Since his days of crawling Ameerudeen has been an extremely busy child. He seldom sat still, and was extremely curious and inquisitive. During is preschool years nobody reported that he was any different from his peers. No one, not even the school psychologist, ever reported that Ameerudeen was lacking in his development.
Suddenly, at the age of ten his school called us in to report that they felt he had to be moved to a remedial facility. Apparently he was not on par with his peers and he did not apply himself. He was considered disruptive at times and at other times uncooperative. The teacher thought that it would be best to move him to a remedial school as he was unable to do work of his grade and in their opinion, and based on an educational psychologist assessment, he would not be able to achieve outcomes as required by the Department of Education.
This was not the child I had came to know over the years. Yes, he was extremely busy, and he was technical minded. He loved taking things apart and reassembling them. He loved art and creative activities and he was conversant with practical applied sciences such as skippering a yacht on his own on the open sea, erecting a tent in winds of up to 35 knots in 9 degrees Celsius temperatures. His Lego creations were functional and aesthetically pleasing. He snorkelled and dived etc. So many things he was doing demanded that he placed forethought into the activity and that he followed a process to achieve a desired result. It was extremely difficult for me to understand who this child was that the school teacher was describing, opposed to the child I took backpacking through remote parts of the world since the age of three. I gave up taking on more work and foregone my regular income to find out for myself what the reason was that my son had found himself in this situation.
We employed about three private teachers to assist with after-school tuition, we attended sessions with a neurotherapist, a life coach, purchased a brain entrainment machine, and had hypnosis done — all at great expense. I then started to work with Ameerudeen and discovered what none of the teachers nor the therapists had picked up: AMEERUDEEN COULD NOT READ NOR WRITE… He could not string letters, he could not say a rhyme, he could not translate sound into script. He was frustrated and terrified, he felt isolated and different and believed that he was incapable of meeting his outcomes. Intolerable teachers picked on him, the lazier ones ignored his plight and then there were the sympathetic ones who just loved him for who he was, yet left him as a lost case. The task seemed daunting and I embarked on research into ADHD/dyslexia and discovered Edublox, I read about all the success the programme had produced and decided to embark on this journey with my son.
We stopped everything else including the life coach sessions and on our year-end schedule to Cape Town from Johannesburg we made contact with Zainu Allie and took the evaluation test. That was Dec 2010. Cape Town did not have an intensive programme for that year, but special arrangements were made by Zainu Allie for Ameerudeen to attend every available day whilst he was in Cape Town. After Cape Town you could see his confidence level was increasing. His demeanour changed. He started to look at books and page through them. Words no longer terrified him.
His Nan bought him a Roald Dahl and told him the story about the writer Roald Dahl and his struggle with ADHD and dyslexia, and how he has become a notary on writing children’s books. She also showed him all the school reports of Roald Dahl where teachers said that he needed to be placed in a special school, that he had no imagination and that he would never make it in mainstream education. His Nan explained to him that he was similar to Roald Dahl, and that like Dahl he too could overcome absolutely anything. Out of his own he googled Roald Dahl and now asks to go to the bookstore to buy his Roald Dahl book and diligently at night reads a couple of Roald Dahl pages.
The year at Edublox Kempton Park equipped Ameerudeen with confidence and resolve. He knows that he needs to go to Edublox at every possible opportunity.
From not being able to read, and doing assisted school exams for the first two terms of the school year 2011, he improved to passing his last two terms exams unassisted. He is cognitively developed to an acceptable level and his current hurdle is just reading practice. He is still not reading and writing as per the outcomes requirements of the DOE, but coming from not being able to read, to being able to read in such a short time I consider absolutely phenomenal.
| Before Edublox | Whilst at Edublox |
| Could not concentrate | Does concentrate |
| Constant complaints by educators of daydreaming and non-cooperation | A focused young man with aims and ambitions |
| Could not read NOR WRITE LEGIBLE | Does read and write now, without having to ask him |
| Attention seeking | Confident to be by himself |
| Fear of the dark | The fear is overcome |
| Assisted exams | Non-assisted exams |
| Grade 5 | Grade 6 |
| Fear of going to school | Sets his alarm, packs his own school bag, prepares his own breakfast and attends to himself |
| Assisted homework | Unassisted homework |
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Ameerudeen has changed from being an insecure attention-seeking illiterate, all-over-the-place child to a literate child who is now cognitively developed, who with lesson after lesson at Edublox becomes more and more well-rounded and developed, MENTALLY, INTELLECTUALLY AND EMOTIONALLY.
I KNOW THIS YEAR AUGERS WELL FOR HIM AND THAT HE WILL GO FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH AND BECOME THE PHENOMENAL MAN HE IS DESTINED TO BE AND IT WILL UNQUESTIONABLY BE BECAUSE OF THE ASSISTANCE AND GROUND WORK HE GOT AT EDUBLOX CAPE TOWN AND KEMPTON PARK.
Miriam Gaffoor