Archive for Making Lists

Using Visual Strategies to Sequence Tasks

October 27, 2010 Rachel Making Lists, Visual/Spatial Skills

When I first began to understand my gifts and challenges, I began to see that I have some trouble sequencing tasks in time. I’d never before thought that I had this difficulty, because I’ve always done a very good job with goal setting, project management, scheduling, and similar tasks. But when I look at it, I realize that I’ve always created a lot of good strategies for getting those tasks done, and that when I let those strategies go, I see why I came up with them in the first place.

I used to work full-time and homeschool (yes, on the same days!), and I kept up with all of my commitments quite well. I never had a problem designing our curriculum or articulating our educational goals. I always got all of the materials to the school district early. We consistently finished our curriculum well in advance of the end of the school year, and I always got my daughter to her lessons on time. At work, I never missed a deadline, I was never late for a meeting, and I was always known as someone who kept all my tasks well planned and well organized. Through all the demands of working, schooling, and mothering, I was never late on a mortgage payment or any other bill.

Take any portion of my life, and it comes out looking much the same. Even when I was working minimum wage, and living in a state of extreme sensory overload, and spending much of my time dazed and confused, I always paid my rent on time, got to my appointments early, and made sure my bills were paid well in advance of their due dates. In my whole life, I’ve only bounced one check, and that happened about thirty years ago.

And yet, when I consider cooking a meal with more than one course, I feel paralyzed. I’m perfectly capable of making a main dish and boiling up some rice or quinoa to go with it, but I’ve never considered trying to make a multi-course meal in which everything has to come out of the oven and off the stove at the same time. Of course, I have no interest in cooking a multi-course meal, because it’s best for my health when I eat simply, but just thinking about it feels like a monumental task. Every time I do, I feel like I’m asking myself to move an object twice my weight up a steep hill. My immediate thought is, “Nah. Never mind that.” And then I think about something more pleasant.

For a while now, I’ve been wondering why I’ve always been able to sequence important tasks in time—like bill paying, and tax deadlines, and arriving at work in the morning—but I’m unable to sequence the tasks for something less important, like a multi-course meal. And then, finally, it came to me: I can sequence tasks in time when I make them visual. Then, they’re no longer just tasks in time. They’re actually objects in space, and I can organize objects in space like nobody’s business.

I have three main ways that I turn the things of time into the things of space:

1. Lists. Lists, lists, lists. Not too many lists, because that gets overwhelming, but enough lists so that I can keep my tasks separate and manageable. So, for example, at the moment, I have the following lists that I keep updated:

  • The tasks I need to complete as the ASAN-VT chapter leader.
  • The letters of recommendation and transcripts I need for the master’s program I’m applying to. (Yes! I’m applying to a master’s program! Don’t ask me too much about it yet. I’ll say more when I’ve actually gotten the decision letter.)
  • The books I’ve sold.
  • My sensory diet.
  • Basic daily tasks. (Most of these tasks I do out of habit, instinct, muscle memory, what-have-you, but I keep a list just in case my routine gets thrown off, and I need to reassure myself that I haven’t forgotten anything.)
  • The tasks I need to complete over the course of a week (household chores, bills, lessons, and so on). Most of these tasks are intuitive at this point, but I keep a list so that I have an anchor if something gets thrown off.
  • Bills to be paid.
  • Bank, credit card, and other accounts.
  • Food we need to buy at the grocery store.
  • The things I need to pack when I go to New York City.
  • The art projects I want to do.
  • Miscellaneous tasks that come to mind when I’m doing something else. I keep a “scribble list” for these kinds of tasks.

2. My appointment book.

Oh, sacred appointment book! Where would I be without you?

Excuse me for talking to my appointment book as though it were a god. I know that I shouldn’t be quite so in awe of it, but I am. I’m in awe of the fact that I can hold an entire year’s worth of time in my hands, and open up to the middle of it, whenever I want, without becoming disoriented. In my appointment book, I write down, well, appointments, but also soccer games, school events, tax payments, special errands, and any chores that don’t happen on a daily or weekly basis.

