Month: April 2026

Post #15 Learning Disability How? Parenting

The How? posts will step over a bit from the perspective in the earlier Learning Disability posts, not looking at how LDs come about or work. These posts will look at how or the manner in which those who surround someone with a learning difference respond to the person and their difference.

The Horse and Groom

A Groom used to spend whole days in currycombing and rubbing down his Horse, but at the same time stole his oats and sold them for his own profit. “Alas!” said the Horse, “if you really wish me to be in good condition you should groom me less, and feed me more.”^[i]

Was Yasik ‘underfed’ as a Gurin?

Yasik was found by social services in a crib alone and uncared for. As I have recorded in earlier posts, it is not a leap to assume he was not being properly fed, ergo lacking sufficient protein in his first year. And if physical needs were not being met, likely no one was around to cuddle him and coo ‘motherese’, the simple form of language mothers often use when talking to their babies (possibly as Yasik’s bio-parents were crumpling under the weight of their lives in the transition from Soviet times). Not responding to Yasik’s infant needs for protein and motherese, his bio-parents may have been slowing his capacity to develop language. Both lots of protein and lots of motherese or caregiver response are essentials to latching on to language.^[ii]

A doctoral paper, written in 2005, speaks to the delayed language of children placed in orphanages in eastern European countries of the 90s. Studies show that children, who have been transplanted into a new language from eastern European countries, performed lower in acquisition of the new language than their age expectations would be. As AI reminds us and as Yasik experienced, these children came out of societies which would respond to their needs with deprivation and likely much less conversational stimulation. Thus when comparing these children to their North American classmates, maybe there is a ‘Duh’ to be heard.  These children, particularly older adoptees, would have been immersed in the second language for relatively less time and possibly with diminished capacity for language. Even for a child transitioning to a more vibrant economy, adoptors and educators need to recognize that these children come with a weak foundation for acquiring a new language.^[iii] It can further be appreciated that in some cases the bio-parents were prioritizing economic difficulties over the child’s needs and orphanages were prioritizing efficiency and budget over the child’s needs.  Do these observations translate to ‘less feeding’?

…when a baby cries and no one responds or when a child asks for help and no one answers…not being fed, being left in dirty diapers or not being allowed to move about freely [is detrimental] … [for] language development and formation of emotional competencies begin with the caregiver’s emotional responsiveness to the infant. …eye contact and facial expressiveness …. Children who have experienced neglect are at a higher risk of cognitive, social and emotional delays...[iv]

Nonetheless, I have read in various adoption manuals that children tend to pick up their new language quite quickly. We certainly thought Forest Gump was speeding Yasik’s English right along. If his beginnings weakened Yasik’s foundation for language learning, was it possible we naively missed cues to his weakened foundation? Until we could no longer ignore his very real needs.

Was Yasik ‘over groomed’ as a Vincent?

I have written many times in earlier posts that we were dumpty, dumptying along as good parents generally do. We thought Yasik was beautiful, a dream come true. Yet, we were on him for numbers and letters almost from week one as a Vincent. We did the routine thing, the homework and bed time reading thing and lordy, lordy if we didn’t push education. Of course it has to be asked, were we, right from the start, communicating to him we could not accept him just as he was; he had to perform to win love?

Naomi Fischer quotes a child who was slumping under the weight of her parents’ pressure, No matter what she says, I feel her disappointment …^[v]  It is possible, with all this pushing, parents aren’t dressing their children for success but for shame, telling them they are not perfect.

It might have changed our family’s trajectory had we been able to step back a moment in the midst of the push pressure to recognize that we were upset by Yasik’s inability to read at the pace of others in his classroom.  Certainly not consciously, but absolutely, we were telling Yasik he was not perfect.

I now read that it is a healthy starting point for parents to acknowledge that they are struggling with the disappointment/anger over their child’s struggles but then box up their idea of the perfect child and accept the one they have been blessed with. To do other than accept is to tell your child he or she is imperfect.[vi] If we could not accept our child’s learning struggles, could we be impeding the flow of love between us and our son?

Is it telling that, at one point, Yasik whispered to Dave that he really didn’t like doing gym even though he knew Momma wanted him to? It never occurred to me to ask why. What could there be about gym that a kid didn’t like?

And then there was the time, likely a common experience in families struggling with learning, when Yasik got a report card and hid it. Dave found it in Yasik‘s bag while making his lunch. When Dave asked, Yasik looked down and said, “Yeah” as Dave opened the report. It had a C in Language, C+ in Math, B in Science, B in Social Studies, A in PE, B in Art, and B in Personal Planning. He was shocked to find that was good.  Dave said Yasik just beamed and swelled when he saw how thrilled Dave was.

That progress report was as real as a piece of white paper with a message printed in black on it can be, and yet its message seemed contradictory. From as early as grade one we began picking up the vibe that Yasik was struggling with reading and writing English, slipping below the expected reading level of his grade. One day we were thrilled at how he was developing; the next day, we got downright charged up to push harder. One of us was pushing reading, spelling and printing in the morning and the other jumped him in the evening. That’s all it took, we were certain. Just more aggressive practice. Naomi Fischer says that parents pick up the sense that it is their fault from the child’s school; they need to stand with the school in pushing the child harder.  At times, the school leaves the parent feeling caught between the struggle facing the child and the hope that the school really is working in the ‘best interests’ of their child.^[vii] The British writer, A.A. Gill, has a more direct (and hyperbolic?) bit to say about parents and the educating of children: We’ve got it all wrong – … education is really about the fear and guilt of parents projected onto their children…[viii]

Each progress report offered quite specific tips for helping Yasik to catch up. When I read over Yasik’s progress reports from the first five years, I am a bit dismayed at how little attention Dave and I paid to these suggestions the school staff offered. Did we encourage him to express his thoughts? Did we encourage him to read words without sounding them out? Did we sign him up for the local library’s reading program? Dave did draw a large clock face with moveable hands to practice reading time. Did we participate in the “Grizz Home Reading Program”? Even as I write this now, I have no idea what that was. Did we encourage him to notice numbers by working through recipes together?  Yes, Yasik cooked with Dave sometimes, but did it turn into a math class converting quantities? Nope.

In Yasik’s teen years, Dave sought his help in rebuilding a lake boat but by this time Yasik, with several years under his belt of shame at struggling with math, thought he was incapable of helping because he didn’t know how to read a measuring tape and didn’t want to admit this. It wasn’t worth the effort to try or even admit it was a stumbling block. This he confided to me later. Dave didn’t know how much of a stumbling block this had become.

Yasik choosing to read a page and a half of The Lord of the Rings moved Dave to tears; across a soccer field, Dave and I locked eyes in pride and happiness as Yasik received awards and cheers.  But Dave couldn’t stand seeing what was happening to Yasik in the regular school system.  That led us to enroll him in a private Orton Gillingham school.

Another parent, Jessica Berg, who eventually also enrolled her son in an Orton Gillingham program, was an educator and a mom but says, I didn’t know how to teach him to read…As an educator, I felt a growing sense of panic. As a mother, I was heartbroken.[ix]

A.A. Gill again: …none of us have any idea what we’re doing… I stand at the school gates and watch the fear in the eyes of other fathers.  The barely contained panic as they herd their offspring, already looking like hobbit Sherpas, carrying enormous school backpacks full of folders and books and photocopied letters … You know my younger kids carry more paperwork than I do? And my job is paperwork. And they can’t read.[x].  It wasn’t difficult for Dave and I to find those same responses within ourselves.

Dragging home more homework in their back pack than any other kid in the class, needing their parents’ homework help, being provided with extra-curricular reading or math programs or a tutor, even the pretty girl next door, too often leads the kid and his friends to wonder why he or she needs more help than other kids.  Do you know that one year while we are driving toward a summer vacation, we had Yasik working on a math program.

But don’t think Yasik wasn’t appreciative of our efforts. The journal records homework scenes of him flopping his head into his arms on the table and wailing, “You never help me”. The script immediately called for either Dave or I to come back with some kind of threat. Yasik’s next line would be another wail, a rather simple and explicit plot line heading, at least in the short term, to not much anywhere.

Joan Didion questioned how helpful all the parents’ pushing is as she sought to help her adopted daughter with homework.

