The
Struggling
Homeschooler
Dianne Craft
Can Learning Disabilities
Be Mitigated?
On a sunny morning, twin 5-year-olds were practicing writing their names. Cara wrotehernameonthepaper
and proudly showed it to me. John also
wrote his name and proudly showed it
to me. Cara’s name was written well,
albeit with the primitive spacing and
angles that 5-year-olds often use. John,
however, wrote his name in total mirror
wri-ting! As a special educator, I knew
that reversing a letter in writing is typical for a child who is just learning how
to write, as 5-year-olds are. However,
Take repeated ear
infections seriously,
because these can be
one of the causes of
auditory processing
problems later in life.
I knew that total mirror writing was a
whole different story. That told me that
this child was having big issues with an
internalized midline that would only
lead to bigger issues when older, if not
addressed early.
To further explore this internalized
midline, I asked John to do the simple
cross-crawl exercise (touching the opposite hand and knee while standing).
I demonstrated how to do this. He
watched me and then did a homolateral
crawl (touching the knee and hand on
