Homeschooling and synesthesia

This morning I came across a new study in the journal PLoS One from researchers at the University of Amsterdam that involves creating synesthesia in non-synesthetes.  After a lengthy chat with Einstein, my resident cognitive scientist, I can see now why it's important work; one result, one small crack in the pavement, leads to others.  But as a homeschooling mother of a synesthete, my initial reaction was bewilderment.  Why would you want to turn anyone into a synesthete?  In my opinion, navigating such a thick world of sensory impressions makes everything harder.  Everything.

And then I realized that I've never actually talked about synesthesia in this space.  Not even once, although my homeschooling thoughts have been consumed by it for a couple of years now.  The more I learn about it, the more there is to learn.  And the longer I homeschool, the more I realize how every part of the child comes into play in education, and nothing can be taken for granted or overlooked.  Especially when it comes to the senses.

Moonshine, my "middlest child" as she calls herself, is a synethete.

In simplest terms, this means that when she senses one thing in the world, she has a strong and  involuntary additional sense perception.  Not exactly simple, is it?  Synesthesia itself is very ill-defined.  The range of cross-sensory possibilities is too large to fully identify and not always consistent between synesthetes.  According to the wikipedia entry for synesthesia, there are so far over 60 reported synesthetic relationships.  Who knows how many forms there truly are and to what effect any of them have on a synesthete's abilities to navigate through the world.  I suppose that's what science is trying to figure out.

As a homeschooling mother of a synesthete, I'm trying to figure out the same thing.  Now that we've identified Moonshine's synesthetic tendencies, what part do they play in her education?  Are they a hindrance?  And if so, how can we turn them into a benefit?

Like the researchers, my first task was to try to understand the parameters.  This wasn't easy.  I'm not sure that I still understand the scope of Moonshine's cross-sense perceptions, but the more common ones I have managed to identify.

For example, Moonshine senses colors with letters and numbers.  They have a name for this form-- grapheme-color synesthesia.  For example, if you asked Moonshine the colors of the alphabet, as I did, she would tell you that the alphabet looks like this:

Or actually, she would argue that the color palette I used isn't quite right--the hue differences are inadequately represented and some of the color combinations I came up with (ie. dark purple) hardly come close.  But overlooking the palette shortcomings, this is how Moonshine senses the alphabet.  We've quizzed her randomly over a two-year period, and it's always the same, without fail.

She senses numbers in color, too.

The list goes on, and again, the hues aren't perfect representations.  Luckily, she's forgiving and understands the palette limitations of the app I was using to recreate them.

To me, it all seems fairly random.  (While G is green, O isn't orange, P isn't purple, R isn't red, and B isn't blue.  The numbers seem random as well, until you get to double digits, and then a pattern seems to emerge.  The teens seem to take on the color of the second number.  Beyond that, they appear multi-colored, with the first color dominating the number, and yet not overpowering the other color(s) completely.)  But to Moonshine, and other synesthetes, there is nothing random about it.  This color perception is a "truth" that they feel to their very core.  And of course, it's made even more interesting because while two synesthetes might agree on a few letter/color perceptions, no two will agree on all of them.  And to take it a step further, some synesthetes actually see the colors when they are reading, while others only sense them inwardly.

Now, if you're an educator, perhaps you have already begun to recognize how this sense perception might lead to difficulties, especially when it comes to reading or mathematics, and especially for those synesthetes who actually see the letters and numbers in color when they read.  It might not make a whole lot of sense to synesthetes when the sum of two yellow numbers is actually a blue number.  You can understand how the sense perception might dominate the equation, especially when combined with another form of synesthesia called personification.

In personification, letters, numbers, colors themselves, months, days, even toilets might elicit a sense of personality and gender.  For Moonshine, this is one of her truths that we face on a daily basis.  Almost everything is imbued with personality, gender, and color.  It's fascinating and mystifying and completely overwhelming at times.

In my recent attempts to understand and explore this personification sense, I took notes.

All letters have gender, though some of them are a bit androgynous.