3. Leaving things where I can see them. My mantra is If my eyes can see it, I will remember it.

When a bill comes in the mail, I put it right at my place at the kitchen table, where I can’t miss it, and then I pay it within a day. If I have to hold a bill for more than a day, I put it in a basket that I use for the purpose, and then I write down in my appointment book exactly when I’m going to pay the bill.

If I have a book, or an item of clothing, or a DVD that I want to give to someone, I put it out where I can see it, and I write a reminder in my appointment book to give it to the person.

In order to remember to take my herbs and vitamins, I put them in a small pouch and leave it on my chair at the dinner table. That way, in order to sit down to eat, I have to pick up the pouch, and then I remember to take what’s in it. I do the same sort of thing with my nighttime herbs and medicine: I put them on a shelf where I’m sure to see them.

So how did I figure out all of this stuff? Well, I’m very fortunate in that I love to organize things, large and small. Organizing soothes me and gives me a sense of accomplishment, two things that I’ve needed from the time I was small.

And then, of course, I grew up before there was a diagnosis, and like many of us, found myself out on the open sea without a compass. So, I invented the best compass I could, and I wrote myself a guidebook, and I came up with a host of very good ideas about how to navigate. Many of us did. We’re the ones my fellow blogger Lili Marlene calls “The Last of the Wild Autistics.” It’s a title I wear with pride.

And finally, growing up in a virtual madhouse violent and dysfunctional family meant that I could either chart my own course or go down with the ship. Early on, I looked at my parents and thought, “These people are chaos. I’d better get myself organized.” And I did. Such are the blessings that one brings out of disaster.

So about that multi-course meal? Yeah, I could make one, but only if I sat back for awhile and wrote everything down, and figured out when I needed to start making each course, and what time I needed to put each course in the oven/on the boil/in the saucepan, and what time I needed to take each course out of the oven/off the stove/out of the saucepan, and which area of preparation I needed to interrupt in order to begin (or resume) another area of preparation, and so on, and so on, and so on, until everything was written down in five-minute intervals, and I had mapped out each and every step in detail.

But when it comes to actually doing it? Nah. Never mind that.

© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

8 comments

Creating a Sustainable Life

August 26, 2009 Rachel Communication, Disabilities, Making Lists, Marriage, Sensory Processing Issues, Stimming

You might remember that, a few weeks back, I wrote a post called Creating a Support Network. I had written down all the tasks that I needed help doing, and Bob and I were going to cobble together a list of people who could help me do them. Over the course of the month, however, we’ve realized that while we can enlist the help of others for regular, practical tasks (such as housecleaning and carpooling), we’re going to have difficulty finding help for other, less predictable tasks:

  • If a task involves advocacy, finding someone is next to impossible; we live in a rural area, and the chances of finding someone sufficiently knowledgeable about adult autism are slim.
  • If a task needs doing only once in a while, it will be very hard to find someone to be “on call” to do it.

So, we’ve shifted gears. We have someone cleaning our house once a week, and Bob is going to take care of making sure that the carpooling goes smoothly until Ashlynne gets her license. As for the rest of the tasks, I am experimenting with ways to do them comfortably, and if I can’t find a way, the task will have to go away.

Our Strategy List
Here’s how our strategy list looked as of Sunday night:

Resolved issues

1. Housecleaning.
2. Understanding home and non-profit financials.
3. Food shopping: Rachel shops at the co-op once a week for herself and Ashlynne.
4. Banking: Rachel has begun the process of transferring funds to our local bank.

Tasks for Rachel to try on her own (limiting each attempt to one per day)

1. Going to the therapist’s office.
2. Going to the stationary store, art supplies store, and other relatively quiet places to do errands.
3. Making deposits at the bank.
4. Bringing envelopes or parcels to the post office.
5. Picking up prescriptions and other items at the pharmacy.
6. Moving more funds to our local bank.
7. Finding out what tasks she can do online.

Issues that Bob will work to resolve

1.   Getting Ashlynne where she needs to go until she gets her license.
2.   Finding people in his network of friends to pick up prescriptions, drive, or do other “spur-of-the-moment” tasks when he is ill.
3.   Making an appointment with an attorney to create Advance Directives for Healthcare for both of us.

