Flipper is often a challenge.  He is ADHD… or SPD… or both.   He has almost no self-motivation whatsoever, and is often completely antagonistic when I try to “teach” him anything — even if it’s something he wanted, and asked, to learn.  Part of the problem is his perfectionism, which – as is often the case with SPD kids – manifests itself in two ways.  First, is a stubborn insistence that his opinion is the correct one, no matter what the evidence against it, even after he has himself realized he was in error.  Second, is the reluctance to try anything at all if he thought there was a chance he wouldn’t be able to do it correctly, or to try again if he’s had an initial misstep.  He just gives up at the first obstacle, loudly proclaiming his stupidity.  And, of course, this usually involves a lot of him yelling, crying in frustration, blaming me for everything, and generally having grand old fits and tantrums.

I try to do what I can to avoid trigger situations, but sometimes it just seems unavoidable.  Once he’s “in a mood”, nothing will get him out of it, he’s completely disconnected, like his brain is disengaged… except letting him go through it and come out the other end, back to himself.

This afternoon, while doing today’s math lesson, we had a most interesting experience.  I thought we were headed towards a meltdown… but he brought himself around.  It was near-miraculous.

At issue, was some calculating involving fractions.  Basically, he had to figure out 38-3/8 minus 1-7/8.  He had written the answer 36, rather than 36-1/2.  Here’s roughly the conversation that got me worried we were headed for a meltdown:

“Oh, that’s close, but not quite.  Let’s try it again.”
“No!  It’s 36!  It has to be!”
“Well, let’s try it again anyway.  So we start by subtracting one, which gets us to 37-3/8, right?”
“Duh!  That’s what I DID!”
“So now we have to take away the 7/8… we start with the 3/8, giving us 37, so how much is left to take away?”
“HUH?  We take away 7/8!!”
“Yes, but we start with the 3/8, and how much is left?”
“YOU’RE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE!”
“I’ll try to explain better… Let’s see… ”
“I already figured it out!!  7 and 3 is 10, so 10/8 makes one, so you take away one more, that’s 36!!!!”
“Wait… 10/8 makes one?”
“YES!!!  10/8 is one, it’s always one, that’s what you TOLD me, that’s how we always DID IT!!!!”

Normally at this point, that would be the end of it.  He KNOWS that 10/8 is not one, but he will stubbornly dig in and refuse to admit it.  I will start off being patient, attempting to rationally show him his error, or even to just suggest we take a break and come back to it later… but it’s too late.  He’ll explode, start crying, throw his pencil, flail about.  He’s “stuck” and only time will unstick him.

Today, it was different.  I not-so-patiently (sigh, I try, but I’m only human) asked him how many 8ths are in one, and he actually calmly (though begrudgingly) replied, “8″.  So if you have 10/8, it’s more than one, right?  ” … right…”

Whoa.  Progress.

We tried the question again, and this time he interrupted my explanations: “wait… wait… I think I got it… 3/8 take away the 7/8… would leave… ONE HALF!  It should be 36-1/2!”

“YES!  You got it!!  Alright, buddy!!!”

I want to clarify here… the astonishing thing is not that he was able to figure out this math problem.  This is math he knows how to do.  It’s not a breakthrough in his comprehension of fractions.  We could have been working on anything… The breakthrough was the fact that he brought himself back from the brink of a meltdown, admitted an error, tried again, WORKED at it, and solved it… and was HAPPY about it!

And it didn’t end there!

Next we were converting fractions into percents.  We struggled a bit to find that 1/8 was 12.5% — but he went quickly from “THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE” to “ooohhh… cool!”

Then from there, “so can you figure out 3/8?”  “NO!  That’s too HAAARD!… oh… wait… uh… 12… 24… 25… uh… I can do this, I can do this…uh… 37-1/2!!!!”

“Great!!! How about 5/8?”  “Uh… I can do this, I can do this… 25… 36… 49… 50… uh.. 50, 50, 50… I can do this… 62… 62-1/2!!!”

“Yup!  What about 7/8?”  “Okay, okay… uh… 62… uh… 80…  86-1/2!”

“86?”

“I mean 87!!! 87-1/2!!!”

And he was GRINNING through all this.

I’ve never seen the like of it.  He was accepting a challenge and plugging away at it, rather than giving up.  He was motivating himself, encouraging himself.  I’ve never heard him say “I can do this, I can do this…” before.  Ever.  EVER.  This was something totally new and different.

He even seemed to be having FUN.  And he was so PLEASED when he came up with the answer.  Normally, he could care less…  He likes information-gathering kinds of learning (reading about dolphins, for instance), but not information-processing or manipulating.  He’s not interested in FIGURING THINGS OUT for himself.

What was different about today?  Beats me.  If I knew, I’d bottle it and market it.  Is it his new bedtime routine?  New vitamins?  Just maturing?  Is it because he had eaten a certain something, or not eaten something else?  Is it just that he likes this particular math program?  I haven’t a clue.

I only know that this was a completely new experience for us today.  And I can only hope that it’s a sign of things to come.  If anything worries me about him, it’s his self-destructive lack of motivation, his complete absence of desire to do better, to improve, to TRY.  Math, shmath, grammar, shmammar… those are just subjects.  I worry about his life.  His attitude issues are all-encompassing, not only about ‘academics’.

If this is a sign that he IS going to be able to pull himself up, to find self-direction and purpose and the inherent joy in sticking through a difficult task and achieving something…

Just, wow.

Any parent of a ‘normal’ child reading this is probably thinking… what’s the big deal?  But parents of ADHD and SPD kids, I think, know exactly what I’m talking about.  “I can do this, I can do this…”

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