10

This trip back has been hectic at best. Although, I am now currently sitting in the "Air New Zealand Lounge" waiting for my flight to take off in two hours. I was bumped twice, once as a volunteer. Now two days, and two unproductive air flights later -- here I am sitting, waiting to go home. Luckily I am flying business class for my fifteen hour flight to LAX; so there you have it -- I have almost left Australia. But not quite.

Luckily on my fanatic trip to Sydney than to Melborne, and back to Sydney -- I found and read a wonderful eye-opening book called, "The Brain That Changes Itself" by Dr. Norman Doidge (MD). I am only two chapters in and already I am dying to read the rest, yet I decided to save it for my flight. The most interesting chapter was the last one I read -- okay and the one before. But for the moment I am going to be speaking about the second chapter on Barbra Arrowsmith Young, "a women labeled 'retarded' (she had severe learning disabilities) discovers how to heal herself" (pg. 27).

Being diagnosed with learning disabilities as a child I drank up this whole chapter -- and fast. I feel as though I've never been so interested in anything before. I have been diagnosed with "auditory comprehension disorder". I have a few other learning disabilities that also hinder my ability to communicate, spell and read as well. Talking to me for a few minutes you might notice a few of them -- to understand anything you are talking about I ask a million questions, as a means to comprehend various daily communication. I try to describe it as people talking way to fast -- I cannot understand them. I get frustrated sometime while trying to communicate what I am thinking. Thoughts have a difficult time coming from my brain to my mouth, and coming out correctly. Although, I am a horrible speller; I am a fairly decent writer, when I set out to be. However, reading somewhat difficult. Yet, I love reading. Now with this, I am very intelligent, although I do find it hard to communicate in certain areas of my life. But that's just a little about me.

In this chapter it explains how she was before she understood how to correct her learning disabilities. Although some of her brain did not function properly, her mind did something spectacular, it could take a "back road" if trained properly. This back road theory is described well in the book on page 9; "'I look at it this way' says Bach-y-Rita. 'if you are driving from here to Milwauke, and the main bridge goes out, first you are paralyzed. Then you take old secondary roads through the farmland. Then, as you use these roads more, you find shorter paths to use to get where you want to go, and you start to get there faster.' These 'secondary' neural pathways are 'unmasked,' or exposed, and with use, strengthened. This 'unmasking' is generally thought to be one of the main ways the plastic brain reorganizes itself."

It also went into detail on how to CORRECT and yes TREAT the learning and attention issues correctly -- without medications. It also explains why these learning issues are coming to the for front(starting to grow rapidly in the 1960s) -- we no longer use classical methods of teaching as we did to strengthen frontal brain development -- such as cursive and strict emphasis on handwriting, and also wrote memorization (especially long passages, and most were in another language such as Greek, or Latin). Quote on page 42 state, "Then in the 1960s educators dropped such traditional exercises from the curriculum, because they were too rigid or boring, and 'not relevant'. But the loss of these drills has been costly; they may have been the only opportunity that many students had to systematically exercise the brain function that gives us fluency and grace with symbols." Kind of interesting if you ask me!

Great book, will finish it on the plane, totally recommend it. Hope too see you soon!