Issues on which we will improvise

1. Cooking meals. Bob does not mind cooking meals when he is well. For times that he is ill or out of town, we will begin to create an emergency cupboard of canned soup, macaroni and cheese, herbal tea, over-the-counter medication, and other items that will allow Rachel to make simple meals and have symptom-relief medicines available.

2. Accompanying Rachel to doctor or hospital appointments and advocating for her. No one other than Bob knows Rachel’s autism well enough to be a proper advocate. When Bob can be there, he will. When he can’t, Rachel will write a letter to the doctor or hospital ahead of time, stating her needs as an autistic patient (a quiet room in which to wait, sensitivity regarding sensory issues, and so on).

3. Making telephone calls. Bob will make these when he can. When he is not available, Rachel will make them only if necessary, and only so long as she gives herself sufficient time to prepare and to recover.

Adaptive Measures
I now have three—yes, three!—Peltor noise-reduction headsets:

  • My original Peltor Optime 101 headset, with a Noise Reduction Rating of 27. I use this one at home when loud noises are coming in from the outside world.
  • My new Peltor Optime PTL (Push to Listen) headset, with a Noise Reduction Rating of 25. I use this one for working at the thrift store.
  • My even newer Peltor Ultimate 10 headset, in blue, with a Noise Reduction Rating of 30 (the highest for a Peltor headset, as far as I know). I use this one for walks and errands in the outside world.

I also have a number of “I can’t hear you” cards in my purse, explaining why I’m wearing a big headset, why I’m in the store (or bank or post office), and how I intend to pay for everything. If I’m going to become more self-sufficient, I’m going to have to continue my strategy of encountering the outside world as though I am deaf and mute.

I gotta tell ya, I’m lovin’ every minute of it. Well, almost.

People Have to Listen to Loud Music in a Pharmacy WHY?
Yesterday, I decided to try going to the local pharmacy and buying some supplies for our “emergency cupboard.” I knew that I might encounter an itty-bitty problem with LOUD MUSIC THERE, SO I WORE MY PELTOR ULTIMATE 10 HEADSET.

This pharmacy is unlike any that I have ever encountered. The number of employees and pharmacists present at any given time is almost always higher than the number of actual customers in the store. Most of the employees are behind a series of counters at the back, and they spend a great deal of their time on the telephone, taking orders for prescriptions. They all sit, stand, and move around in very close proximity to one another, all talking at the same time, all talking rather loudly, and all listening to very loud rock ‘n roll. The truly amazing thing about the people, though, is that when you come up to the counter, they are very focused, very friendly, and very helpful. Whenever I’ve gone there to fill a prescription, I’ve been so entranced by the mystery of how these people can actually work under these conditions and enjoy themselves that I forget what’s happening to my senses until I get home and stagger in the door.

So, when I set out yesterday afternoon, I knew my adventure might not last long, and as you might have surmised, it didn’t. The walk was wonderful. I could hear very little of what was going on around me. Then, I walked into the pharmacy. I was there for about five minutes, and I had put about five items into my basket, when I couldn’t stand hearing the music anymore. I felt as though someone were screaming right into my ear. Even with my headset, I felt like I was being assaulted by sound. I simply couldn’t concentrate. I finally just put my basket down and went home.

Once I had recovered from the fiasco at the pharmacy, I decided to order all the items online. I found a site that offers free delivery if your order is over a certain amount, and I got everything on my list. Then, I called my insurance company (yes, myself!) and arranged to have my regular prescriptions mailed to my house. If I need some other prescription once in a while, my husband, or my daughter, or a neighbor, or some other nice person will go and get it for me.

One task resolved. Onto the next one!

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

6 comments

The Words I Most Needed to Hear

May 11, 2009 Rachel Anxiety, Disabilities, Gravitational Insecurity, Happiness, Making Lists, Marriage, Meltdowns, Parenting, Sensory Processing Issues, Women and AS

Some momentous personal things have occurred since last Friday. It’s taken me awhile to know how to express what I feel about them. Although I woke up with a bad cold today, I’m feeling fairly lucid at the moment, so I thought I’d start describing the happenings.

