We were hanging out at our friends Heather and Daron's house and Cub asked Heather if he could watch cartoons...."Sure Bud, just change the channel to 300 on the remote." He looks up at me, eyes wide and deer like and I know he doesn't want me to tell her. I walk over and help him change the channel, he relaxes and grows little antennas as he gets lost in the animated world. Heather looks at me quizzically...."well," I explain, "it's hard to use the remote when you don't recognize the numbers."
Dyslexia doesn't discriminate between reading words and numbers. A symbol is a symbol and it represents a sound or a combination of sounds, whether its a letter, word or number. To succeed in math you must be able to read the symbols...so dyslexia creeps in.
Later, after we have left, Heather discusses the scene she has witnessed with her husband Daron, who happens to be Cub's baseball coach. (And boy, does Cub ever love Coach Daron). As Daron tries to wrap his head around the fact that this happy-go-lucky, bouncing ball of all boy energy, seven year old can not use the remote he starts thinking. (...As Heather puts it thinking and drinking).
......Thinking about how it is a man's right of passage to be able to command the remote.....thinking about how can it be that no one has figured out how to teach him numbers.....thinking about how he could teach Cub his numbers by teaching him to use the remote!
And so, the baseball coach finds a technique to teach a 7 year old dyslexic player his numbers and a mastery skill of man-hood. Sounds like a grand slam to me! Thanks Coach!
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