You can't always get what you want

“Can you read those letters on the wall?” the tech asked Kai.

“O-W-O-R-E-F.”

“Wow,” the tech said, sounding less awed than alarmed.

I had been spacing out, enjoying someone else being responsible for my kid for a few moments. Kai seemed to be enjoying himself at the eye doctor. But the tone of the technician’s voice suggested I should check back in. I looked at the wall.

D-V-G-F-R-P

He’d gotten them all wrong.

:::

Scott and I both wear glasses, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Kai might need them, too. I need them for reading, Scott needs them for everything.

The doctor had asked me all kinds of questions about Kai’s reading, whether he had problems with comprehension or writing. He does, as a matter of fact. Just the other day we wrote writing and reading comprehension goals into his IEP.

I had an idea that maybe Kai just couldn’t see. Was it possible that Kai’s deficits in reading could be attributed to bad eyesight? Because I can fix that! I could get Kai a jaunty pair of specs that would suddenly solve his problems, somehow talk his left and right hemispheres into cooperating more fully. I wondered if he’d want those kinds of lenses that turn into sunglasses outside.

The doctor put me in mind of Mick Jagger. He was diminutive and spoke with a vaguely British accent, longish hair swept back from his face, his blue suit had a sort of rock-and-roll sheen to it.

“Kai has no problems with his vision,” he said.

I cleared my throat. “But he got all those answers wrong,” I argued.

“Yes, but if we separated the letters, he got them perfectly. It’s only when they’re in a group,” the doctor countered.

“Kai has problems with tracking and with visual processing. He can’t read a line of text, he loses his place, he substitutes words. The denser a text gets, the less data he can collect, the less what he reads imprints.”

Mick Jagger decided we needed some more tests.

I liked Mick. I thought he made sense. It was like he used a scalpel to quickly get to the heart of something that we all—his teachers and I—just realized was becoming a vast disconnect. But it meant more testing, more money, more therapy, more modifications at school.

“Kai has great analytical skills,” Mick said. “There are a lot of reasons to be hopeful.”

I’ve been told this before. Doctors use that word “hopeful.” I’m beginning to suspect it’s some kind of code, like “Hopefully he won’t live in your basement.”

:::

Though the doctor had offered hope that Kai's visual processing could be vastly improved, I drove home feeling frustrated and discouraged. I’d thought that Kai’s problems with reading comprehension stemmed from a communication problem. His teacher had given me his reading assessments ahead of his IEP meeting.

“Why to people go to the zoo?” one question asked.

“Because ‘zoo’ starts with ‘z’ and ends with ‘oo,’” he’d answered.

We’d all had a good chuckle around the IEP table over that one, but it’s really not that funny. Kai has trouble with abstract thought, will need to be taught how to do it in order to answer any question thrown at him. That his visual processing adds another layer to the problem makes it an even bigger challenge for everyone.

Mick Jagger suggested that this will be incredibly frustrating for Kai, that there are things that come so very easily for him, but not this. He will struggle with this. He needs something called ocular re-education therapy. He’ll need ongoing speech therapy, time with his special ed teacher, all to answer a question that any three-year-old can answer whether they read the story or not.

Why do people go to the zoo? To see the damn animals.

:::

Later that night, I was taking some time to feel sorry for myself, scrolling through Facebook. Someone’s blog just got picked up on a news outlet. Yippee for them. A friend of mine’s son won his first trophy at a chess tournament. He’s five.

I shook my head.

This kid had been a surprise to a bohemian artist couple who hadn’t planned on having kids at all. In fact, she was halfway through her pregnancy before she figured it out and hadn’t been careful with her behavior. I remember her confiding in me that she was worried she’d hurt the baby somehow, but instead he is perfect. He is in an accelerated program at school. Gifted is the word you might use.

“The randomness of it,” I said to Scott. Here is a tale of two children, one carefully planned, one not. One placed in an expensive Pottery Barn crib that exceeded all safety recommendations and one placed in a crib built by his artist father in a nursery next to a workshop full of saws and nails. I took Kai to their house once, and was advised to lift him over my head in the yard so the pit bulls couldn’t get at him.

Their kid wins the chess trophy and my kid wins years of therapy.

Scott shrugged. “Everyone gets the kid they can handle,” he said.

But I was jealous, if only for a few moments.

My friend is an amazing parent, raising an amazing kid. Mine’s just different from hers.

When the doctor said that Kai would perhaps find this new venture frustrating, that his skills are so splintered that things most children can do handily will be so utterly baffling, I wonder if he wasn’t really warning me of what I would feel. I thought I’d accepted it all, but maybe not.

“There’s a lot of reason to feel hopeful,” the doctor had said. I was suddenly sure it was a reminder, a ladder tossed into whatever pit I would need to wallow in before I made my peace with Kai’s complicated brain and once again charged forward with great gusto and armed with my insurance card.

And who knows? There are a lot of people in this world. Maybe one of them DOES go to the zoo because it starts with a ‘z’ and ends with an ‘oo.’

One can always hope.

Comments

[Crystal]

My daughter has a visual processing disorder. As I read what you had written, all those feelings came back to me. She's doing much better with some accommodations. She wears bifocals to enlarge print and they help with the tracking. We also have all her assignments on blue paper. The white background was too much for her eyes to handle. These accomodations have made a big difference.

[megan (PDM)]

Wow. So interesting! Who would ever thought about blue paper instead of white?? Thanks for weighing in--glad your daughter's doing better!