My child is struggling 
Now that my child has 
But frustration soon crept in as Danielle couldn't sequence five or six directional steps to follow patterns around the ring. She also couldn't understand multiple directions. I understood her IEP well enough to know she needed to receive the information in a different way. This became one of the first of many solutions we would design together.
Danielle was five years old when she began taking horse back riding lessons and advancing in her riding skills. When we talked about how frustrating it was for her to try to learn the figure eights and follow other directions, she expressed how she heard what her teacher said and how it was all mixed up in her head. It took more than a year for us to put together strategies for her to master two courses in the ring including six turns and two low fences. There is no easy way to find these strategies; it is trial and error with dozens and dozens of each. I began to understand how frustrating her daily life must feel as we searched for ways to get information into her brain and keep it there for future use.
Ultimately we were able to devise strategies because her desire to ride and spend time with the horses was so high. When I described this to her special education teacher Susan, she explained something that would become key to her education. Susan told me that Danielle had demonstrated through this process the ability to learn in context. If she could relate to the subject matter, it seemed to provide a channel for her to learn. She could visualize the goal and the result of her work.
Learning to read was an abstract concept to Danielle. Learning to get around a riding ring and over two fences was not. We found that she could learn best if she walked the course before she tried to direct the horse around the arena. She could absorb directions by hearing them and then repeating them back in her own words to the teacher. When she would make a mistake, the teacher would touch her hand while talking with her and let Danielle try to explain why the exercise hadn't worked. That was the beginning of our understanding that her best avenue for learning was to learn in context and with a connection.
When we were told that Danielle could not understand or follow in correct sequence multiple directions I was confused because she could help bake a cake or make a sandwich. How could she know that you put the cake flour, eggs, and water into the bowl before you mix it but she couldn't follow or sequence directions? Why could she make a sandwich with several steps and not have a problem? I was convinced that if she could learn these things she could learn others.
The psychologists advised me that what I saw as a proven ability to learn was the most difficult part of Danielle's learning challenges. They described her brain as Swiss cheese. There were areas that were developed and working, but then there were large gaps where information or a task might land and there would be nothing. I took great hope from the things she had learned and mastered. While I heard what they said, I believed it was a problem in need of a solution, not a dismal prognosis which screamed limitations. They were speaking from education and experience and I was not going to listen or believe their dismal outlook.
Danielle learned to ride a horse and to lead it through a series of directions. Susan derived more and more understanding from our discussions about this frustrating, but ultimately successful process. She spent days researching and developed yet another reading strategy for Danielle. Susan constructed an elaborate program that included horses and visual cues that she used to teach Danielle to read. Susan had literally exhausted every accepted reading strategy when she designed this one for Danielle. Within a month Danielle began to retain and recognize words. Six months later we sat crunched in tiny chairs, in that cramped room where I heard Danielle read for the first time about a horse named Fred. And, for the first time, I knew in my mind what I believed in my heart, Danielle could learn. We had struck gold: Danielle, Susan and me.
Reprinted with permission: Surviving Learning Disabilities Successfully: Sixteen Rules for Managing a Child's Learning Disabilities. "Rule #4: Mine for Gold." Copyright 2007 Nancy E. Graves and Danielle E. Graves.
