Leigh; A case study

Leigh's background reveals a great deal of turmoil. He has moved seventeen times and has been enrolled in four schools. His parents divorced when he was three years old. His mother remarried recently, and Leigh is having trouble accepting the new authority figure in the house. To complicate matters, Leigh's biological father sees so much of himself in Leigh that he generally dislikes Leigh , instead showering Leigh's younger sister with affection.

Leigh is an incredibly gifted ten-year-old. His vocabulary and reasoning ability are matches for any adult. Leigh scores at high school levels in all areas of achievement, with the exception of written expression, where he performs at average levels for his age and grade. When writing, Leigh's spelling is perfect, as is his use of complex sentence structure and punctuation. However, he cuts his writing short, takes unduly long to put anything down on paper, and develops themes in such a detail-oriented way that the reader has no clue about the main idea he is trying to convey. In conversations also, Leigh spouts unnecessary detail after unnecessary detail but doesn't let the listener in on what the basic point is. This, in addition to his clumsiness and emotional difficulties, has left him friendless.

The evaluation revealed a captivating young man struggling with many personal issues, In addition, he abhors writing. The writing difficulties were found to be due to very poor motor planning. Leigh could not write a word without actually having to think about telling his hand how to move. His body movements and spatial judgements were equally nonautomatic, for example, it was a struggle for Leigh to touch his thumb to each successive finger, to figure out how to skip, to walk through a doorway without bumping the frame, or even to stand upright without falling over when he closed his eyes. No wonder he hated his worksheets and essays and took so long to do them. Interestingly, when given sufficient time to plan and think, Leigh eventually could figure out how to perform all motor activities and visual-perceptual exercises (puzzles, mazes, finding missing objects in pictures) perfectly.

Complicating Leigh's written and oral communication was his overanalytic style. Leigh focused on all the "trees" but seldom gave equal attention to the "forest" unless specifically asked to think about the main idea. It was found that simply telling Leigh to start each paragraph with a main idea, instructing him in the use of a prewriting, brainstorming strategy, and allowing him to tape his compositions resulted in products that were superior for his age and grade.

In order to accommodate his written language needs, Leigh's school psychologist and parents wanted him identified as learning disabled. Without this classification, there would be no way to convince Leigh's rigid classroom teachers to give him extra time on written work, to reduce unnecessary written assignments, to let him use the computer, or to let him tape and then transcribe his compositions. Leigh couldn't understand all this. He simply asked "Why not?"

Leigh was right. The evaluation team recommended the accommodations that had been successful at the clinic, as well as counselling services. The team felt that despite Leigh's significant weaknesses, these did not require an unusual intensity or quality of instruction. Simple adaptations within the classroom could promote success. Besides, Leigh said that he would feel dumb having to leave the class for a special education teacher's help. The team worried that the stigma of an LD label may be more detrimental to Leigh's social adjustment than the frustration he experienced front written work. The team recommended that Leigh's school initiate a gifted program and that Leigh be its first enrollee. The team explained Leigh's weaknesses to him and described how he could work around these difficulties. The team pointed out that his pattern of strengths and weaknesses was not unlike that of at least half the professors at the university!