Executive Function Disorder

I feel that I must apologies to all my readers out there because of my lack of frequent updates in terms of material. I often find myself thinking of myself as a Dreamer instead of a Writer, a distinction I will get too shortly. I have many ideas and ambitious prospects for my future, near and far. However, when it comes to the actual follow though I have difficulty.

When dealing with things hands on, at the moment, a clear and present timeline, which must be adhered to, I don’t have a problem. Things are being done in the present and there isn’t a future that needs to be planned or other things, which can get in the way. Once there is a present and a future in terms of a project then things start to get shot to hell.

The problem that I have to deal with here is called Executive Function Disorder (EFD). The basic definition of this diagnosis is a great difficulty to follow though a plan. The more loosely defined the plan the less likely I am able to follow it. For this reason I tend to jump into things fast. My friends can attest to the fact that I am a spur of the moment kind of guy.

My main problem is that if I don’t immediately try and follow though with something. Write a paper, do research, write a blog entry, then they tend to wait and eventually stop. If I try and force myself to do it by a certain time, then it waits. I have to consciously force myself at an exact moment in time to get up and do it. And for me it’s not as easy as it sounds.

In the past I’ve had various catches and things to make sure that I got the work done. The main one being my mother. I have no problem admitting that my mother is probably the only reason that I got though school at all. I would tell her what work I had, after dinner was over or she had the time, she would sit down in front of the computer and allow me to dictate my homework to her.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t the regular day to day homework but the essays and such that she was instrumental in assisting me though. When I got distracted it was my mother who got me back on track before I was completely away from the topic. It was also her who coaxed the information out of me. She knew just how to do it, give me a subject and a verb and I could write a paragraph or more. Something that I would most definitely be unable to do on my own, that is for certain.

I’ve spent two years in another college, and a year off, before attending my current school. My last college was called Landmark College. The premier college in the United States dedicated to Learning Disabled students. By that time I had a good handhold on my dyslexia. But the real problem began with being away from home and the assistance I got from my mother. That’s when the EFD reared its head once more, and I’ve been working on putting the lid on it ever since. I worked on it at Landmark. Though I’ll be the first one to admit that making plans to deal with a disability that makes it difficult to follow plans is one of the greatest ironies I’ve had to deal with.

One thing that has helped me in my struggle is my friends, people backing me up and helping me work out a schedule. For this I am eternally grateful. The next step is working on following my own schedule. Perhaps the greatest feat I will face. Let’s see how well I do, shall we?

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So here I am on break, home for a little R&R and to weelde some stories out of my mom to talk about my development in terms of language and dyslexia. What really brought this about was on Friday evening I went to my aunt and uncle's place where we had a soup night with their children and grandchildren. My cousin, his wife, and two children aged two and four. Looking at them and how they played and communicated it made me wonder about how I was different from them at that age. Was my learning difference was visible then? And so we begin.

My mother said that I always had a presence about me, sure of who I am and so forth. At a very young age eye contact was a very important thing for me. As early as five weeks old I was looking directly at people when they walked into a room and my mother says there was understanding. I'm inclined to believe her.

By June of '87, I was roughly 20 months old, and my vocabulary was over ten times that. I checked the statistics online. The average vocabulary for a two year old child is 200 words, and I had more then a little head start on that. However I was not putting them together as other children might. I could identify something as a 'truck' and know it was 'big' but i would never say it was a 'big truck'. The reason for this is unknown to me. Perhaps it just never occured to me that they could be put together that way. My sister on the other hand was using full sentences by the time she was my age even if her vocabulary was not the same as mine.

My mother said that there were only two words that I ever misspronounced with any regularity as a child. Those were music as 'meekos' and buffalo as 'bullafo'. I can only surmise that I learned these two words wrong and the pronunciation stuck with me until I could unlearn my mistake and speak them correctly. My vocabulary continued to grow at a pretty good rate though nothing truely of note occured until I was three years old.

At age three I attended a cooperative nursury school and publick park combenation. Asside from te usual running around and story time there was a large focus on art. I didn't stand out as a painter, that was for sure. My mother described me as a "most minimal of the minimalists." Given a large piece of paper I would make some tiny figure on part of it, declare myself done and run off to do something else. I'm sure it was quite discouraging for my mother.