Although not a complete list, all numbers also have gender.  For Moonshine, there is definitely a pattern to it when you get to double digits.  The teens go by the gender of the second digit, while the 30's and up go by the gender of the first digit. The 20's are girls, even though 2 is a boy.  Go figure.

Both letters and numbers have personalities as well.  And again, these personality perceptions are automatic and intense-- they're nothing short of "truths" for synesthetes.  I asked Moonshine to tell me about the ones that were most interesting.  Here's what she told me.

This is where it gets a little more confusing.  I had to ask a lot of questions to fully understand what was going on here.  In the first row, E and F love each other.  Their relationship had stumped Moonshine for years until she discovered that some boys marry other boys, and then the relationship between E and F made perfect sense to her.  They love each other as if they were married-- even if I did draw the heart in the wrong color (apparently hearts are red and they are not outlined in black).

In the second row, it's clear that L and K are enemies.  Moonshine had me write the gender names in their correct colors.  Boys are blue, girls are green.  Apparently lowercase L is a girl, which takes us back to the androgynous business. You can also see that the symbols (+, =) have color representations. 

The third row is interesting because both 3 and 13 are horrible, and while both numbers are green, horrible is a yellow word.  While letters have independent colors, words tend to take on the dominant color-- it's almost like a math equation of sorts.  To me, it's something I have to go and add up-- 3 yellows, 3 greens, 1 light blue, 1 black-- uh, okay, maybe yellow dominates because it starts with a yellow?  But to Moonshine, it's automatic.  She doesn't stop and count-- she senses the word as yellow without thinking. The drawing of Z is also fascinating, because the personality changes with the angle of the top line.  This is not something I would have ever thought about had she not pointed it out to me.  Because we're doing Waldorf education at home, it brings up so many questions I have about sense perceptions of different form drawings.

Just as letters and numbers elicit colors and personalities, so do months.

And days of the week.

And colors.  Moonshine senses the rainbow, for example, like this:

Fascinating, no?  I noted an inconsistency where Moonshine told me that Purple (a 2yo girl) is the youngest, but then informed me in the next breath that Yellow is a baby.  Maybe you're wondering about that, too.  In any case, I'm told that Purple is the youngest child-- and babies don't really count in that ranking system.  Babies are babies.

But what about toilets?  I told you that some synesthetes perceive personification with everything.  And by everything, I meant just that.

My drawing of the large and small wine glasses isn't so great, but I think you get the general idea.  And if all of that wasn't fascinating enough, food and soap also have gender and personalities.

Peas are mean girls?!! It is enough to make my head spin at times.  And if everything is imbued with sense perceptions for Moonshine, including music, what do you think that does to her learning?

There is an effect for sure.  She has always been dreamy, but now I can't help but wonder how much of that is her navigating these automatic sense perceptions.  In my mind, it must be a noisy sea of color that she has to wade through whenever she's faced with anything-- from words she reads or ones I read to her, to math problems, to music and foreign language (in which words present in different colors than in English), to spelling... it's endless.  And how much of that time is spent trying to make peace with things in the wrong color?

She points them out to me in the world.  Just yesterday we were shopping for clothes, and Moonshine remarked that the sizes (numbers) were color-coded in the wrong colors.  And when something is represented in the correct color, it's almost a relief to her.  When she tells me about it, it's as if her whole body relaxes, and she often wonders aloud, "How did they know to make it green or yellow or...?"

In hindsight, this explains so much about how Moonshine experiences the world-- why she fell apart at age two when we changed the color of our roof; why two seemingly identical purple balloons are very different; and why having to change her shirt in the middle of the day is a shock to the system.  

For Moonshine's synesthesia, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  There is still more to come.

Right on time

Time. It's something we parents think about when it comes to our children. It's a constant, recurring theme. We start by counting them off by weeks when we're pregnant. Then when our due dates come we start to ask how many more days...? We record their ages when they smile, roll over, sit, crawl, speak, walk...and onward. How old are they when they learn to read, to ride a bike, to tie their shoes, to tell time?

