Learning disabilities and Expats

If you are one of my readers you probably noticed all the mistakes I make when I'm writing. There's a reason for it. It's called dyslexia. I am dyslexic. I can't tell left from right, forget about north, south east and west. When I read I skip the articles and most of the times, if one of the sentences doesn't make sense I have to read it again to understand it. Welcome to the dyslexic life.


Dyslexia is only one among lots of other learning disabilities, and when I was young it was one of the few that had a name. Now we have lots of different spectrum of autism, of ADHD and other disabilities.


I was diagnosed because my uncle is a pediatric neurologist. And back then, I'm talking about 30 years ago, there was not much of a treatment, so I was my uncle's guinea pig.  At the same time of my diagnostic, my mom have had a brain aneurism. After 32 days in coma, she woke up with very limited memory. So my uncle made us play the memory game together all the time. I can't tell you to turn left or right if we're driving together, but I have a great sense of direction because I can memorize where things are. And this good memory is what got me thru high school and law school. Dyslexic people can learn everything other people learn, only in a different way.


Why am I telling you all this? It is because if you're moving overseas with a child with learning disabilities you need to learn how and where to get help. We can overcome our issues, but we need help and understanding.


If you're in Sao Paulo, Albert Einstein Hospital has a great diagnostic center to help you find out exactly what the problem is. The Graded School is very good for kids with disabilities. Any kind of disability - learning or physical. They have an Optimal Learning Center to help children with learning issues - reading, math. The OLC has improved on the past couple of years. There's also help outside the school. You can work with Dr. Wendy Smith. She has a PHD in Education and applies different methods on the treatments of kids, usually it starts with an intervention. She's amazing! She's not cheap, but her work is worth every penny. You will see a quick improvement on your child's learning within a couple of weeks. 


I still haven't explored much of this issue in Mexico. I know ASF has a Service for Academic Success -SAS - but from what I know they prefer holding the kids back a year rather than working with the learning disabilities. This would never be an option to me, given that their curriculum is already behind the curriculum of schools in the US. When I asked questions about SAS they told me that they don't have enough teachers there to care for all the children in need. Plus they charge parents extra for this service. At the Graded it is free. One of my husband's co-workers has a child with ADHD enrolled at ASF. I know he is extremely frustrated with the school. So frustrated he decided to move back to the US. He doesn't feel like the school was being fair to them and to their child. It was not giving them enough support to find a solution. What they were proposing was for them to pay an aid to stay with the child during the school hours. The child is already enrolled on SAS. This child is still in one of the early kindergarten years. It is not the kind of support I would expect from an american school overseas. ASF also refused to give a spot to another expat whose child has dyslexia. Maybe this is one of the reasons why they're not fully accredited - but who knows? They won't tell the real reason. I would love to know the real reason. 


As you can tell, this cause is dear to my heart. 


Just wanted to give you something to consider...