Lessons and Learning

Ever wonder how we began to learn? If Adam knew everything he needed to when he was created, did he know how to teach having not been taught? His children and their children weren't with all the knowledge in the world (no pun intended of good and evil,) therefore who taught them? Just a thought...

I believe this; communication through written and verbal means is an amazing thing. The amount of shared knowledge astounds me to the point of understanding that I'll never know as much as I'll be able to handle and yet the information will continue to expand exponentially. Funny to think that I could lock myself in a resource room for years, the rest of my life even, and not make a good enough dent in the world's knowledge to know a 10th of it. Simply amazing.

Of course my memory serves as a better lubricant of losing knowledge. Fleeting thoughts aside, my knowledge of how to live with my son grows substantially every day! My clients fill me in, my family contributes, and most importantly, Nicole shares her already vast trivia in child rearing. I even get a few emails from national websites serving up the latest trends of parenting. All this information is extremely handy and entirely relevant of course, but... something is missing.

OH YEAH, EXPERIENCE!!

Not to say that I don't learn from books and verbal direction, but I can't wait to learn with a hands on approach. This means I will probably fail a time or two, but at least I'll be figuring things out from a standpoint that my brains likes the most. I'm a hands on learner. Show me a schematic for a house, and I'll be able to build it; no problem. With my hands and eyes and my brain. Telling me that things should be this way, or reading just words, and I may lose the intended lesson.

I'm analytic, but I'm a big picture kind of guy, and knowing how all the small things go while addressing the needs of a child builds the necessary foundation of how I should and shouldn't parent my child. Things need to make sense in the entire scheme of things in order for me to understand the smaller steps. Order is important, but if I do D, A, B, E C and still get the same result in the end, then I'm usually ok with that. Efficiency aside, when I get home from work, I know what chores must get done, but I have no routine about getting them done except that they should all be done before I hop into bed.

I'm told to get a routine, it helps make the baby's life easier. What about the baby who doesn't like routine or doesn't find one? I'm somewhat convinced that many kids that are labeled ADD are simply the kids that need to be taught a different way. They are like me, a global thinker, knowing what result needs to happen, but not so sure the way to go about making it happen. I wasn't the best student in school unless the lesson was competitive. I knew that if I was competing, I was winning something in the end. Tell me to do a math lesson, though most of the time easy, I didn't have the big picture in my brain to tell me why this was important. I didn't know where the lessons were taking me. Who is to say that ADD kids aren't normal? Only those whose brains are wired a different way. Analytical thinkers. The people that ask the "why" question, wanting to find the reason behind the cause so they can use it in the future. Decidedly, they are the A-B-C kind of kids. The school system caters to them, and calls the others ADD. Not to lump them all together in such polarizing groups, but its funny the way I see it.

Which ever way Spencer turns out, I'm not going to label him. I'm going to communicate with him. Sitting down and learning how he learns. That will be the greatest way over any obstacles keeping me from helping my son succeed in life. I'm willing to do take on that hands on challenge!