We measure and compare and wonder. Sometimes we have a child that skips walking altogether and runs, leaving us panting to keep up. For me that would be Sunburst. She's always racing ahead as if time were a fleeting thing. And sometimes we have a child that is content to just sit it out and dream. Clock? What's that?

I know a lot of it boils down to personality, but I would be ignorant if I didn't notice there was something more to it. Learning is a bit of a struggle for Moonshine. The only thing that makes complete sense to her is math, oddly enough. Reading has been a struggle. Music has been a struggle. Even the physicality of playing with other children has been a struggle.

She's always been this dreamy child, head in the clouds, feet tripping unaware into traffic. Catching balls, finger games, clapping games, climbing, running, jumping... all sort of mysterious activities to her. She's on her own schedule, always has been-- I carried her for 42 and a half weeks before she was willing to make the journey towards the light of day. She started speaking at 8 months but waited the requisite 12 months to walk. She's reading now, but once in awhile the words come out backwards. Sometimes she forgets words she has already learned, and sometimes she reverses letters and numbers.

It's not laziness. She works extremely hard. Math concepts come easy for her, but the rhythmic counting by twos and threes and fives and tens is a challenge. Rhythm and coordination are somewhere out in left field. Pencil grip is awkward, but artistic expression is still realized despite it.

Moonshine can out-think all of us at the dinner table, Einstein included. But if she were in regular school she'd be behind. She wants to learn so badly, but she already recognizes it as a bit of a challenge both inside and outside herself. And that, in simple terms, sucks. It makes learning less joyous than it should be.

I'm continually fascinated by her and completely humbled by the task of teaching her. With Sunburst, it's easy to think I have it all figured out. With Moonshine, I find myself rethinking everything, constantly reevaluating and reorganizing and relearning how to teach, how best to guide her, and how to help her acquire the tools she needs.

And with two completely different school-aged children, it's hard for me to draw the line at what's in the range of normal. Sunburst makes a lousy yardstick. She has always out-raced, out-cheetahed, and out-risked all of her friends. Moonshine is more cautious. She is the only child I have that recognizes the value of a good night's sleep-- she's not so afraid about missing out on the action. And she's still the only child I can take to the grocery store who doesn't knock over displays, tip grocery carts, or run amok. It's kind of refreshing, actually, but at the same time I find the learning issues hard to blog about.

I don't want to label her. I just want to understand her and help her the best that I can. I have been making it a point not to push her, rather waiting until she feels ready, until her clock starts ticking and her enthusiasm kicks in. But I'm starting to think that sometimes our inner clocks need a bit more winding from the outside now and then.

In the end, I think she'll have a lot more endurance than Sunburst. She'll know what hard work feels like, and her successes will be that much greater. In the end, it won't matter so much how long and arduous the road was or even when her clock started ticking. She'll be right on time.

First Steps

"Learning is a process, not the static image provided by an intelligence test. It's an intrinsically hopeful process of improvement. As an animal, I am also perpetually beguiled by the bumbling folly of baby animals, while also understanding what I see is not stupidity, but an early stage of a journey toward grace, competence, and comprehension."

--Becoming a Tiger: How Baby Animals Learn to Live in the Wild, by Susan McCarthy

Kitty Bill, our youngest child, stood up the other day and began to walk. He took two wobbly steps and fell. He pushed himself back up on his fat, little sausage legs and grinned at us. He took two more steps and fell. Undeterred, he stood back up and tried again. By the end of the week he can walk across the room.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how we learn new things. Not just how we teach our children, but how we teach ourselves. To me those ideas are connected because our children learn so much from watching us. If learning is a painful process for us... If we curse, or get frustrated when we mess up... If we chuck our knitting or statistics books across the room... If we are easily defeated and give up the first time we take a spill on the ice, they might see those things and adopt them as their own. If we make a fuss, they learn to make a fuss.

The opposite is also true. If we're sure-footed and excited about learning... If we're eager and interested... If we're accepting of new challenges and seek out new learning experiences, they will too. If they see us laugh at our own mistakes, our own follies, our own early attempts at mastering a new skill, and if we don't give up, they learn to try and try again. Of course it won't always happen this way, but we're the biggest role models our children have.