I said my own efforts to help Quintana with her homework- which were extensive- were probably in retrospect too based on taking it over, showing her how to do it rather than prompting her to discover herself how to do it.

… Teaching is something very few parents can do. There’s this fad now for teaching children at home. I have no idea how they do it. Moreover, it’s a terrible idea…^[xi]

Alongside the pushing and the homework drama, at the advice of Yasik’s third grade teacher, we sought out other avenues to help Yasik. We tried to get psycho-ed help via my work benefit plan. Turns out counselling was a possibility, well at least 5 sessions. But getting a full-on psycho-ed assessment? No, that was on us and pricey. We also checked out an alternative school, a Waldorf school, a mere hour and half drive each way. Yasik was on board with the idea of play your way to learning.

Both Yasik and Phil Hanley did their bits too. When Yasik and I closed off the night with a prayer to Dear God, Yasik would ask Dear God to help him with his spelling. He wanted to make sure we kept that request up front and center with Dear God. And he gave Dear God updates when he got all the words spelled right.

Phil Hanley tried this avenue too. In first grade, I prayed every night that I’d wake up smart. ^[xii]

All these darts thrown in the dark as the question was always there: does he have a learning disability or is he just lazy?  Yasik actually found the explanation, “I’m lazy” preferrable to there is something wrong with me.

Sure, we could always blame it on Oblomovism, named after a novel about a nobleman who spent his time in bed living off the income of his family estate, having no motivation to work, no need to work, as he would still be taken care of. Why bother to do anything when he didn’t have to?  This attitude was prevalent in the Soviet years as people figured they would get paid anyway whether they worked or not.[xiii]

When Yasik tried to sign off of unfinished homework or academic struggles with “I’m lazy” was he leaning on a cultural attitude picked up in his early years or was this an attempt at a more normal defense against the embarrassment of having to acknowledge a disability?  Hint: don’t take this suggestion too seriously though I have been told by a Russian emigre that the attitude remains.

Our response as parents was to try whatever we knew possible to aid a son we understood, according to the dictates of our society, to have a disability. Even so, … over the long haul, the sum of our parental pushing: Yasik was steadily sinking into shame, fear, desperate to please. We pushed methods and he tried feeble resistance until he just gave up and slipped away.

Were we grooming when what he needed was to be fed?

Footnotes

[i] Aesop’s Fables   Doubleday & Company, Inc.  1968, 63

[ii] Bohannon, Cat   EVE: how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution   Random House Canada, 2023, 274, 318-334

Szalavitz, Maia, Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.  Born For Love: why empathy is essential-and endangered   William Morrow, 2010, 90, 194-195

[iii] Hough, Susan D.  Language Outcomes in School-Aged Children Adopted From Eastern European Orphanages, 2005/08/29, https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/concern/etds/fbb77800-8f8b-4559-95ce-d33837f7b37d

[iv] Bosco-Ruggiero, Stephanie, MA, Gloria Russo Wassell, MS, LMHC, and Victor Groza, PhD   adopting older children: a practical guide to adopting and parenting children over age four   New Horizon Press, 2014, 177, 178, 192, 193

Seligman, Martin E.P., Ph.D. Learned Optimism: how to change your mind and your life  Vintage Books, 2006, 15, 16, 67

[v]Fisher, Naomi   A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education   Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 112

[vi] Silberman, Steve  Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity  Avery, 2016, 433-446

Guthrie, Elizabeth, M.D. and Kathy Matthews   The Trouble with Perfect   Broadway Books, 2002, 85, 86, 87, 120, 188, 195

[vii] Fisher, Naomi   A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education   Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 25, 31, 36, 197

Silberman, Steve  Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity  Avery, 2016, 296

[viii] Gill, A.A. “The Parenting Trap”  Vanity Fair December, 2012, 130, 132

[ix] Berg, Jessica. “My teen couldn’t read for years, a dyslexia diagnosis changed everything”

https://www.businessinsider.com/my-teen-couldnt-read-for-years-dyslexia-diagnosis-changed-everything-2026-1 Jan 2, 2026

[x] Gill, A.A. “The Parenting Trap”  Vanity Fair December, 2012, 130, 132

[xi] Didion, Joan   Notes To John   Alfred A. Knopf, 2025, 134,192

[xii] Hanley, Phil.  Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith   Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 140

[xiii] Lachman, Gary   The Return of Holy Russia: apocalyptic history, mystical awakening, and the struggle for the soul of the world   Inner Traditions, 2020, 24, 29, 210

Wheeler, Sara   Mud and Stars: travels in Russia with Pushkin, Tolstoy, and other geniuses of the Golden Age   Pantheon Books, 2019, 202

Judith’s husband, Oct 2’25

Post#15   Learning Disabilities – Where? When?

This post muddies the water between ‘Where’ the learning disability or difference is encountered and ‘When’ it is encountered but does offer some understanding of time and place.

As I have said in earlier posts, we became aware of Yasik’s learning struggles or differences somewhere in his first and second grade. I don’t remember any overt awareness in kindergarten.  From several sources, I have read that it is helpful to become aware as early as pre-kindergarten and that the age of 7 is cutting it close in terms of good help.[i]

But when a child comes into an English-speaking kindergarten with a body, brain, mind, soul and heart still filtering all communication, how is it possible to see signs signaling a learning disability?  Where and when does learning happen? Where and when are ‘gaps in learning’ or for tht matter differences in learning to be isolated and identified?[ii]

All living human beings learn, so it is a global thing.

Check it out if you are unsure, but I am moving on to first take a wide sweep of humanity and learning. According to Dr. Aliza Pressman our brains construct and reconstruct to enable learning, adapting, rewiring in “three major stages of neuroplasticity”. During the first few years of a baby’s life about 90% of the brain develops, from adolescence to around 30 our brains are reconstructing/pruning, and then (and this one was a surprise to me) when we open our lives to caregiving, apparently caring for anything from a pet to parenting or allo-parenting another we experience a “neural growth spurt”.[iii]  To this I would add, even if we have not found anything or anyone to parent, we are at least taking care of #1. Each day as we confront life, our brains are enabling us to learn.

All living human beings learn and develop in “myriad” ways.

A map has been advanced to place learners based on which of the ‘myriad’ ways we learn.

Most helpfully, Nick Walker provides an online site to clear up the terminology involved, https://neuroqueer.com/neurodiversity-terms-and-definitions/.

In case we fear Walker is going ‘woo woo’ on us, he begins: There’s an awful lot of scientific evidence that shows quite plainly that there’s considerable variation among human brains.

This is called ‘Neurodiversity’, “the diversity of human minds”.

… The idea that there is one “normal” or “healthy” type of brain or mind, or one “right” style of neurocognitive functioning, is a culturally constructed fiction, no more valid … than the idea that there is one “normal” or “right” ethnicity, gender, or culture.

In the words of an autistic person: what is normal for other people is not normal for me, and what is normal for me is not normal for other people.[iv]

However, we are irrepressible mappers and labelers. When an individual or group of individuals diverges from the dominant societal standards of “normal” neurocognitive functioning, … they’re neurodivergent as opposed to Neurotypical.

Neurodivergence is not intrinsically positive or negative, desirable or undesirable…[v] It simply is where someone not considered neurotypical is found.

Here’s an odd little side point of interest to middle-aged and senior women I couldn’t resist tucking in as it was also my experience. The Shaywitz family tell us that loss of estrogen post-menopause may impact the female brain’s ability to cope with reading, speaking and memory. For a few menopausal months I was a stuttering English teacher.[vi] I was not speaking to my students in what was considered normal speech.

To place those not neurotypical the mapmaker of human minds draws more specific details. The map details the locations out from neurotypical to neurodivergent to neurominority. We are shown a gated community of people who share a form of neurodivergence that is specific to them, constituting an intrinsic and pervasive factor in their psyches, personalities, and fundamental ways of relating to the world. By this definition it seems to me even menopausal women are a neurominority community.[vii]

 Learning Disabilities are neurominority communities.