Last Thursday, I made a big mistake that only I could see: I tried to do two things in the outside world in a single day. And worse than that, I tried to do them consecutively.

Before I left for my volunteer job last Thursday, my husband asked whether I could stop at the co-op after work to get him some more homeopathic medicine for his cold. I told him I’d try, and I felt the way I always feel about these requests: Totally Lousy. Lousy because it’s so hard for me to go to two different places in the same day, and lousy because I wish I could just say, “Sure, honey, no problem.”

In any case, I went to work, and then I went to the co-op. Outside, there were some really nice plants, so I bought a bunch, and then I went into the store and bought some medicine for my husband. Luckily, the store was quiet, so I didn’t feel completely overwhelmed. When I came home, I was tired, but that’s pretty normal after work, so I rested. The remainder of the day went along fine, and I felt great. 

Then, Friday came, and I had my first meltdown since my diagnosis in November. To understand why, you’ll need to understand that every Friday, we get ready for Shabbos (our Sabbath), which includes the following tasks:

1. Sweeping up the house (me)
2. De-cluttering the house (me)
3. Emptying the wastebaskets and recycling (me)
4. Buying the food for dinner (my husband)
5. Cleaning the bathroom (my husband)
6. Setting the table (my husband)
7. Cooking the food (my husband)

This past Friday, though, my husband was sick, and I started worrying about having to take on some of his tasks. That was the beginning of the meltdown: the worry. I knew I couldn’t do the food shopping myself and get the house cleaned up, so I offered to go food shopping with him. I figured that it would help us both. So that was the plan.

Nice plan. Except that then I had to figure out in what order to a) clean the house, b) get a shopping list together, and c) go to the co-op. But I couldn’t even get to the point of sequencing. Each task felt absolutely monumental. Like. Turning. A. Barge.

So, I started with what was familiar. I started sweeping. And as I started sweeping, I noticed that I was becoming more and more sensitized about how hard it is. I’m fine with taking the broom and moving it back and forth on the floor. But then, there’s having to pick it up and pull the dust bunnies out of it; somehow, having the broom upside down makes me dizzy. And then, of course, there’s having to bend down with the dustpan and sweep the dust bunnies into it. Serious gravitational insecurity moment. Just thinking about it makes me anxious. And then, the worst part is sweeping under the bed. Arghh. I have to get down on the floor on my stomach and kind of shove the broom here and there till I get all the dust balls. When I’m all done, I am one dizzy, disoriented human being.

When I realized how hard all this was going to be, I started to get really agitated. And when I get agitated, I start thinking really helpful thoughts, like, “Hey, Rachel, if you’re so smart, how come sweeping the floors is so hard, huh? Huh? HUH?” As my self-esteem started going down, my irritability started going up, until I was stomping around and angry at everything. When my husband committed the unforgiveable sin of moving the recyclables to the garage, the recyclables that I had planned to move myself, thank you very much, I just about had a cow. Fortunately, I was able to recover some sense of time and space, and say, “It’s not you I’m angry at. It’s me. It’s me. It’s me.”

Ultimately, I just broke down into inconsolable sobbing. The more I thought about how hard it was to sweep the floor, the more I thought that writing up a shopping list was beyond my skills as a human being. How could I possibly transition from one task to another in the state I was in? Especially when writing a shopping list required time and concentration that seemed impossible to locate at that moment. On a good day, each task feels like a big challenge. On the day following one in which I had pushed my limits, each task seemed beyond my reach.

Hubby tried to give me some comfort, but I just kept saying, “Everything feels so incredibly hard. Why does it feel that way? Why can’t I just sweep the room without getting dizzy? Why can’t I just make a food list and be done with it? I can’t stand it.”

And then he said the words that I’ve been waiting to hear all my life:

“It’s not your fault.”

