Brandy could not do word problems
We had a RAD kid living with us for a while. Jim & I were talking about her the other night. Remembering how she would go blank when we’d be working with her on her homework & when she had to do word problems. She knew *how* to do all of the different math functions. She knew how to add, subtract, multiply & divide (for the most part), but she had no idea how to decide which one to use in which situation. We would read through the word problem & then ask her what she thought she should do. She would randomly choose numbers from the problem and math functions & put them together for her answer: I should times the people and the time, right? I should add the cows to the bottles?, etc.
And, I got to thinking, it was the same for her with social behaviors, too. She *knew* how to be polite, how to be assertive, how to be independent, how to behave, how to be responsible, how to have fun… She just had no clue *when* to be each of these things. She was just randomly choosing behaviors, or, choosing the ones that might have worked before, or that were fun. But, seldom did she seem to be choosing a behavior because it was the appropriate behavior for the situation. She could get the easy ones (pious in church, for example), because of sheer repetition over the course of her life. But, when faced with something where she hadn’t made repetitive successful choices, she was lost.
I wonder if they are related somehow