Grok will tell you stats on such communities vary in definition, diagnostic criteria and country, settling on the numbers 5 to 15% of the world’s population with 10% as the most widely accepted number however higher the percentage may actually be.  The same numbers are offered for the specific LDs: Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, though Non-verbal LD comes in at a lower percentage. These neurominority communities have learning differences that do not disappear with the reconstruction going on in the adolescent brain, are often found in family clusters, and are not limited to alphabetic writing systems but also logographic languages like Japanese.  Whether they are more heavily male than female communities is still up for discussion.[viii]

Therefore, it seems safe to say, if the grade school teacher asks Suzy to read most days of the week, but Suzy has a problem translating the squiggles on the page into communicating language, some learning difference on a spectrum between moderate to severe is showing. If Johnny is unable to focus on the teacher’s lecture, he too may be on a spectrum calling for an assessment. [ix]

As mentioned in an earlier post, When most people had to hunt [as in an ancient hunting society], a minor genetic variation in your ability to focus attention was hardly a problem, and may even have been an advantage…[x] In a classroom it may lead to diagnosis and designation.

For most in a LD neurominority, awareness of a learning difference becomes apparent when children enter a school system built around reading.  For others the differences manage to stay in the background, not interfering with life too much until adulthood. Again, if you live in a community that doesn’t use reading to communicate, a non-reading neurominority may be hard to find.[xi]

Eligibility for a LD neurominority does not include IQ.

My beautiful, creative young neighbour is possibly a reluctant member of a neurominority, and for all the wonderful features of her community, she looks over the fence at the neurotypical communities around her and would like to jump the fence.

But one of the things she may not yet realize or doesn’t want to realize, as it may make her present as ‘different’, is a sign of intelligence she already possesses.  As The Idiot Brain tells its readers …One of the generally accepted signs of intelligence is an awareness and acceptance of what you don’t know… those with poor intelligence not only lack the intellectual abilities, they also lack the ability to recognize that they are bad at something.[xii]

Nonetheless, some of what tantalizes my young neighbour as she looks over the fence is how much safer a neurotypical community looks, away from the barbs of ‘What’s wrong with you? You must really be dumb if you can’t read’. Intelligence is often questioned in the face of a learning disability or difference.[xiii]

When seniors apply for housing in a gated community they must swear they are not bringing children along.  Carting in dated furniture is not on the checklist for identity as a senior.

When a person is assigned a label or place in a learning difference neurominority, the person’s intellectual capacity is not a required box to be checked.  It may be questioned when applying for a Mensa community or an intellectually disabled community, but IQ and LD are separate. LD is about how someone learns. IQ is a peer reference, reliably or otherwise. (Grok says IQ tests are not given the authority they have had in the past).

Sally and Jonathan Shaywitz make the point for separation of IQ assessments and LD designations this way. A child’s IQ one year will influence his reading score the following year, while his reading score one year will influence his IQ in a subsequent year… …(but) in the case of dyslexia, IQ and reading are not linked at all. The data show that dyslexics can have a very high IQ but still struggle to read; that is, they can think quickly and read slowly...[xiv]

Some suggested ways to spot members of a neurominority community are, to me, questionable. A child who showed little interest in being read to or seemed more intelligent when younger but seemed to grow progressively less perceptive (especially relative to peers) as she grew older is an indicator I find unstable, but I can see having difficulty understanding the increasingly complex, layered, clause-filled sentences that come into use around grades three and four as a useful red flag.[xv]

It should also be noted here that the trend toward sightings of autism have drawn the attention of concerned individuals lately. The word ‘epidemic’ has become attached to articles about autism. Between 2000 and 2016, there was a 464 percent increase in diagnoses among children with no significant functional impairment whatsoever. Those questioning this rise ask if “quirky children on the spectrum,” [are] the same train‑obsessed third‑grader your grandfather knew, only now he’s been assigned a diagnosis. There is also a rise in diagnoses for ADHD, anxiety and depression.[xvi]

So the question must be asked: Should a different ‘developmental age’ be considered?[xvii]

Yasik came to Canada with 90% of his brain already developed. We don’t know exactly what his ‘developmental age’ was at the time? Much of his adolescent pruning happened outside the home and school environment. He has yet to enjoy the neural burst that comes with parenting.  Nonetheless it is evident that all along he has just kept right on learning, his way.

Having been in the Canadian west coast and middle-class school system for 3 years, Yasik was given the learning disability assessment provided by his school district in the 1990s, done when he was in grade 3 and almost 9. The second assessment done by a private organization was a requirement for entering a private school for disabled learners. The assessment noted the significant difference in chronological age and the self-concept that would go with such a situation- weak language skills leading to low risk-taking, fear of failure and anxiety.  He asked for lots of cookie breaks during the assessment process.

Does a look at a map of Yasik’s learning offer some idea where and when ‘gaps in learning’ might be isolated and identified? Were these ‘gaps’ the appropriate signifiers for placement in a LD neurominority community? Or would he have been better placed in a community of children simply born later in the year, not developing maturity at the pace of the neurotypical community? A late bloomer? A kid whose self-confidence was interrupting his comfort with learning? [xviii]

Footnotes

[i] Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020,30

Hall, Susan L & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D   Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties.  Harmony, 2002, 47-49

[ii] Stanovich, Keith  What Intelligence Tests Miss; the psychology of rational thought Yale University Press, 2009, 20

Mukherjee, Siddhartha   The Gene: an intimate history   Scribner, 2016, 346

Bosco-Ruggiero, Stephanie, MA, Gloria Russo Wassell, MS, LMHC, and Victor Groza, PhD   adopting older children: a practical guide to adopting and parenting children over age four   New Horizon Press, 2014, 180

[iii] Pressman, Dr. Aliza   The 5 Principles of Parenting: your essential guide to raising good humans S&S/ Simon Element, 2024, 64

[iv] Silberman, Steve  Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity  Avery, 2016, 437

[v] Walker, Nick, PhD. NEURODIVERSITY: SOME BASIC TERMS & DEFINITIONS https://neuroqueer.com/neurodiversity-terms-and-definitions/,

[vi] Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 192-193

[vii] Walker, Nick, PhD. NEURODIVERSITY: SOME BASIC TERMS & DEFINITIONS https://neuroqueer.com/neurodiversity-terms-and-definitions/, 2014

Nerenberg, Jenara Divergent mind: thriving in a world that wasn’t designed for you   HarperOne, 2021, 5,15

Armstrong, Thomas, PhD    The Power of Diversity: unleashing the advantages of your neurodivergent brain, 2^nd ed.   balance, 2025, 8-15

[viii] [viii] Schumacher, Johannes, Per Hoffmann, Christine Schmäl, Gerd Schulte‐Körne, Markus M Nöthen  Genetics of dyslexia: the evolving landscape  J Med Genet . 2007 Feb 16;44(5):289–297. doi: 10.1136/jmg.2006.046516 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2597981/#:~:text=A%20child%20with%20an%20affected,family%20members%20are%20also%20affected.&text=There%20is%20an%20estimated%203,when%20strict%20criteria%20are%20applied. PMCID: PMC2597981  PMID: 17307837

Hall, Susan L., & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D.   Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties    Harmony, 2002,90, 92-93

https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/specific-learning-disorder/what-is-specific-learning-disorder

Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 28-33

Adlof, Suzanne M; Hogan, Tiffany P.  Understanding Dyslexia in the Context of Developmental Language Disorders Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools (Online); Washington Vol. 49, Iss. 4,  (Oct 2018): 762-773. DOI:10.1044/2018_LSHSS-DYSLC-18-0049

Fischer, Naomi.  Changing Our Minds; how children can take control of their own learning   Robinson, 2021, 134-135

[ix]Silberman, Steve  Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity  Avery, 2016, 130

Fisher, Naomi   A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education   Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 30

[x] Mukherjee, Siddhartha   The Gene: an intimate history   Scribner, 2016, 350

[xi] https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/specific-learning-disorder/what-is-specific-learning-disorder

Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 112-116, 27

Mukherjee, Siddhartha   The Gene: an intimate history   Scribner, 2016, 350

Fisher, Naomi   A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education   Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 21

[xii] Burnett, Dean   The Idiot Brain: a neuroscientist explains what your head is really up to   HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd., 2016, 118, 131

[xiii] Burnett, Dean The Idiot Brain: a neuroscientist explains what your head is really up to HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd., 2016, 115, 116, 118