This all changed once the medium changed from painting to clay. Working in three dimensions completely changed the activity for me in some way. My projects changed instantaniously from minimalist to incredable detail and focus. I worked on every aspect of the project going so far to even make a meat drying rack and little pieces of meat less then an inch in size to fit. My mother estimates that it was all done to the same scale.

I believe it was because I was so attuned to the dimension of things rather then appearance. Recreating something I had seen in three dimensions rather then trying to put it on paper with paint. My spacial awareness translated to three dimensional creativity rather then just two.

It's from this point that it really starts to come out how I am much more a cerebral individual rather then physical. I played with the other kids but it was never in competition. My mother calls it being a 'Paralell Player'. Playing alongside without trying to surpass them. I was large for my age and apperently strong as well though I never really thought about it like that and that became the trend for the rest of my life.

The next school I attended was when I was four years old called St. Columbus. There the focus was on socialization rather then teaching facts and so forth. Teaching children to relate and solve problems. To get along with one another. Truely an important skill to cultivate from a young age. There was nothing really of importance there to note on other then the focus of education.

I'll continue with my diagnosis and more schools in the next post.

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Dyslexia

Well I"ve gotten some replys and I'd have to say that it's a good start in how I want this proect to progress. People are asking questions, voicing support and bringing up things that I intend to talk about in the future such as dysgraphia. For those of you who arn't that familiar with learning disabilities it is an inability to write legibaly. Think about Doctor's handwriting, you know what I mean, that illegibal scrall that seems to be required to enter the field of medicine. But this is getting off my intended topic for this post. I wanted to talk about Dyslexia here today and tell you what that means.


People tend to think they already have an idea what dyslexia means. Looking at a giant red octagon at a crosswalk while driving and seeing POTS. While this is sometimes true, dyslexia is a bit more subtle and often more insidious. Dyslexia covers a much broader area then just reading, it aso includes writing, spelling, mathmatics, language skills, short term memory, processing, organization, audio/visual perception among other things.

What was that? Oh? Examples? Let me see what I can think of to simulate it.

To be perfectly honnest, I can't think of all that much. Oh I could find you a dozen misspellings and cartoons and cute backwards letters online. However, I think that they are poking fun at what is often quite serious for me. I could say try reading that dictionary upside down again, but that's just another misconception about dyslexia. Oh I can do it, just probably no faster or slower then any other person. Ah, I think I've got it now. Pick a word, something sutably long and complex. Here are some exaples of ones I thought of, though it could be anything really: atmosphere, ancient, SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS! The last one's a joke, but use it if you want.

Now say the word, over and over and over again. Take a moment to slow down, feel the word rolling over your tongue and past your lips, think about every sound and where it comes from in the word. Take your time, don't hurry on my account. Can you imagine not being able to do that? Not being able to redily recognize where each sound comes from, what leter produces each tone in the word? Try saying the word quickly about 20 times. I'm not asking as a tongue twister or anything like that. I'm asking you to experiance something I've heard reffered to as a Gestalt Break. You've probably experianced this in the past, where a word you know and use doesn't make sense, where the parts don't add up to a recognized whole. Instead of parsing a word like Atmosphere into Atmo and Sphere, you may find yourself thinking of it as Atmos Fear, or perhaps all together something different.

That best describes my early experiances with dyslexia and learning to read, write, and spell. Can you imagine it? not just a few moments of incomprehension, but years and years of inability. There were other things as well that stemmed from that inability, psychological things. Fear mainly, but also embarrisment, anger and disappointment with mysef for being unable where so many others were excelling in my eyes. It was torturous at times believe me.

Enough of this. If you were going to pity me, or feel sorry for me, forget it. I wouldn't trade my dyslexia for anything. You might be confused now, but here, let me explain. Dyslexia isn't all bad, infact it can be quite good. I tend to see the world from a completely different perspective then a lot of people. You want an example of this? Easy. Ever been to a classical orchestra? Enjoy the music, watch the musicians, have some fun? Ever been able to follow each section of the music from each area of the orchestra? Follow the melody by watching the bows of the violins? Seen the msuical back and forth, competition and conversation and not just heard it? I do, every time, all the time.

My short term memory may not be all that. I may be a slow reader and most definetly slower writer, but I remember the vast magority of what I do read and write. I have a lot of fun with games of Chess, pulling the unexpected move because I don't think like a traditional chess player, I don't think I would be able to if I wanted. I have stories, both good and bad about dyslexia. Perhaps I'll be writing out a few of them on here later this week. I look forward to continuing this.

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