an awful lot of anguish if we'd known earlier.
It's incredibly frustrating for a child who's actually working twice as hard as his/her peers to be constantly accused of slacking.
One of my son's saddest comments was made after the final parent/teacher meeting at the middle school. It took us a long time to convince him his teachers had recommended him for the top groups in all the subjects at the new school, and when he finally accepted it he said "You mean I'm NOT thick?"

Please please please get someone to do a basic check.

Even a kid with a so-called 'genius' level IQ, which enables him/her to manage well enough for it not to be noticed, has a great deal of trouble from about 14 onwards, when kids are expected to take a lot more responsibility for organising themselves.
If she turns out to be dyslexic and you find out now you have time to get some organisational strategies in place before the real pressure starts (yeah, like writing notes on your hands )

Teachers! Don't you just hate 'em! My son had been at school for 2 whole years (in a class of only 11 children) and couldn't read or write a single word. When I pointed this out to the woman that had supposedly been teaching him all that time she said "Well if he can't read or write now he never will"
I had to teach him myself.

I hope the counselling helps.
If it doesn't the separation might.
My first husband and I held hands all the way through our divorce hearing and ended up in bed together that night - once the pressure's off it seems to be a lot easier to be friends.
I've heard other people say that too.

Remember why you wanted to marry each other all those years ago...
Good luck.

Ha! Oh, we asked for help. We were referred to a doctor that immediately put her on hyperactivity medication, which made her sluggish and gave her acid reflux...so we gave her medicine for the acid and it made her sick to her stomach...
Then I found out from the wife that the doctor had done nothing but talk to the child for fifteen minutes and made her diagnosis from that. Off the medication for the kid.
One of her problems is that because she is left-handed, they back off on her a bit, but I have seen her results when she cares and I have seen her draw...
She's just about two grade points from having a B across the board.
I told her if she managed that, then she wouldn't have to do many of her chores. I think that counts as encouragement. One of the things holding her back is her band practice. I've been making her practice at home a bit more, instead of letting her decide when to.
I recently had to go down to the school and talk to her counselor and her language arts teacher and one of the things she was doing was reading too much. She'd flash through her school work in order to have more time to read. We yanked her out of the Accelerated Reading program because she had the second highest score in the whole school and she had enough points for the grade but she was reading below her level because the school library doesn't have anything at her level, which is about Second Year of College....she was reading a book about DNA research to her mother the other day.
We had the experience with two teachers browbeating her in front of us one night after a Parent/Teacher Evening a couple of years ago.
The principal, a lady, came in saw what was going on, an personally paid attention to our daughter and us for the next year and a half.
Unfortunately, that was also what led to the trip to the doctor.
She scored so high on her end-of-the-year test, a Texas thing called the TAAS, that she got a medallion for it.

Left-handed huh? Good at drawing...music...and that reading.
And being diagnosed as hyperactive...
Yup. More and more definitely starting to sound like a very bright dyslexic.
Does she find it hard to actually start the work, either slow and painstaking or misspelt and scruffy, easily distracted and then forgets about it...?

In Britain the Educational Psychologists employed by the Local Authorities fight tooth and nail not to diagnose dyslexia because if they do they have to spend money to provide help. We therefore have an excellent self-help organisation calle d the British Dyslexia Association. You may have something similar there.

If you can find someone qualified to do a basic test ask them about "crossed-laterality"

http://www.bda-dyslexia.org.uk/d02adult/a03check.htm

http://www.bda-dyslexia.org.uk/d03parnt/p01signs.htm

Right now I'm trying to get
(by the way, the kid can mirror-write, too)
it through my head that school office personnel cannot be expected to be the brightest bulb in the pack.
I just now returned from having to drive down to the school to speak in person with the, um, phone-answering 'secretary', after having tried to call down there for a half an hour and then, when someone did pick up the phone, I got put on hold for twenty minutes....
So, when I drove there, stood and stared at five teenaged office 'assistants' for ten minutes while she was on the phone, finally got to speak to her, preambled my original question with a wondering about whether their phones were out of order...I was asked,"Oh, is that all you wanted to know?"
I restrained myself. Mightily.
Then I told her that all I needed to do was get a message to the Band Department that I would like my child to bring her instrument home this evening because she had not practiced in a while, having been sick for three days last week. It should have been simple, shouldn't it? No. It wasn't. I had e-mailed the Band director, but the school server bopped it back to me, saying invalid address. I mentioned this to the public servant. She said,"Ah, we haven't updated our site, yet, this year. And she is probably using her old address from the High School."
Well, it turned out that none of the regular teachers were there today and I didn't know half of them anyway, because they keep quitting and getting replaced.
So, the office person scribbled a note to whichever substitute is in charge today and we will see if the message gets through.
Once again, no one asked for ID or who I was, they just took my word for it.
Nah, I'm not worried about my kid, I'm worried about all of them!

As for that BDA survey, some of it certainly applies to me.
I will have to see if it applies to the child.