Special Mom’s blog

Write about something mysterious.

#Bloganuary Challenge Day 19.

When I read this prompt my immediate thought was Chidambaram Rahasyam, translated to English, the secret of Chidambaram. Chidambaram is a place in Southern India, the Temple has a shrine of Lord Shiva and there is a secret hidden in the Temple.

So I googled and found out what is the difference between mystery and secret. So, the prompt was thought provoking. I found out secret is knowledge that is hidden, and intended to be kept hidden while a mystery is something unexplainable and that need to be solved.

I found a youtuber talking in great detail about the secret of Chidambaram and has taken up on himself to unravel the secret for his audience. I realized that it is a secret and definitely not a mystery. Our ancestors have made it a point to make that into a secret and I do not want get myself involved in solving the mystery!

But let me pen down a mystery that I solved with my son’s learning. Teaching my son has always been a challenge. There are some skills that he learns quickly and some he cannot or will have a tough time. When my son was nine years old I informed his class teacher that he knows his shapes. We were doing intense ABA with him that time. Every day she used to send me a note saying he still has not mastered the skill. But at home my son could say all the shapes. So one morning I decided to go to school early drop him off and talk to his teacher why the kid was not performing good at school. The teacher put down some shapes on his desk and asked him to pick up the circle. That is when I realized how I put forth the question matters to him. He cannot pick up a circle , but he can answer to the question, what tha particular shape was. Picking up a circle among other shapes involves so much of visual activity. But when the shape is picked up and put in front of him, he was able to say that it was a circle. I think both myself and the teacher had wow moment. It was in the same class, my son learnt his phonics and became a good speller.

I think this a mystery that had to be solved, and that I could find some alternate method to teach him. It also paved the way for us to do therapies targeted for his shortfall in learning. Autistic people are visual learners was what I had learnt until then, but my son was an auditory learner and my teaching had to change completely. Even today if I ask him to point to twenty one on calendar he can just show a two and one randomly but not twenty one as a whole piece. 😀