A Special Kind Of Gift

A Special Kind of Gift

By Bernette Sherman

If how you see the world is all you’ve ever known, why would you ever think it was different? We all see the world in our unique way, but for Eliza – that meant looking at the world through a rainbow.

Eliza sat at the kitchen table, her eyes tired, she just wanted to go to bed. Her parents didn’t understand why it was taking her so long to do one math sheet. It was first grade and already Eliza hated school. Everything was so confusing. Reading was hard. Math was hard. Everything was hard.

She struggled to read, stammering over simple words and sometimes crying because it seemed impossible. Even though her parents tried to encourage her and be patient, there was pressure. Her parents wondered whether there might be something wrong with her. After all, the other kids were reading and doing addition.

Feeling like she wasn’t good at anything in school, Eliza would come home and close the door to her bedroom and draw pictures whenever she could. In school she’d doodle across the pages of her notebook. Pictures made sense. They matched what she saw and didn’t need solving. Pictures made her feel smart, because she was the best artist in her grade. Even when everything else seemed impossible, she could draw something and it was good.

But it didn’t change school and homework. Her mom had her in tutoring and had her eyes tested. Eliza had told her that something might be wrong with her eyes. The eye doctor didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Her mother wondered if it was dyslexia but something about that didn’t ring true for Eliza. Although the struggle and frustration were similar to someone with dyslexia, they didn’t have a name for it. Special classes for reading and math, seminars at school to help her stop fidgeting and be able to focus, and more tutoring gave her no gains in math. However, by sixth grade she’d discovered a love for reading and for the first time met or exceeded the annual state exam for reading. Eliza cried.

Still, grades were poor, and she was at risk of failing. They didn’t know why there was such a struggle but the school system didn’t work for her. During the middle of seventh grade Eliza was withdrawn from public school and enrolled in a homeschooling program. Armed with new eyeglasses (which she never wore) and a pocket full of hope, she braved a new lifestyle. After a few stressful months and realizing that she is too much of a social bird to not have regular interaction, she was enrolled in a private school that had a different approach to learning.

It was here in the midst of being a new teen and middle-schooler that Eliza learned that how she saw the world, really was special.

One day at school they watched a documentary on Netflix about a girl with synesthesia and a light bulb went on for her. She finally understood that she did see things differently – and why. She also realized she wasn’t by herself and she wasn’t unintelligent. The rainbow was real and even though she was one of a very few, she wasn’t alone.

Synesthesia. That’s the name for it. It is a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Between one percent and five percent of the population has this condition. The most common type is grapheme-color synesthesia, which Eliza has. As late as 2015, the cause is still unclear although several different theories exist.

Eliza’s synesthesia showed up by coding every number, letter, syllable, and word with a color. That meant a simple word like BROTHER would have six different colors overlaid on the letters (BROTHE), an overlay for each of the two syllables that would flash for her and then an overlay for the word. It would flash these different colors as she’s reading or thinking the word. All the time. The same was true with numbers. A single digit has a color and a double-digit number has the extra third color of the full number flashing.

As her parents, we finally understood why everything related to school, except art and music, plagued her. She’d been struggling to swim in an overwhelming ocean while carrying bricks. It’s become something she deals with. It still makes school more difficult and she still finds escape in her art. This struggle has given her empathy and compassion and while the intelligences traditionally valued aren’t usually attributed to her; she’s had to grow in ways she can be proud of. Her emotional intelligence, compassion, empathy, and love to learn in ways not valued in school will serve her long after she completes her formal education. Her world is colorful, truly, just as she is.

Synesthesia is not one of the learning disabilities listed on the website by Learning Disabilities of America. This may be due to the fact that so few people are identified as having it. Children who have it may not realize they are seeing their world differently and perhaps are classified as having a different learning disability. However, there is commonality in learning disabilities in that they are neurologically based and can impact everything from learning basic skills (as described above) to higher level thinking, organization, and time management. These learning disabilities are often called ‘hidden disabilities’ because we can’t see them on the surface. Just as in the story above, she appears fairly normal on the outside and performs ‘average’. However, to become an average student requires above average effort, patience, and struggle.

Back in public school in a performing arts program, she’s learning to work with her disability and find pride in her gifts. She’s recognized as being the best artist in her school and dreams of becoming a tattoo artist and possibly a clothes designer for women who are sized differently. She’s also writing and recording music. In her colorful eyes, everyone is worthy and deserving of being honored and appreciated. If nothing else, her rainbow view of the world makes her overall life richer and deeper and perhaps the rest of us are the ones who have a disability in how we’ve learned to view it.

In general, our public education system teaches to the middle. Common Core is the perfect example of this mentality of teaching to create a core of common level learning goals. What does this do for the child who may be above or below that center of the bell curve? It means they don’t receive the full benefit of the potential of a public education. It means that some of their needs won’t be met because they fall outside of the common or the average.

That girl is my daughter, now a sixteen year old junior, who has learned to live with her special kind of giftedness. As a mother I’ve watched the pain of failure, by traditional intelligence standards, and then saw the other side of the coin when my son who is six and in the second grade came along – also gifted, but traditionally speaking.

Both of them are valuable to this world. Both of them have something unique and special to offer, whether we want to recognize it or not. Their differences are real, valid, and impact how they carry out their lives and what their educational needs are. Neither of them fit well in traditional school settings. Fortunately, the public school Eliza is in may be the best for her – only four classes at a time with drama as her major. My son is in the private school I mentioned above where play and physical activity are as important as learning and there is no common core. We have to do the best for our children, with the resources we have. We also have to allow them to figure out how to use their gifts in their own way. In fact, we all have to figure out how to use our gifts, whatever they may be, in our own special way.

Being different doesn’t end when we leave traditional schooling and receive a piece of paper. Rather, it can give us more opportunity to reveal and define our uniqueness. We all see the world differently. Sometimes we don’t realize our unique perspective because it is all we know. Understanding how we stand out from others can help us leverage our gifts, to be more for ourselves and this world. I’ve had to learn this myself and my children have been my teachers. How have you uncovered your own special kind of gifts and uniqueness? What is it for you? What are you doing with that special something that makes you - you?

The name has been changed for privacy.

Resources: Learning Disabilities Association of America: https://ldaamerica.org Synesthesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/synesthesia

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Self Portrait by "Eliza". Courtesy Bernette Sherman.