[xiv] Hall, Susan L., & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D.   Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties    Harmony, 2002, 89

Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 102

Cherry, Kendra “Theories of Intelligence in Psychology” November 3, 2022 https://www.verywellmind.com/theories-of-intelligence-2795035

Hall, Susan L., & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D.   Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties    Harmony, 2002, 89

[xv] Eide, Brock, M.D., and Fernette Eide, M.D.  The Mislabeled Child: how understanding your child’s unique learning style can open the door to success   Balance, 2006,22,23

https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/specific-learning-disorder/what-is-specific-learning-disorder

Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 112-116

[xvi] Omary, Adam “The Myth of the Autism Epidemic”https://humanprogress.org/the-myth-of-the-autism-epidemic/ April 1, 2026

Tozer, James Autism has become ‘glamorised’ and diagnosis ‘desirable’, expert warns Daily Mail https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/autism-has-become-glamorised-and-diagnosis-desirable-expert-warns/ar-AA1XM6pr

[xvii] Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020,30

Hall, Susan L & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D   Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties.  Harmony, 2002, 47-49

Bosco-Ruggiero, Stephanie, MA, Gloria Russo Wassell, MS, LMHC, and Victor Groza, PhD   adopting older children: a practical guide to adopting and parenting children over age four   New Horizon Press, 2014, 180, 181

[xviii] Fisher, Naomi   A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education   Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 21

Post #15 Learning Disabilities  What? Types

Abraham Verghese, through the voice of one of his doctor characters, offers us a healthy caution before we review the types, each with their individual labels.

Our brains have extraordinary capabilities. In our simplistic understanding, we put each function in its box – Broca’s area for speech, and Wernicke’s area for interpreting what we hear. But the boxes are artificial. Simplistic. The senses intertwine and spill over from one area to another.[i]

Once again I begin with (admittedly a rearrangement) of Grok’s tidy overview providing the list of types of learning disabilities with the DSM-5 as reference.  And heads up: a person can have more than one of the following issues.

Dyscalculia: difficulty understanding numbers, memorizing math facts, grasping time/money concepts.[ii] Other terms used are ‘math learning disorder’, ‘math learning disability’ and ‘math disorder’.

Dysgraphia: poor handwriting, trouble organizing thoughts on paper, spelling issues.[iii]

Dyslexia: difficulty decoding words, poor spelling, slow reading but not slow thinking, trouble with phonological awareness [by which is meant] the functional part of the brain where the sounds of language are put together to form words and where words are broken down back into these elemental sounds… of language… The Shaywitz family refer to this as a ‘glitch’.

The DSM-5 now uses the label ‘Specific Learning Disorder’ rather than Dyslexia to allow for learning variables and the variety of impacts of alternate wiring in the brain.[iv]

Auditory Processing Disorder: trouble distinguishing similar sounds, following verbal instructions.

Visual Processing Disorder: difficulty with reading maps, recognizing shapes, spatial organization.

Nonverbal Learning Disability: strong verbal skills but poor motor, visual-spatial, and social abilities.

Dyspraxia: difficulty with handwriting, tying shoes, sports, sequencing movements.

Executive Functioning Deficits: challenges with planning, organization, time management, working memory and self-regulation.

This seems a comprehensive list and yet I have come across other labels as well. Whether this makes the list complete or not, I am not sure anymore, but here are the others I have found.

Specific Reading Comprehension Disabilities(S-RCD): phonological and word recognition skills which are the opposite pattern to dyslexia. [v]

Mixed Reading Disabilities: problems with both word recognition and language comprehension because of weaknesses in vocabulary or other language areas that also affect their reading comprehension. [vi]

Language-based Learning Disabilities/Developmental Language Disorder (DLD): ‘unexpected’ and more severe difficulty acquiring and using spoken and/or written language despite normal intelligence and hearing.[vii]

Sally and Jonathan Shaywitz want their readers to know Dyslexia is pain. It represents a major assault on self-esteem.[viii] I think it is safe to say that anyone living with any of the above difficulties would nod in agreement.

I appreciate how Phil Hanley illustrates this pain.

When I was a kid, I was desperate for people to see me as anything but a special ed student. I tried to conceal my dyslexia from the world the way one hides a hickey from their parents at the breakfast table. I attempted to use my appearance to distract from my learning difference.  So, when I developed a love for Bob Marley at age eleven, I decided to grow dreadlocks.  They would be the perfect smokescreen. When a white person has dreads, no one wonders what else is wrong with them.

As an adult Phil Hanley met someone who was modeling but was also trained as a lawyer. Hanley couldn’t imagine anyone modeling if he or she could read. He’d chosen modeling only because he believed that any career involving reading was out for him. Hanley was writing of the years he was a model but ashamed to let his hometown friends know what he was doing to make money.  Why did I still hide my career?  Why had shame followed me cross the Atlantic? My shame stemmed from a lifetime of embarrassing moments caused by dyslexia. I was embarrassed that I was the only one who got a zero on spelling test. Embarrassed that I was constantly being taken out of class and forced to go to the Learning Resource Center. Embarrassed that I needed more time to finish tests. Embarrassed that even with all these allowances, I still ended up in special ed.

Embarrassment is fleeting; it surfaces, then fades. Shame is enduring; it stays with you like a criminal record or the theme of the television show Muppet Babies.

He saw himself as the world’s slowest learner. I still struggle with concepts taught in first grade, a major assault on his self-esteem.[ix]

Yet Hanley is now a renowned comedian and writer, turning his struggles into a successful, creative career. That is the surprising ‘unexpected’ part of Dyslexia for while the reading impairment is evident, there is so often this other side of the coin for people living with dyslexia, creativity. A quick Google provides a list of successful dyslexia creatives.

We believe that the resolution of this paradox [between impairment and creativity] lies in the problematic but undoubtedly real distinction between declarative and procedural knowledge, between explicit and implicit knowledge, and between explicit and implicit learning… Reasoning ability does not depend fundamentally on fluency. …analytic, creative and practical [learning] … [depend] directly on skill or fluency…[x]

Myths that have built up around children and learning.

Yasik does remember mixing up his ‘d’s and ‘b’s early on. For those of us who knew little about learning disabilities the ‘d/b/p’ mix-up was a simple enough explanation to satisfy us. And for that mix-up all we needed to do was find this slide-like device that isolated letters on the page for our child to be able to move ahead in reading.

Enter the next ‘however’. Apparently… letter reversal is quite common in the early stages of reading – for any child. Is that all it was for Yasik?  I actually have problems mixing the ‘d/b/p’ as well at times – tired eyes, menopause?

Sally and Jonathan Shaywitz tell us there is no evidence that they actually ‘see’ letters and words backward. But naming the words was difficult – kids write ‘was’ but say ‘saw’ … The problem is a linguistic one, not a visual one….

They also brush off the possibility of mirror writing, writing backward and reversing letters and words. Apparently…this also happens in dyslexic and non-dyslexic children.[xi]

Phil Hanley suggest dyslexia also explains his hopelessness in sports: I was the skinniest kid with the least skills. Dyslexia affects hand-eye coordination and depth perception, two things needed in any athletic endeavor.[xii]  In response, the Shaywitz family say that while clumsiness, left-handedness, difficulties with right-left orientation, and trouble tying shoelaces may be “side symptoms” for some dyslexic people, they are not “core” aspects of dyslexia.  They may be elements of Dyspraxia though.

So many people have a right-left orientation frustration that store clerks are told to help hapless customers when necessary. I certainly have a problem with this in two languages. But alas I can no longer call it my dyslexia.

