Let's Chat or Meet fledgling As Herself

Sparrow,

My last entry, as you know (!) was a love letter to my youngest daughter, a girl I think many of our readers feel like they’re starting to “know” because, of course, I write about her – A LOT!!!  She’s a character, this girl of mine and, let me tell you, she came out of the womb that way! Both of my girls are “characters” and, while I write mostly about my youngest born so far, my eldest, with her permission of course, will make an appearance as well because she, too, is central to the heart of my journey. For this entry, however, I’m concentrating yet again on my Fledgling, and I’m doing it “interview style” in order to allow her to speak for herself.

To start, let me give some background. Fledgling, at the time of this blog entry, is 12. She is a petite miss with short brown hair and a smile that lights up a room. She is a spirited girl who will, when she grows up, most certainly be a beauty. What marks her though, are her “exceptionalities”; those things that make her neurologically unlike the average child her age. Fledgling has a long list of labels that we have uncovered through years of being followed by Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Pediatricians and Occupational Therapists.

When she was in the first grade, and was extensively flipping letters and numbers (with entire words being flipped mirror image and writing starting on the right side, rather than left, of the page), we brought Fledgling in to see a Psychologist to have “psycho-educational testing” (an assessment of psychological aspects of learning and of academic skills). Through this testing, we (her father and I) found that there were several things “going on” in the head of our wee offspring and years of follow up testing confirmed and highlighted her needs. We learned, then, that our wee one is profoundly gifted (in case our readers aren’t aware, gifted has several ranges: mildly, moderately, highly and profoundly gifted with profoundly falling in an IQ range of 180+, a tiny minority of the gifted population), and is LD (ie has learning disabilities) and, hence, has extreme difficulty getting her racing intellectual thoughts out of her head or interpreting intellectual information. She may, or may not be somewhere on the Autism Spectrum scale and may/or may not suffer from childhood bipolar disorder. Childhood neurological issues so often mimic each other that it can take years to completely understand a child’s labels. She is, however, going through a diagnostic process for both of the latter mentioned issues.

One recent evening, I bribed my wee Miss with freshly baked peanut butter cookies and hot chocolate and I met her for a Facebook “Chat”. She typed on her laptop from the comfort of her bed:

 and I from the comfort of mine:

The conversation is here recorded word for word, spelling errors and all. I have, of course, taken out our names for privacy.  Here goes:

Red Bird:  Hey You!

Fledgling:  hi there

Red Bird:  Thanks for joining me...I may have to take pauses to murdelize your puppy every now and then, k?!

Fledgling:  kk.

Red Bird:  Okay, so let's start with this: Sparrow and I have been talking about the term "exceptional" a lot, do you know what is meant by that term?

Fledgling:  yes. in the way we’re talking about, it means"not average" for lack of better words

Red Bird:  Ya, actually, that's a great way of putting it. So, with that said, let's agree that you are "not average" in several ways, right?

Fledgling:  hehehe that's foe sure

Red Bird:  I'm laughing so hard at that answer I scared the dog!

Fledgling:  poor little bunny!!!

Red Bird:  He wants my cookies! mmmmmm peanut butter cookie

Fledgling:  mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm                                                                    

Red Bird:  Okay, back to serious, tell me in what ways you've been labelled "exceptional"

Fledgling:  like, just a list of my labels? 

Red Bird:  Ya, just a list

Fledgling:  profoundly gifted, adhd, ld, mood disorder, am i missing any?

Red Bird:  A few. Auditory Processing Disorder, Motor coordination Disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder and I want to clarify that when you say LD you mean Learning Disabilities in which you have several and when you say mood disorder you mean anxiety disorder and clinical depression

Red Bird:  I'd like to add that you are currently being re-evaluated for Asperger's Syndrome as well as possible childhood bi-polar disorder.....wow!

Fledgling:  woops i guess you better add forgetful to the list

Red Bird: Ha! Good Response! Did either of us add profoundly gifted to the list?

Fledgling:  i did.

Red Bird:  Okay. That list was long! How do you feel about that long a list?

Fledgling:  well, some of them are fine with me. like adhd and profoundly gifted. Others i am more bothered by

Red Bird:  I didn't know that. Can you tell me which ones?

Fledgling:  well ones that affect me all the time like sensory prossesing, depression, motor  coordination

Fledgling:  did the dog just hit his head?

Red Bird:  He did! Did you hear him?! He's such a dunce.

Fledgling:  yes he is!

Red Bird:  HMMMM Depression is the one that bothers me most for you. Depression is hard on me to watch you go through and I can't imagine how it feels, especially to a child (though there's not a lot child like about you!). 

Red Bird:  Can you sum up in just a few words what depression feels like?

Fledgling:  its lethargy, anger, and a general "do not want" to do anything

Red Bird:  Tell me, if we could take your labels off of your shoulders, would you give them up?

Fledgling:  yes, except for gifted. but i would need to keep the memories because they make me in a way, less naive, more aware of the real world.

Red Bird:  Beautifully well said! I love you, I hope you know that; labels and all. I just hate that you whoop my butt so often at Connect 4. Seriously, you couldn't let me win once in a blue moon? 

Fledgling:   http://www.google.ca/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&biw=1366&bih=667&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnsa&tbnid=-P0x3Y4SUJwWrM%3A&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fknowyourmeme.com%2Fmemes%2Fno-rage-face&docid=spFkSmlp8FNO4M&imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fi0.kym-cdn.com%2Fen

Red Bird:  Can you hear me laughing all the way from your room?!

Fledgling:  oh yes, hyena woman

Red Bird:  Goodbye BRAT! Thanks for joining me and eating my cookies. Now, I have to find puppy, he escaped. He's probably pooing somewhere :0 Arggggghhhh smiley fail!

Fledgling:  nice going

Red Bird:  BRAT!

Fledgling:  bye

A few notes on this conversation: Make sure you click on Fledgling’s link, if you didn’t. She came up with that in seconds; literally! Also, a comment on her grammatical errors: My young lady never capitalizes and rarely uses punctuation. She knows how to do both but, for some reason, seems incapable of doing it. She does, however, often accidentally capitalize words at random places throughout a sentence when she’s printing though.  Even for school, Fledgling uses a laptop as an accommodation for her learning disabilities. Also, in case you are old like me, KK is used to mean okay (check out urban dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kk). And, on a final note, murdelize is a word and I’ll stand by it!

With all our love,

Fledgling and Red Bird!