I melted. What an incredible relief. It’s not my fault. I’m doing the best I can, and then some. I have to accept myself as I am. I need to stop apologizing for what I can’t do. It’s not my fault.

Wow.

Okay, hubby loves me as I am. He sees me clearly, and he loves me as I am. That’s very good. Cross that worry off my list. Done. I got it together to make the food list and go shopping. My husband even swept under the bed and swept up everything into the dustpan. We were both tired out, but we were in it together, and that put me in a much better frame of mind.

But then, on the heels of this major piece of wonderfulness, came the second worry: I don’t do enough for my daughter. I can’t cook more than a one-course meal because the sequencing is too hard. I can’t go to her concerts at school because the sensory overload is immediate. I didn’t go to the paintball place for her 8th birthday. And on and on like that.

I was right back in the soup. I felt like writing her a letter, apologizing for all the things I haven’t been able to do over the course of 16 years. I know, it’s a little much, but that’s how I was feeling. I decided that when she came back from her class trip, I’d talk with her about it. I’d try to explain why I am the way I am. She knows about the AS and SPD, but we haven’t talked about its impact a lot lately.

So, I was getting ready for this conversation when Mother’s Day came, and I thought, great, we’ll have our talk today, when everyone is in a good mood. And then, before I got the chance to initiate even the merest hint of a beginning of a conversation, my wonderful, loving, utterly fantastic daughter gave me a Mother’s Day card she had made.

And the card said, “Thank you for being such an awesome mom. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I love you so much.”

I couldn’t believe it. It was perfect. I said, “That’s so beautiful, Ash, and so much what I needed to hear.” And then my big strong teenager gave her little Jewish mom a great big hug.

I melted. Again.

So, in the course of 72 hours, I got to hear the words I most needed to hear:

My challenges and disabilities are not my fault.

I am an awesome mom.

It’s no coincidence that today, I’ve finally got this cold that’s been coming on and going away for months now, over and over. Until today, I’d start to feel sick, and then a few days later, it would turn into nothing. This would happen in two-week intervals, over and over and over.

Now that I’ve had these two weighty pieces of worry taken off my body and soul, I can get sick like a regular person, get over it, and go on with my life. That sounds pretty good, don’t you think? ;-)

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

11 comments

Every Aspie is a Working Aspie

May 6, 2009 Rachel Disabilities, Making Art, Making Lists, Marriage, Meltdowns, Occupational Therapy, Sensory Processing Issues

On any given day, venturing outside the walls of my house feels akin to entering a sensory minefield.

Of all the things that feel difficult, driving my car keeps rising to the top of the list. I’ve had a lot of resistance to driving for some time now, which is difficult when your teenager goes to school an hour away.

My daughter has a friend nearby who goes to the same school, so our two families share the driving. My husband does our share of the driving, and the other parents do the rest. Occasionally, my husband is out of town when my daughter is with me. At those times, I am perfectly capable of getting up at 6:00 am, getting in the car by 6:45 am, getting my daughter to the bus stop by 7:15 am, and then driving home.

Perfectly capable. It all goes swimmingly. The problem is that I cannot do this routine every day. When I have to do it, I do a lot of advance planning to clear my schedule for the rest of the day. If I can’t clear my schedule, and I have to do something else in the world, the next day I’m pretty exhausted. I stay home, and if I’m lucky, I might remember to drink enough water.

For some reason, driving feels especially daunting. It must be all the attention that I have to give to so many things at once: other cars, stoplights, pedestrians, work crews, construction vehicles, and road signs. I simply must read all the road signs. Every. Single. One. Then, of course, there are all the various stores, and advertisements, and strip malls, and signs with print and flashy graphics by the side of the road. Of course, I simply must read all of the print I see flying toward me, even though I will never go to MacDonald’s or to my local Chevy dealer. When I think about driving, the sensory minefield image becomes especially vivid.

Now, it’s true that I drive an hour for my OT appointment, but that feels very different. I know that when I get there, I can relax my attention completely. My OT has set everything up so that life doesn’t feel like a sensory minefield. She even asks me how the drive felt. She doesn’t ask whether there was a lot of traffic, or whether I knew which exit to use. She asks how the drive felt. It’s a minor miracle, really.