Kitty Bill isn't old enough to feel humiliated when he fails. He's still in that natural, unblemished phase of life where every moment holds some new discovery. In watching him I have to wonder if that's how each one of us started out, on shaky legs but eager to learn and discover. To taste the untasted and explore the unknown, without bias or fear or embarrassment or expectations. Imagine carrying that into adulthood and how empowering that would feel. I'm not saying that at age 35 we should go around mouthing shoes or licking the cat. But if we could hold onto our sense of wonder and eagerness and ride that horse of self-esteem into adulthood, goodness knows what we might accomplish.

As I watch Kitty Bill in this pure state of exploration, I can't help but ask myself where does he go from here? What pitfalls in learning might trip him up, and like ashes on the snow, mar his unfettered sense of discovery? When and how and why does this eagerness and self-motivation start slipping away?

I don't have the answers. I just know that I wasn't always eager to learn. Even in the recent past I have given up because I felt foolish and innane and simply not up to the task. It's not the newness of something that I find daunting, the idea itself. In reality I want to learn everything. I want to be perfect at it the first time out: bowl a 3oo game, play a symphony, hit the ball out of the park. Completely unrealistic, but there it is.

The part that trips me up is the falling. The failing. The making a complete ass out of myself part. If you're not the kind of person that can laugh at yourself, and most people aren't, then the hurdles of learning appear a bit larger than they actually are. It's like looking at your pores with a magnifying glass. Of course you're going to look hideous and pock-marked. But isn't that what we're doing when we critically examine each and every attempt at learning as a separate thing? When we focus too much on one critical aspect and lose sight of the whole, the bigger picture?

Learning isn't like that. That's like focusing on a two inch square of one of Monet's water lilies. We would think it was blurry crap. Maybe he did, too, since he painted so many of them. Maybe he was just trying to get it right. Maybe he didn't know the first one was outstanding. Maybe Manet came along and laughed at him, and said, "You call that a water lily? Ha!" Manet was dead by then, so it would have to have been his ghost. Or what if Rembrandt's ghost came along and fashioned a grade on Monet's water lilies. Imagine Rembrandt, with his exacting eye for the smallest detail, came along and put a big honkin' red F on Monet's sort of hazy way of painting the world.

What if you and I were graded on a daily basis, on each task laid out before us? Overcooking pasta might earn us a C, while forgetting to buy cat litter, yet again, would get a big fat F. Could you imagine living in that world? Two nights ago I finished knitting my first adult sweater. It took me months of agony, and it looks ok. It's not perfect. But I'm proud of it. Who knew I could follow the directions and knit a sweater?! But if some knitting genius came along and gave me a grade on it. If they turned it inside-out and examined every seam I guarantee they would find plenty of mistakes. It would not hold up to that kind of scrutinty. Would I ever dare to knit a sweater, or anything, ever again? If someone graded my first row of stitches, I might not have even tried knitting a dishcloth, let alone a sweater.

Learning is hard work. Those first steps can be traumatizing if we let them be. If we fall off the horse and never get back on, we may never know what it's like to gallop fearlessly on with the wind whipping through our hair. If we don't learn how to overcome our own hurdles, how can we learn to teach?

"Teachers and educators must be patient with their own self-education, with awakening something in the soul that indeed may sprout and grow. You then may be able to make the most wonderful discoveries, but if this is to be so, you must not lose courage in your first endeavors.

"For you see, whenever you undertake a spiritual activity, you always must be able to bear being clumsy and awkward. People who cannot endure being clumsy and doing things stupidly and imperfectly at first never really will be able to do them perfectly in the end out of their own inner self... If once or twice you have succeeded in thinking out a pictoral presentation of a lesson that you see impresses the children, then you will make a remarkable discovery about yourself. You will see that it becomes easier to invent such pictures, that by degrees you become inventive in a way you never dreamed of. But for this you must have the courage to be very far from perfect to begin with."

--The Kingdom of Childhood: Introductory Talks on Waldorf Education, by Rudolph Steiner