She won’t tell me when something’s wrong.
He won’t engage with other kids.
I keep telling her that every sentence begins with a capital letter! She’s just won’t do it.
He won’t write neatly.
All the other kids have the routine. She just won’t turn in her homework each morning.
He won’t speak clearly.
She won’t check her work. If she would, she’d find all those silly errors.
I don’t get it. Your kid is so smart with so many great thoughts, but he just won’t write it down. I know he can do it.
At some point, it becomes evident that maybe the better question is instead:
“Is it won’t or can’t?”
Here’s the thing: My kid can write neatly, but only when that’s the only thing he’s doing and with plenty of time. She can spell, but not if she’s trying to communicate something with her writing. He can speak clearly, but not when expressing a complex idea. She knows the rules for capitalization and punctuation, but she can’t apply them.
So often, I think teachers see the bright child, and it blinds them to the fact that the child can’t do certain things, at least in certain situations. A lot of gifted kids develop in an inconsistent manner, leaving some skills lagging behind others. Eventually, the slower-to-develop skills will kick in. However, all too often, the child is using his or her cognitive abilities to compensate for a disability, so that sometimes, with enough effort brought to the task, the child can, but at a cost.
In either case, consistently being told by a teacher or parent that they should be able to do something they can’t communicates to the child that he is lazy, sloppy, or dumb. This is damaging.
Teasing apart can’t and won’t can be just as hard as teasing apart asynchrony from disability.
It takes an expert. Not google. Not some blog. Not a message board. It takes an expert.
I wish I’d found expert help for my daughter earlier. Addressing the learning disabilities at that point also required addressing compounding issues of anxiety and low self-esteem.
It was finally a series of questions I asked her 4th grade teachers, along the lines of “is it can’t or won’t?” that got them to see a significantly more complex child than they’d seen previously. It took an expert to delineate exactly where the log jam was in her brain.
I did start earlier seeking a diagnosis for my son, and we’re slowly zeroing in on diagnoses and appropriate help. I don’t think we have the full picture yet, but he’s learning that he has strengths and weaknesses, and that it's ok to not be perfect at everything. Experts can help him with his weaknesses, and he’ll get there in his own time.