The drive home is pretty good, too, because I’ve just spent an hour with someone who understands how much work it takes for me to do any of the following:

1. Drive
2. Plan a sequence of apparently simple tasks
3. Transition from one apparently simple task to another
4. Walk through a grocery store
5. Figure out how to put my shoes on without feeling dizzy
6. Keep up with a conversation between two people
7. Keep up with a conversation that involves more than two people
8. Be in a crowd in which people are talking loudly and/or all at once
9. Handle sudden or persistent noises
10. Keep track of visual stimuli, whether moving or stationary

She also understands that the following are not optional or a waste of time, but activities absolutely essential to my neurological health:

1. Walking or bicycling
2. Making lists
3. Singing and moving
4. Stretching
5. Doing my OT exercises
6. Touching soft fabrics
7. Watching spinning things
8. Writing
9. Resting under 30 pounds of weighted blankets
10. Doing physical labor (the more strenuous, the better)
11. Having a routine
12. Doing art work
13. Stimming
14. Having a good night’s sleep

The husband also understands all of these things. He’s amazing. Today, for example, he asked me whether I could take the car in for inspection, because he has a cold. He didn’t say, “You do it, honey. I’m sick.” He said, “I don’t want to do it, but I realize that if you do, it means dealing with the outside world.” He understands that I need a fair amount of lead time to prepare, and that I will need a great deal of recovery time when I get back.

I felt pretty goddamned awful about having to say no today, but it wasn’t because he was putting any pressure on me. It was because I had to say the words: “I have a disability, and I can’t do these things on the spur of the moment. We need to start thinking about getting some assistance from other people when you’re not feeling well.” It was so hard to say those words. I went outside, dug up some more grass (yes, we still have some, but not for long…) and felt really sad. On the positive side, however, saying those words helped lead me in precisely the opposite direction from a meltdown. Not bad for one lifetime.

I used to be able to do everything. Really. You must believe me. Everything. I could get up in the wee hours of the morning, drive long distances, go grocery shopping, work at a demanding job, teach my kid, support my family, pay the bills, cook, clean, plan birthday parties, include all the neighborhood kids in our Jewish holiday celebrations, plant a garden, exercise, and do just about anything anyone asked me to do, except stand on my head. But, as LizzieK8 said so beautifully in her comments to Monday’s post:

“We’ve spent so much of our life using up our energy to pass for normal, that we just don’t have the reserves for full-time passing anymore. We can do it when we have to (if given enough time to prepare), and we know better how to take care of ourselves when we’ve had to overextend our reserves, but we just don’t have it any more to do a full-time job, day in and day out.”

I burned a lot of energy in 50 years trying to be “normal.” I tried to do everything I thought the world demanded of me, and I did it with a very sensory-sensitive neurology, undiagnosed AS, SPD, dyspraxia, and who knows what else.

But those times are over. I’m sad that they’re over. And I’m also unbelievably relieved.

I’m finally learning that a human being is not an infinitely renewable resource. We have to take care of ourselves and use our energy wisely. For Aspies, just walking through the world and taking care of ourselves is a lot of work. For those of us who are feeling the effects of a lifetime of defying the way we were made, taking care of ourselves is the most vitally important work we can do.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

13 comments

Inability to Visualize: More on Why I Love Picture Books

January 25, 2009 Rachel Childhood, Making Lists, Picture Books, Visual/Spatial Skills, Word Pictures

Last week, I found a used children’s book called How It Works: Funny Bones and Other Body Parts, written by Anita Ganeri, and illustrated by Steve Fricker and John Holder. The book is written for third or fourth graders. I was attracted to it because there are basic systems in the human body that I have never been able to understand. I wasn’t interested in complex, high-level information. I was interested in things like the difference between a muscle and a tendon. So I bought the book.

It’s wonderful. Each section consists of detailed drawings that cover two pages. The book presents each body system by using analogies to familiar objects. For example, in the section that illustrates how different parts of the brain function, a compass symbolizes the ability to orient oneself in space, and a megaphone denotes the ability to understand speech.