Not only does Dyslexia share some side symptoms with non-dyslexic people, it is also gender neutral for though it has long been thought that more males have dyslexia, it turns out that maybe the females were simply quieter about their struggle with reading.[xiii]

And in response to the idea that our brains process writing differently based on the different ways languages are written: a child struggled with dismal inability to read in English in his American school. The family moved to Japan when the child was a teen. In Japanese the teen was very successful at reading. The different ways languages are written was the explanation. Nonetheless there remains some mystery to the teen’s success for the Shaywitz family say it is a myth that dyslexia occurs only in a few countries or alphabet-based languages.[xiv]

Footnotes

[i] Verghese, Abraham   The Covenant of Water, large print   Gale, Thorndike Press, 2023, 720

[ii] https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/specific-learning-disorder/what-is-specific-learning-disorder

Kivirähk-Koor, Triin, Kiive, Evelyn   “Differences in Cognitive and Mathematical Skills of Students with a Mathematical Learning Disability and Those with Low Achievement in Mathematics: A Systematic Literature Review” Education Sciences; Basel Vol. 15, Iss. 3,  (2025): 361. DOI:10.3390/educsci15030361

[iii] https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/specific-learning-disorder/what-is-specific-learning-disorder

[iv]Rappaport, Lisa, PhD & Jody Lyons, Med   Parenting Dyslexia: a comprehensive guide to helping kids combat shame, build confidence, and achieve their true potential   balance, 2025, 6

Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, (I have arranged these references numerically and suggest that all are valuable reading) 4, 27, 33-34, 39, 40, 41, 50, 56, 65, 93-94, 96-98, 106, 107, 112-116, 130-138, 158, 159

Hall, Susan L., & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D.   Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties    Harmony, 2002, 92- 105

Adlof, Suzanne M; Hogan, Tiffany P.  Understanding Dyslexia in the Context of Developmental Language Disorders Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools (Online); Washington Vol. 49, Iss. 4,  (Oct 2018): 762-773. DOI:10.1044/2018_LSHSS-DYSLC-18-0049

Fisher, Naomi   A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education   Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 21, 30

[v] https://readinguniverse.org/article/explore-teaching-topics/features-of-structured-literacy-instruction/different-learning-disabilities-in reading#:~:text=Problems%20with%20phonological%20skills%2C%20such, impact%20of%20poor%20word%20recognition.

[vi] https://readinguniverse.org/article/explore-teaching-topics/features-of-structured-literacy-instruction/different-learning-disabilities-in reading#:~:text=Problems%20with%20phonological%20skills%2C%20such,impact%20of%20poor%20word%20recognition.

[vii] Adlof, Suzanne M; Hogan, Tiffany P.  Understanding Dyslexia in the Context of Developmental Language Disorders Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools (Online); Washington Vol. 49, Iss. 4,  (Oct 2018): 762-773. DOI:10.1044/2018_LSHSS-DYSLC-18-0049

[viii] Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, (I have arranged these references numerically and suggest that all are valuable reading) 4, 27, 33-34, 39, 40, 41, 50, 56, 65, 93-94, 96-98, 106, 107, 112-116, 130-138, 158, 159

Hall, Susan L., & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D.   Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties    Harmony, 2002, 92-93

[ix] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith   Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 62, 64, 75, 98, 99, 147

[x]Nicolson, Roderick and Angela J. Fawcett   Dyslexia, Learning and the Brain    MIT Press, 2010, 4

https://readinguniverse.org/article/explore-teaching-topics/features-of-structured-literacy-instruction/different-learning-disabilities-in-reading#:~:text=Problems%20with%20phonological%20skills%2C%20such,impact%20of%20poor%20word%20recognition.

Saltz, Gail   The Power of Different: the link between disorder and genius   Flatiron Books, 2017, 24, 25, 28-29, 30, 92-93

Hall, Susan L., & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D.   Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties    Harmony, 2002, 87-88, 91

Adlof, Suzanne M; Hogan, Tiffany P.  Understanding Dyslexia in the Context of Developmental Language Disorders Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools (Online); Washington Vol. 49, Iss. 4,  (Oct 2018): 762-773. DOI:10.1044/2018_LSHSS-DYSLC-18-004

Agbonlahor, Winnie.  “44 years to find out that I had dyslexia’: More than 100,000 people in Notts suffer from dyslexia”. Nottingham Evening Post; Nottingham (UK) 14 Feb 2013: 23.

Schumacher, Johannes, Per Hoffmann, Christine Schmäl, Gerd Schulte‐Körne, Markus M Nöthen  Genetics of dyslexia: the evolving landscape  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2597981/#:~:text=A%20child%20with%20an%20affected,family%20members%20are%20also%20affected.&text=There%20is%20an%20estimated%203,when%20strict%20criteria%20are%20applied. PMCID: PMC2597981  PMID: 17307837

https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/specific-learning-disorder/what-is-specific-learning-disorder

Schwartz, M.D. and Sharon Begley    The Mind & the Brain: neuroplasticity and the power of mental force    Harper Collins Publishers 2002, 217, 226, 229, 236

Gobbo, Ken.  “Dyslexia and Creativity: The Education and Work of Robert Rauschenberg”    Landmark College Vol. 30 No. 3/4 (2010): Disability and/in Time || General Issue /

Hall, Susan L., & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D.   Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties    Harmony, 2002, 92-94

Garson, Justin, Ph.D.  “Seeing Dyslexia as a Unique Cognitive Strength, Rather Than a Disorder

It’s time to nurture the abilities of dyslexic individuals”.   The Biology of Human Nature  July 25, 2022 Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

Theories of Intelligence in Psychology Kendra Cherry Updated on November 03, 2022

ww.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-biology-of-human-nature/202207/seeing-dyslexia-as-a-unique-cognitive-strength-rather-than

Zill, Nicholas.  “The-paradox-of-adoption”  https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-paradox-of-adoption/T

Trauma: The New Explanation for Everything, and a Bad Example https://childmyths.blogspot.com/search?q=Trauma%3A+The+New+Explanation+for+Everything%2C+and+a+Bad+E ample+Trauma: The New Explanation for Everything, and a Bad Example

[xi] Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, (I have arranged these references numerically and suggest that all are valuable reading) 4, 27, 33-34, 39, 40, 41, 50, 56, 65, 93-94, 96-98, 106, 107, 112-116, 130-138, 158, 159

[xii] Hanley, Phil.  Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith   Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 110

[xiii] Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Volume 135, 2022, Article 104593

Dyslexic people make so-called “mirror errors” in reading, for example confusing the letters ‘b’ and ‘d.’ Scientists may have found a cause of dyslexia  Published Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Gray, Deborah D.   Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents   Perspectives Press, 2002, 149, 150, 172, 173

[xiv] Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 117-119

Post#15 Learning Disabilities  What? An overview

Yasik was four and a half when he entered the English-speaking world.  He tried at first to hold on to Russian but, probably at first reluctantly, later in frustration, he gave up and started to work with English. Forest Gump was his go-to mentor.

I have journal entries of some of Yasik’s early language, cute words and incomplete or even wrong phrases. ‘Telephone’ came out first as ‘Sillyphone’ and ‘tuddle’ for ‘puddle’.  Forest Gump was first ‘Forest Gunk’. It was ‘mockbark’ for ‘bookmark’. Did he flirt with copyright infringement with his rendition of the ABC song, singing ‘eno, meno, p and now I say my ABC’?  When Yasik had to give in on some challenge to our authority, it was ‘No look’.

Were these the first signs of a learning disability or the first forays into language learning as the lone Russian in a new world? Or some mix of ‘set and setting’, nature and nurture for this child?

These are the questions this set of posts considers.

In Who?,  I provided an outline of Yasik’s slide from happy confidence to determination never to put himself in a place of learning again.   To make the point of the power of external pressure dictating an expectation to read, Naomi Fisher wants us to recognize, however improbable it may sound to our minds, that when anyone is living in an environment where no one reads, not being able to read is not a problem[i].  Entering a world full of the expectation to read, our son was swamped.

What? looks at what may have overwhelmed Yasik.

I start with the current language for the “spectrum of experiences”[ii] outside a standard understanding of ‘normal’ even though, given the title of Roy Grinker’s book, Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness,[iii] likely few can unquestionably place themselves within the parameters of ‘normal’.

But…, if there is a place for a ‘normal’ standard it may be the ‘Simple View of Reading’ (SVR) which says that good reading comprehension requires two broad types of abilities: good word recognition skills and good oral language comprehension.[iv]  Grok adds this: It’s often formalized as a multiplicative model: Comprehension = Decoding × Comprehension (meaning if either is weak or zero, overall comprehension suffers).

When readers see language symbols on a page, they can read and understand them.

But not everyone can read and understand what they have read. Struggling to recognize the letters, words, phrases, and sentences on a page is a frustrating aspect of the experience of those outside the SVR standard.

