nwhiker | Three things for Sunday (Reply)

1. Annoyed that more and more "learning disabilities" is being used for "intellectual disabilities". In part because that leaves kids like Linnea described as having "learning disorders", which might be the case, but it's already hard enough to get services for kids with dyslexia etc in the schools that losing the term disability won't help. Seriously. The services for learning "disorders" requires a different mindset when dealing with them that, say, mild autism. You can't just teach the same stuff, only less and slower, you are dealing with a kid with "normal" IQ whose brain patterns are off: you need to change the way you teach and evaluate.

2. That said. In the dark days when her inability to relate basic numbers to number of objects, the total incomprehension of the number line (is 17 M&Ms better than 3? She didn't know) caused us so much anxiety, it never occurred to me that she'd one day be manipulating logs and e and trig with relative ease (even if slowly and with a cheat sheet).

3. Bit annoyed here. So my mom is coming for three weeks. And my sister emails this morning about how my mom slipped on her carpeted stairs (second time it's happened, both times she was carrying coffee). My stairs, while normally pitched, are wood, and a fall would be, as dh said "life altering and not in a good way". In addition there are some edges (thanks, asshole builders. When we said 'no ogees' we figured it would be the same eased edge on the wide sills and side/top of the stairwell and side of the stairs boards as the rest of the window trim. No, those are 90 degrees and sharp as hell. I suspect they were supposed to route them to match but by the time the boards showed up, we were all pissed with each other. Which is why they left untreated open edges on the window sills, btw. Not a horrid deal because it's plain unanythinged maple, but what if we'd chosen cherry?) Where was I? Oh yeah. My stairs are not elderly person friendly and with this additional warning, dh especially is completely against her going downstairs. Which means a MAJOR amount of rearranging our bedroom. In a day. Fuuuuuuck. I let my sister know, so she could prepare my mom, and sis is all like 'oh, I don't think that's necessary'. Well, yeah, actually it is. If this wasn't a concern, why did you bring it up? Anyhow. Did not need this, week of graduation, with both me and dh on impossibly tight deadlines for various things. UGH.