I began reading the book the night I bought it, and I sailed through the sections on hair and skin, bone and muscles, the five senses, the brain, and the respiratory system. I was enjoying myself immensely until I got a few minutes into the part on the circulatory system. Very soon, I began to feel very, very dense.

I will try to describe why. On the picture of a heart are the following easy-to-read chunks of text:

Arteries are the blood vessels that take oxygen from the heart to the rest of the body.

Veins are the blood vessels that bring carbon dioxide to the heart from the rest of the body.

So far, so good. Arteries take blood away from the heart, and veins bring blood to the heart. Very nice. I can grasp that. But then, there is another chunk of text, and this is what it says:

Arteries take carbon dioxide from the heart to the lungs. Veins bring oxygen to the heart from the lungs.

At this point, my poor brain began to twist itself into knots and lots of grey matter started dissolving. In a nutshell, here is the problem:

1) On the picture, the text says that arteries take oxygen away from the heart. But then, the other text says that arteries take carbon dioxide away from the heart. To the lungs. (How did the lungs get there, anyway?)

2) On the picture, the text says that veins bring carbon dioxide to the heart. But then, the other text says that veins bring oxygen to the heart. From the lungs. Help!

Don’t forget, I am looking at a very well-rendered picture in a children’s book, and I just couldn’t get it. I couldn’t see the relationship between the words and the pictures at all. I finally put the book down and felt really, really stupid for the rest of the night.

A day or two later, I picked up the book again, determined to understand. So I looked at the pictures. And I looked at the words. And then it dawned on me to draw the pictures out myself.

So I did. I drew the heart with its two chambers, and then the lungs to either side. I drew the aorta, and I labeled what it was for. I drew the superior vena cava and inferior vena cava, and I labeled what they were for. I drew veins from each lung to the heart, and arteries from the heart to each lung. Finally, I drew arrows to chart the blood flow from the body to the heart, from the heart to the lungs, from the lungs back to the heart, and from the heart to the rest of the body. I cannot draw to save my life, but at least I drew a picture that made sense to me.

Finally, and I know you will be shocked to hear this, I made a list. There is always a list somewhere, waiting to be born, and I will always find it. My list (which is now tucked safely inside the book for easy reference) looks like this:

1) Veins carry carbon dioxide from the body to the right chamber of the heart.

2) Arteries carry carbon dioxide from the right chamber of the heart to the lungs, where the blood picks up oxygen.

3) Veins carry the oxgen from the lungs to the left chamber of the heart.

4) Arteries carry the oxygen from the heart to the rest of the body.

I can understand this system as a linear sequence of events. I can conceptualize the difference between what arteries do and what veins do. But I cannot visualize it in my mind at all. I have the words, and I have the pictures in the book. The pictures help me grasp the meanings of the words. But I cannot hold the pictures in my mind.

Now, if I were in an operating room with a surgeon who was doing open heart surgery, and he or she explained all the different parts while showing me each one, and I could see the blood flowing and the valves of the heart opening and closing, I would hold that picture in my head for the rest of my life. I’m certain of it. I can visually remember things I see and touch. But I cannot visualize things I read, and I cannot hold a picture I see in a book in my head for very long.

So how did I get all those As in grammar school?

We had picture books to read, but tests and homework consisted solely of words. All I had to do was rote memorization, something that many Aspies are very good at. In those days, I had a nearly photographic memory. I could look at a word once and know how to spell it. All my life, I have seen spoken words and my own thoughts as word pictures in my mind. I literally see all the words spelled out across my mental screen.

So I could regurgitate information on a test without understanding it at all. I had lots of facts and lots of details, but no big picture—another Aspie trait. I could not have told you how the body parts fit together. I saw them as discrete objects. Had I gone to a school in which we were expected to synthesize information, I would have had a much more difficult time of it.

In any case, in these days of educational software with lots of blinking lights and moving images that endlessly distract and ultimately overload my senses, I’m glad to know that picture books have not gone the way of the wind. Where would I be without them?

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

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