Starting from the outer edges of the lexicon built for the struggle to read, I move to the specific designations associated.

I begin with a comment and caution from Sally Shaywitz concerning learning disabilities in general. She states: Learning disabilities is a general term referring to a range of difficulties which have not yet been delineated or scientifically validated.[v]

With this in mind we turn to the terms now used to define the world too often lumped together as learning disabilities.

Neurodiversity: a biological fact, not a perspective, an approach, a belief, a political position, or a paradigm, not a trait that any individual possesses or can possess. But rather, a person whose neurocognitive functioning diverges from dominant societal norms.[vi]

Neurodiversity is the idea that some children and adults have naturally different brains, and these differences should not be thought of as a disorder… [but rather a disability in the sense that these differences are products of] the inaccessible world, rather than something which is located in a person. For example, if a person cannot walk, the degree of their disability is determined by the world around them …  and accommodations are made [or need to be made] in order to reduce their level of disability.[vii]

Yet, moving to the heart of this lexicon: SLD, (Specific Learning Disorder), according to the DSM-5, refers to neurodevelopmental impairment that remains persistent (lifelong) in reading, mathematics, and written expression but is not related to intelligence nor laziness.

When comedian Phil Hanley’s learning disability became apparent in school, he wrote, I tried to pray away my disability[viii] but over the course of his memoir we see that he makes peace with its persistence.

According to Google, The official Canadian definition of a Learning Disability (LD) describes them as neurological disorders affecting information processing (acquisition, organization, retention, understanding, use) in individuals with average or higher intelligence, distinct from intellectual disabilities, impacting areas like language, reading, writing, and math due to underlying processing issues (memory, attention, executive functions) … LDs are specific, not global, impairments. 

Other and more common labels for SLD are ‘learning disorder’, ‘learning disability’ or ‘learning difference’ (LD).  Another term: ‘Low-achievement’ (LA) is defined as at-risk for academic failure, with and without learning disabilities and with or without specific cognitive deficits.[ix]

Areas of communication that may be affected are word reading accuracy, spelling, grammar, or calculation as well as fluency and comprehension in degrees from mild (affecting only some academic areas) to severe (needing support and or accommodation). Intellectual disability, vision or hearing problems, a neurological condition, adverse conditions such as economic or environmental disadvantage, lack of instruction, or difficulties speaking/understanding the language, emotional disturbances or lack of educational or cultural opportunity are outside the LD criterion[x].

Time and again, two words are found in the LD definitions. Given a person’s otherwise normal capabilities, difficulty in certain areas, not global, are “unexpected” and “specific” deficits, not anticipated based on the child’s overall abilities.  A ‘deficit’ being observable impairments in function relative to age peers.[xi]

Where in these definitions do we find what overwhelmed Yasik?  Was what we were seeing unexpected and specific or what should be expected as Yasik navigated a new language, a new culture, and a new set of expectations—all at once?

Footnotes

[i] Fischer, Naomi  A Different Way To Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education   Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 21

[ii] Nerenberg, Jenara Divergent mind: thriving in a world that wasn’t designed for you   HarperOne, 2021, 5

[iii] Grinker, Roy. Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness, W.W. Norton, 2021

Forbes, Samuel, Prema Aneja  “Why there’s no such thing as normal in child development” December 23, 2024 https://theconversation.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-normal-in-child-development-244681

Fisher, Naomi   A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education   Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 30

[iv] https://readinguniverse.org/article/explore-teaching-topics/features-of-structured-literacy-instruction/different-learning-disabilities-in-reading#:~:text=Problems%20with%20phonological%20skills%2C%20such,impact%20of%20poor%20word%20recognition

[v] Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 94

Eide, Brock, M.D., and Fernette Eide, M.D.  The Mislabeled Child: how understanding your child’s unique learning style can open the door to success   Balance, 2006, 149-152

Hall, Susan L., & Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D.   Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties    Harmony, 2002, 83, 84

Nicolson, Roderick and Angela J. Fawcett   Dyslexia, Learning and the Brain    MIT Press, 2010, 221-222

[vi] Walker, Nick, PhD NEURODIVERSITY: SOME BASIC TERMS & DEFINITIONS https://neuroqueer.com/neurodiversity-terms-and-definitions/, 2014

[vii] Fischer, Naomi.  Changing Our Minds; how children can take control of their own learning   Robinson, 2021, 134-135

[viii] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound:  my life as a dyslexic wordsmith   Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 49, 131, 165

[ix] Kivirähk-Koor, Triin, Kiive, Evelyn   “Differences in Cognitive and Mathematical Skills of Students with a Mathematical Learning Disability and Those with Low Achievement in Mathematics: A Systematic Literature Review” Education Sciences; Basel Vol. 15, Iss. 3,  (2025): 361. DOI:10.3390/educsci15030361

[x]https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/specific-learning-disorder/what-is-specific-learning-disorder

[xi] Dennis, Maureen; Spiegler, Brenda J; Simic, Nevena; Sinopoli, Katia J; Wilkinson, Amy; et al. “Functional Plasticity in Childhood Brain Disorders: When, What, How, and Whom to Assess”   Neuropsychology Review; New York Vol. 24, Iss. 4,  (Dec 2014): 389-408. DOI:10.1007/s11065-014-9261-x

“What are some signs of learning disabilities” https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/learning/conditioninfo/signs

Official Definition of Learning Disabilities Adopted by the Learning Disabilities Association of Canada January 30, 2002 Re-endorsed on March 2, 2015

 

Post#15 Learning Disabilities   Who? Child and Parents

“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?”[i]

Yasik came into Dave and my life at four and a half from an orphanage in Russia. Within an hour of meeting us, he had discarded fear, showing his parents-to-be full on Yasik, happily off to shop with total strangers and charming shopkeepers along the way. Twenty-four hours later, while he was submitting to being stripped of a pink T-shirt, tights and scuffed, too small girl’s shoes in the office of the orphanage, we were being told he liked to play with cars, to draw, learn poems by heart, watch cartoons and he liked to be read to. No mention of a learning disability was on the list.

In fact, the orphanage resume seemed to grow as we watched unrestrained curiosity about how things work.  It seemed boundless – from switching on lights to every gadget he came across- the TV, a flashlight, a water pistol, and earphones on the airplane with the added wonder of the music filling his little head.

Being confronted with a new country, a new home and surrounded by new people who were pulling him into their lives, this happy curiosity, accompanied by unrestrained chatter in a kind of Russlish, showed no signs of restraint.

Nor was there any hesitancy displaying natural charm. When Dave delivered a fatherly warning, Yasik came back with, “Be Happy Poppa”. He would remind me to “Kiss Poppa” as we set out on a bike ride.

Do I sound like a proud momma. Wouldn’t you?  He was picture-book beautiful, with soft blond hair, a heart-captivating smile and exuberance about every little daily thing.

A friend brought her kid over to play from time to time. This kid, Jake, was a bit older and bigger. When they first spent time together, Yasik did his best to get Jake to notice him but Jake  was not impressed with this little kid with a slightly left of center eyeball and little intelligible English. Barely 2 months later, Yasik was no longerinterested in trying to impress. He was confident that he knew how things worked, he was good at ball and bike (though I think he was still supported by training wheels and fearful of having them taken off). He was oblivious – he was just having fun, singing Russian songs while biking, full of happy confidence. When he fell or couldn’t quite handle something he didn’t quit; he tried again until he got it. Or told us that telephone pole was in the way and needed to be moved. He set Jake back on his heels a bit and soon they were partners in fun.

All of this charm, curiosity and confidence was infused with unrestrained imagination. One free weekend we took the ferry over to Lake Cowichan and while we are driving Dave noticed Yasik reaching out the window and grabbing handfuls of air and putting them in his mouth.  At first shy to say what he was doing, he told Dave, “I can’t eat the sunshine. I am just pretending”.

This is how we, his parents with love glazed eyes, saw our son.  We must have communicated this quite successfully to the social worker. Her post-adoption reports said, Yasik is a bright and good thinker. … His parents describe him as “compassionate, mischievous, direct”. He is curious about the world around him and is capable of being very focused and is very observant…[although] he is bossy and tries to get everything right… He likes to figure out how to do everything himself. He can at times dissolve in frustration when he cannot handle something difficult… At the beginning of a new activity, he stands to the side and observes. Once he decides to commit himself, he does it fully.  It seemed to us that the report recognized Yasik at his core.

