Welcome to a day in my life. I can't guarantee that this will be an exciting read for anyone. My life is filled with all the mundane activities of a stay-at-home-mom just trying to raise her three sons to be the best men they can be.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

It's time for 13 Thursday again

As most of you know, our oldest son has Nonverbal Learning Disorder. If you are interested in what that is, follow this link. Nonverbal Learning Disorder


Thirteen Things about Why It's great to have Nonverbal Learning Disorder


1…. You always win at Trivial Persuit. You have superb wrote memory skills which means that you remember facts and trivia after hearing or reading it once ... and you'll remember it forever.

2. You love to read and are good at it. You can read a Harry Potter book in less than two days. (we learned this the hard way when we were flying to Victoria. We stopped at the book store on the way to the airport to pick up a book to read on the plane. By the time we landed, he was half way through the book. By the next morning, we had to make another trip to the book store.)

3. You learn to speak and read early ... and amaze everyone with the facts you know when you're only 4.

4. You could be captain of the debate team. You could argue any point any way you wanted to, and win the argument. You leave the other party in your dust.

5. You get to be exempt from French.

6. You get to be exempt from Gym (which is good if you have NLD because you don't like it anyway.)

7. If your classmates don't remember what page a quote is on, you can find it for them in 10 seconds.

8. You say things that the rest of us only think but would never say ... such as telling someone they have bad breath. Thank you - you are doing the rest of us a favour.

9. You are a details person.

10. You always see the best in people.

11. If Cameron asked me a question that I don't know the answer to, I can just send him to you.

12. Because you see everything in black and white, you have a very strong sense of right and wrong.

13. You win speech competitions.


Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
1. Raggedy
2. Cat
3. Kelli
4. Semitough
5. Brony




Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!


The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!



9 comments:

  1. Great TT!
    I had not heard about NLD. The link was informative. I find the name very odd because Nonverbal to me implies not being able to talk.
    When I read it talked about how eloquent the NLD's speak..
    Thank you for sharing this information with us.
    ^5 to Cameron he sounds like a really neat kid!
    My TT is up
    Happy Thursday!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice look at Matthew's strengths rather than his weaknesses. I wish our society would stop defining people by what they can't do. What an incredibly narrow view of life - and we call that normal?

    ReplyDelete
  3. This IS a great TT! Great way to take a 'disorder' and accentuate the many positive skills your son has! He sounds like a pretty neat kid to me! :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous12:09 AM

    I wish that we could always look at the strengths of children like that! What a wonderful way to let others know about your son! Thanks for sharing! Have a great weekend!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous12:28 AM

    What a great perspective. Interesting and informative.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Last week I facilitated a strategic planning session with our child and family services programs. We deal with families with difficulties and with children of all ages who have challenges of all sorts. Many of the children in our school program are children who have challenges like Matt and whose families have had difficulty coping. In these programs, we use what we call a "strength based appraoch", where we look for the positives in the kids like you have done here. The aim of the day was to have all the supervisors and managers see that we can have even greater success by ensuring parents are further empowered and wrapping around as many supports as is possible, both internal program supports and external community supports.

    Without using identifiers, I used Matt as a case study and spoke to them of how you and John have ensured every support possible is in place. I shared many of the same attributes you have listed here with them and how Matt is doing so well because of his parents refusal to allow the system to make all decisions, and his parents dogged determination to ensure their son had every support possible in place. Matt, you and John are now not just an inspiration to your family, but to a staff in Calgary as they look at the best ways to ensure the same kind of success for the children in our programs.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Love the positive outlook.
    My TT is up.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Great TT. Good on you, you sound like an awesome Mum (I'm an aussie so we say mum!!) I have 5 boys myself so I can so relate to your life.

    ReplyDelete
  9. The world needs people like Matthew and his strengths. I would hate to live in a cookie cutter society and seeing peole through a strengths perspective rather than a deficit model would make all of us better people.

    ReplyDelete

thanks for taking the time to comment on my blog. I appreciate the comment and will be sure to stop by and visit your blog.