But somewhere along the way between grade 1 and grade 2 that core was being tampered with, shaving away at this core. Or forcing it down deep in his being to somewhere he became steadily more and more reluctant to bring back out into the sunshine.

This change began with Dave and I, and then settled into a constant with each year Yasik was in school.

I’ve read that behind the success of every disabled child is a passionately committed, intensely engaged, and totally empowered parent.[ii]  As I have brought forward in earlier posts, I can’t confidently say we were up to any of those adverbs fronting such fierce adjectives.

We slipped into the parenting roles we understood: providing a routine with regular eating and sleeping hours, school and play: tree forts, soccer, computer games and cartoons. We wasted little time getting on him for letters and numbers and signing him up for piano lessons with short practice sessions at home. We watched videos together on the weekends and read each night, some for school and always as a bedtime routine.

He’d been in kindergarten only a month when we read a book with him called Bump, Bump, Bump; for us, bedtime reading was as much about helping Yasik learn to read as it was about easing him into sleepiness. I don’t remember what this book was about but likely it said very little more than ‘bump, bump, bump’. Our plan was for Yasik to repeat the words after us.  He only wiggled and listened but wouldn’t read. Instead, he asked for ‘confety’ (Russlish for candy?).  We bargained, “OK, if you read with us”. And just like that we were bargaining, some might say bribing in exchange for reading. And what do you expect? It worked, so far so good.

Parents are not always quick to see that their child’s experience is slipping toward problematic for it happens often gradually and mixed in with all the gloriously normal parts of a day.[iii] In fact, we were seriously surprised at Yasik’s difficulties when he went to school for we saw him as very quick.

It has even been suggested that it is probably the gift [parents give] … not being around enough what with work etc. to interfere more.  Besides which, it is hard to gauge what is “normal” and what is less than normal within the confines of home and family life[iv]. Convenient too, considering the demands of our daily life.

We thought we saw improvement in his printing, reading and piano. He even did some practice on his own and he seemed to like getting the music together, showing an interest in hearing and creating his own sounds and putting words into the songs sometimes.

There was a time Yasik and I were reading; at one point while he was reading, he looked up at me and gave me the most brilliantly sweet smile I have ever seen. It made me blink. Something about reading made him happy.

As many reading advice books suggest, children are most likely to be lured into reading when it offers them something they want to know. Yasik’s first ‘real’ reading was with the TV Guide. He was checking times for a movie called After the Silence and there really was one that came out in 1996 about a deaf and illiterate woman. He found the title, sounding it out and showing evident happiness with his success.

We, his parents who engaged with him for all the hours outside the five week-day hours at school, were not seeing any reason to be concerned about his progress in reading for we like most parents had a deep need for our children to be all right. … Sometimes it’s much easier to bury our heads in the sand and deny that there is a problem[v]. I actually wrote at one point that life works better for me if it’s more black and white.

After all, we were doing what decent, loving parents do: provide as best they can for the physical, mental, emotional well-being of their children. The little school down by the community playground said we needed to sign Yasik up for school three weeks after he arrived in Canada as our son. We signed him up and lock stepped with all the neighbourhood parents in walking him to school each morning and picking him up afterward, armed with more homework than most of the kids in his classroom, certainly more than he ever wanted.

The change was gradual but with each passing year we were seeing that curious little charmer become weighted by something he certainly didn’t like or understand. And so the time came when we had to begin to recognize we too didn’t like what was happening nor did we understand it.  We were caught between Yasik’s unhappiness and our school system’s expectations for it was “the only answer”[vi], yet we slid into this struggle because ultimately we agreed with the school that it was ‘for the best’ even though both Dave and I had also experienced some level of difficulty navigating grade one. And now I wonder, best for whom, the school system, expectations we place on ourselves, or expectations of those around us?

But yes this is a question I temper with the ‘essential paradoxes’[vii] of life in our times.

From that first attempt to bargain with us for ‘confety’ to more and more frustrating tug-of-war engagements alternating between bribes and threats, we felt we are working in the dark, looking for a break through. Yasik, in turn alternating between snarky and sweet, needed our support, not our push, but we fervently believed he also needed to read. We tried competitions, made up stories, found games on the computer.

One morning I was sitting with Yasik, pushing him to put in his 15 minutes of pre-school practice. He made some mistake playing Sweetly Sings The Donkey, and ended up pounding the keys, yelling “Stupid, Stupid, Stupid”. I wondered if that was the usual route to great music.

In our defense we weren’t all about expectation and push. We tried most of the ways we heard about to help. We considered enrolling him in a Waldorf school about an hour’s drive each morning and each afternoon. Yasik was on board because it offered learning through play. Dave took an intense Orten Gillingham training course to tutor Yasik. Dave spent 4-5 hours the night before each class prepping the lesson with games, exercises, rule-teaching cartoons to offer a lesson as multisensory as possible. Being the only male and the only non-teacher in the group there were times he felt so defeated that he cried all the way home. The silver lining perhaps was that it left him, not with a teaching certificate, but more sensitive to Yasik’s struggle. And most importantly Dave could tell Yasik with sincerity that the problem wasn’t his, but the tutor’s, if Yasik wasn’t getting it.

Dave and I even resorted to prayer, lying in bed asking God to help us get an effective tutor, or maybe at that time any tutor. Pascal’s wager…

Nonetheless, by the time he was in high school, slowly and steadily, we were letting go: cancelled piano, didn’t sign up for soccer, actually switched to golf for the three of us. It worked for a bit. Paintball was a strong draw for a while too. One semester in the self-paced school he went to for grades 8 and 9, he tried to keep his report card from us, a report card that revealed some serious incompletes. We pulled a coming paintball tournament out of our dwindling arsenal of threats. He got right at working on some of the lesson packages. I noted at the time (optimistically?) ‘so with threats and bribes we limp along to maturity’. Elizabeth Guthrie would not agree, saying, Reward effort, not results. Don’t punish poor marks[viii].  

As a student with learning challenges struggling against parents who believed nothing, and I mean nothing, was more important than a solid education, fighting about doing homework was a nightly ritual by now.

One night stood out. It started out as just another night with a flare up over getting homework done.  Of course, there was more than just the tired, after work, homework conflict at stake.   We were in the midst of another threat of flooding. TV weather reports had us uptight about the North Allouette pouring down the road instead of flowing sensibly under the too narrow bridge at 224 St. and 232^nd Ave.  If Yasik was angry, we were tense too; none of our tempers would have been at Calm on the emotional dial.

My journal entry of the night does not detail the fight we engaged in but does note that Yasik was arguing to go paintballing or skiing and we are countering with a negotiation of homework first.  The fight escalated. Yasik, who deeply, though sometimes selectively believed (you might read ‘stubbornly’ here) in justice, wasn’t giving in.  He left the house.  Did he grab a coat? Did he slam the cheaply made front door? The journal doesn’t say, but it is likely on that cold, wet night threatening a flood, he was jacketless. Going outside into a night that did not warmly embrace his anger probably gave him a slow down as well because, apparently, he went only as far as the front patio.  A probation officer once noted that most runaways opt for warm summer nights.

The first time your kid does that, you stop a moment.

Dave clicked in first, pulling a jacket on and going out after him, thinking Yasik was running off somewhere more in line with a great teen drama of fiction than merely hiding out under the eaves.  I guess when it is your first move into rebellion you don’t always work out a detailed plan.  Yasik let his dad go off on a goose chase, slipping back in the house while Dave was out blindly checking up and down a rainy street boasting one lone streetlight on the corner.

Those of you who have a Bible-infused background may remember the verse in the gospel of Luke (my version) that goes, “Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart” referring to the unusual activities of her firstborn, Jesus. This was the piece of the evening I continued to ponder in my heart for a long time after: when Yasik came back into the house it was not with more fighting or cold slamming of doors. Instead Yasik came into our bedroom; I reached out to him and held him.  While we stood there, me crying and shaken, Yasik said, “I always wanted to do that.”  Whaaat?

Years later, we took Yasik out for dinner to celebrate his 21^st birthday, all the while hoping to coax him back toward school. He went direct on us, letting us know what turning 21 meant to him, “Now I don’t have to learn anything anymore.”

To me it felt like defeat; he was not who the world had told him or us who he should be. Did he remember who he was, the learning he did so effortlessly once upon a time? Or for that matter who he could be? Did we remember who we as parents had once been, the pride we had taken in his curiosity, confidence and charm? Or for that matter who we as parents needed to be?

Footnotes

[i] Google: Charles Bukowski Quotes. Charles Bukowski: A Little Book of Essential Quotes on… Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?

[ii] Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D.   Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 9

[iii] Fradin, Kelly, MD Advanced Parenting: advice for helping kids through diagnoses, differences, and mental health challenges Hachette Book Group, 2023 13, 14, 15

[iv]Guthrie, Elizabeth M.D. and Kathy Matthews     The Trouble with Perfect: how parents can avoid the over-achievement trap and still raise successful children   Harmony, 2002, 192

[v] Fradin, Kelly, MD Advanced Parenting: advice for helping kids through diagnoses, differences, and mental health challenges Hachette Book Group, 2023, 13, 14, 15

[vi] Fisher, Naomi   A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education   Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 36

[vii] Nafisi, Azar.  Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in reading   Random House, 2003, 86

[viii] Guthrie, Elizabeth M.D. and Kathy Matthews     The Trouble with Perfect: how parents can avoid the over-achievement trap and still raise successful children   Harmony, 2002, 180

 

Post #15 Learning Disabilities Introduction

“Mom, you know how I am not perfect.”

It was the end of a school day for all three of us. Absent-mindedly I turned to Yasik merely to check off my ‘to-do’ list the perfunctory question, “How was school today?”

I was not prepared for such a heart wrenching response.  It hurt. Wanting to comfort, I whipped out an emotional band-aid I hoped sound unequivocal.

“No. Yasik you are perfect in every way that counts”, which I ended with a lame, “Everyone has struggles.”   I listed his good points all of which were absolutely true but he countered anything positive I could conjure, focused on telling me of only one actual instance when he answered a question in class and was right. “Mostly,” he said, “I let others do it because I don’t know how.”

At bedtime Dave picked up my attempt at comfort with yet another band-aid.

But of course, Yasik, 12 years old at the time, was, by then, well past the reassurance offered to a child with a boo-boo. By now we three knew on some concrete level that the wound was deep in each of our hearts, but it ran most deep in Yasik’s heart.  He told Dave that evening that he wanted the teacher to let him go out of the classroom for extra help because he knew being adopted from a foreign country, he was different and because reading was hard for him, he was behind the other kids in the classroom.

This wound had been making itself plain, roller coaster fashion, in almost daily assaults since grade 1.  One day the roller coaster chugged upward.  Yasik was confident of his understanding of time and numbers, asking for a minute to play before getting ready for bed. I said, “A minute is 60 seconds.” In true Yasik distain, he came back with “Nobody can count that far.”

Another day the roller coaster plunged. After school in grade two, Dave was helping Yasik prepare for a spelling test.  Yasik managed to get several words firmed up and was beaming with his success. Dave was happy too, yet added a fatherly sermon-in-a-minute, intoning as good pastors do, “You are learning these words so you can read them and write them and go on to more and more spelling. It never stops.” Yasik dropped his head to the kitchen table and wailed.

Up went the roller coaster again as Yasik played so well his soccer team carried him over their heads off the rain-soaked field. His athletic skill had given them the first game of the season. Down went the roller coaster when I got sharp with Yasik one Monday morning as I tried to push him to do 15 minutes of piano practice, eat, dress, and practice spelling before the dash to school. I demanded he go through the words one more time. He struggled to comply, looking so lost, thankfully, it halted me. I called him to me, held him, fighting tears and we went over the words together this time. He laid against me, not holding back at all – and spelled them all correctly.

How does a child get the message that he is not perfect? Or our neighbour girl, a young girl whom we first met as she stood on the deck of their home belting out a song in pure joy? How does she get the message in grade 5 that she is the “class problem”?

I’m not harried these days; I have the time now. I want to come to some understanding of the ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘why’ and definitely the ‘so what’ of Learning Disabilities or ‘LD’.  I will start with the ‘who’ because beyond the basic questions about LD, which can’t be left out of the equation, I have a more specific investment in seeking understanding. I want to understand my son’s experience, making my study very specifically a ‘sample of one’, a sample of one family’s experience of learning disabilities in the context of adoption.

It is a study of his experience of abandonment, hospitalization and orphanage or institutional care.  How are these experiences entwined with LDs?  Context matters.

And since adoption into our family? Pretty much from the fall Yasik entered grade one, the label, LD, has been part of our family’s identity though for most of our active, growing family and working years, it dragged along with us like some long-suffering, ghostly apparition needing to get our attention before it could go poof. Now I turn to this apparition, giving it the attention it has been clamoring for, allowing it to show me some perspectives on all the ingredients in a recipe for a learning disability: abandonment, institutional care, schooling, and brain wiring.

I am, hopefully, seeking these perspectives without indulging in providing advice. Time and again in the reading I have done to prepare this set of posts, I have come across these warning labels: “While no consensus has been reached…”, “Research does not support…”, “The definition of “learning disability” (LD) varies according to the source…”, “Sometimes there’s a temptation to oversell conclusions, …”[i]

Kinda’ puts you in mind of the six blind men of Indostan, doesn’t it?

A further reason to avoid offering remedial advice comes from articles that question the studies like one popular for a time that suggested there was a specific dyslexia gene, or dyslexia is simply a twisting of letters like ‘d’ and ‘b’, or programs which offer a way out of a learning disability, often accompanied by a hefty fee, ironically not seeing the oxymoron in ‘the science is settled’. Too often, these programs keep a back door open for themselves by suggesting if the program doesn’t work, the child is simply not trying hard enough or the parents have gotten in the way.[ii]

And let me add: There is no virtue signaling here. Yesterday, the young girl two doors up told me of her struggles with reading. I was all ears as this is just what my study is about. I asked her how she coped. She came back with, “Do you want the right answer or the truthful answer?”  I was amazed that someone so young had thought through the problem to this extent.  She said, “Honestly I just shove it to the back of my head… until it pops.”

When I tried to encourage her by telling her that she was uniquely artistic and creative, she replied in a fair degree of frustration, “I don’t want to be just creative. I would rather be able to do everything equally good than just be good at somethings and not so good at other things. I just want to be able to do everything”.  And I, who have read a fair bit and thought through the ideas presented, could find nothing to say that would have moved her to hope.

In seeking to understand our personal experiences with learning disabilities I am attempting to interpret research; I am reaching into knowledge I have little preparation for. I found a warning in this sentence, The moment you start to arrange the world in words, you alter its nature[iii].  Warning taken.

Note: I am using Grok, Google and Chatgpt without citing their references though each site provides these references.

Footnotes

[i] Hall, Susan L., & Lousia C. Moats, Ed.D.    Parenting a Struggling Reader: a guide to diagnosing and finding help for your child’s reading difficulties   Harmony, 2002, 84

Forbes, Samuel, Prema Aneja.  “Why there’s no such thing as normal in child development.”  December, 23, 2024  https://theconversation.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-normal-in-child-development-244681

Burnett, Dean   The Idiot Brain: a neuroscientist explains what your head is really up to   HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd. 2016, 114

[ii] Lee, Jenny.  ‘Dyslexia challenge is a race against time: UBC scientist Max Cynader is making strides toward solving the dyslexia puzzle” [Final Edition] The Vancouver Sun; Vancouver, B.C. [Vancouver, B.C]. 03 Oct 2002: A19.  I could no longer access the article.

Mathias, Vicki.   “Study confirms gene is linked to dyslexia: Youngsters in the city have helped researchers confirm that there is a gene associated with dyslexia or other reading problems.”  Evening Post    Bristol (UK). 02 Oct 2008: 68.  

Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonthan Shaywitz, M.D. Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed.  Alfred A. Knopf, 2020, 117, 118, 119

[iii] Shields, David. reality hunger: a manifesto   Alfred A. Knopf, 2010, 65