April 2026 – Adoption As Family

Post #15 Learning Disabilities So What Now is Needed?

A great city was besieged, and its inhabitants were called together to consider the best means of protecting it from the enemy. A Bricklayer earnestly recommended bricks as affording the best material for an effective resistance. A Carpenter, with equal enthusiasm, proposed timber as a preferable method of defense. Upon which a Currier stood up and said, “Sirs, I differ from you altogether: there is no material for resistance equal to a covering of hides; and nothing so good as leather.”^[i]

Aesop’s fable, “The Three Tradesmen” speaks to all the voices, all the ideas being presented in the pursuit of change and support for and within the neurodiverse universe.

And for the most part, with good reason. If we are committed to continuing to meet the diverse needs of the neurodiverse, gaps in policy, perspectives, personnel, procedures and provisions must all be considered.

Focus on changing perception

Given that change is in the air and given that more work is needed to secure these changes, right down to that deep core within us, we need to see the positives in differences. Difference does not always equate to deficit. When parents see how their child is handling the expectations of school, their very core needs to know it is just different, not bad.^[ii]

As Brock and Fernette Eide point out in, The Dyslexic Advantage, if there are so many in the world with learning differences, that’s because it probably helps us somehow … to enhance group survival. … To that end, it’s important for different people to use different cognitive strategies… More generally, it’s time to start thinking about many of the conditions that we label “mental disorders” as being purposeful, not pathological.^[iii]

Speaking for LDers themselves, Winnie Agbonlahor in the UK, says, “It’s time to change the way we view dyslexia, we need to be proud of who we are”. ^[iv]

I give Naomi Fischer the last word: … If we can see our children exactly how they are right now, then the task becomes how to work out how to change the environment so that they can best learn and thrive as the wonderful person they are.^[v]

Focus on offering support to all with learning differences whether they are dyslexic or learning different in other ways

In the argument regarding the need for a specific diagnosis, on the one side a diagnosis is evidently effective in opening doors and guiding the direction to support. On the other side the contention can equally be appreciated: what is plain for all to see: a child is struggling to read and write. Therefore, we should be trying to help all children with literacy difficulties, not just those who have been diagnosed with dyslexia.^[vi]

Focus on getting parents involved

The Shaywitz family offer detailed advice to parents of children with dyslexia that on some levels speaks as well to parents of children with a variety of learning differences, to encourage them to get involved. Parents might want to get their book.^[vii]

For that matter, there are enough professional advisors, books and other media available to leave no parent in the dark. Perhaps the trick will always be to navigate advice well enough to stay within the guidelines of ‘evidence-based’ advice.

Focus on assessment/evaluation

Hopefully it goes without saying that assessments should be done by a certified evaluator.

Assessments should always be concerned with evidence-based observations of academic achievement. Sometimes with cognitive testing, sometimes without. Learning issues viewed in the context of age and/or education, cognitive ability, knowledge of the individual’s history, clinical observations, behavioral observations, and judgment are essential to a diagnosis.^[viii]

Assessments must also take into account whether a student is using a dialect, is bilingual or is a second language learner.^[ix]

Individual Education Plans (IEPs) should be expected as a follow-up to the assessment.

And should a child become so lost as to be heading into conflict with the justice system it is recommended that the child’s advocates push for an assessment to guide the decisions made in sentencing. UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, [recommends] that children with developmental disabilities ‘should not be in the child justice system at all’.^[x]

Focus on details of support

These details would start out with making sure to be familiar with the child’s back story. Then ensure that the child is comfortable in the classroom in the face of expectations.

Yasik had to wear a proper and somewhat stiff uniform to his school for the learning disabled, the only label available at the time for a school offering targeted education for the learning different. He knew that he was in a school for children who were ‘different’, not necessarily an image he wanted to flaunt before his buddies. But he did not bring these complaints of stiff clothing or being in a ‘special’ school home to us. Instead, what he relayed came across as a burden lifted. He was deeply appreciative of being made to feel that the teacher was aware of how he was coping. Yasik now knew he was able to fully participate in this class and did not need to worry about being taken outside or treated separately.^[xi] He could relax and know that he too was learning. As Dr. Bruce Perry says, when the school has done its homework to accommodate students, and eased them into a learning environment they know they can cope with, their cortex is open for business.^[xii]

Bear in mind making an inviting environment for each student may mean being comfortable with a student who stims, or what we sometimes consider disruptive behaviour. It also means continually staying in touch with the plethora of ‘best practices’ information, not only in how to teach to learning differences but also how to help the students adapt their differences to expectations. It absolutely also means listening to the child’s parents’ input.^[xiii]

Or parents could just do what this family did. Of course, the following story is another obviously goofy story that I couldn’t resist. But it does reinforce the need for ‘evidence -based ‘support as it is not fiction and backs up the message that globally we definitely have a way to go.

Tamara Sukhovei, waitress, 29 years old who has tried to commit suicide three times because “Life’s a Bitch!” shared the support she got from loved ones who were worried about her welfare. She didn’t want to go to school and was afraid of everything.

Tamara says, One day, I came home from school, went to bed, and the next morning, I couldn’t get up. They took me to the doctor – no diagnosis. So then we went off to find a wise woman-a magic healer. …the wise woman laid out the cards and told my mother, “Go home and cut open the pillow your daughter sleeps on. You’ll find a piece of a tie and chicken bones inside. Hand the tie from a cross by the side of the road and feed the bones to a black dog. Your daughter will get up and walk. Someone put a curse on her.”^[xiv]

Focus on adoption specifics

Perhaps because when we adopted, such information was considered unnecessary as the child was so obviously going to be raised in a different educational system, we were told nothing about Yasik’s education other than that they considered him bright and musical. Based on what? Books on adoption now encourage adopters to ask as many questions as possible about their children’s education pre-adoption. It will be helpful not only to them, but also for the school their children will be attending.

If the child is coming to them from institutional care, individual interaction between the children and the caregivers will likely have been limited or ‘socially depriving’. The child is simply part of a group of children shepherded through the day as in many orphanage situations. Where resources and care are even more lacking, the term used is ‘globally depriving’ for educational programs are not provided. A child adopted out of these circumstances is likely to be learning delayed and can be expected to have learning difficulties.

We were not given any indication during the adoption process that Yasik might struggle with learning. And in the honeymoon period post-adoption we were love-blind, a very good thing. We were unaware that Yasik, in the educational system of the time, would come up against barriers.

In time awareness crept in. And with it fear. The first reaction to recognizing that your child has learning difficulties is most often fear for the child and fear that as parents you are not equipped to support your child. These fears must be recognized and worked through. Adopters have to take a firm grip on the reins, understanding that they, not the school system are the primary guides of their child’s education and well-being. It would have relieved much of the burden though had we understood, that Yasik, like most children, will have resources within that can be nurtured to resilience.^[xv]

To effectively deal with the fear, adoptive parents, begin by recognizing when the child’s needs are beyond the capabilities or resources of the parents or the school. This is the time to seek assessments and more focused support.^[xvi]

Perhaps also reconsider choosing an entry grade level on chronological age (as we did for Yasik).^[xvii]

In time Yasik was ready to learn something again, to go to school. He’d learned adaptation, accommodation, alternatives, enough to have gained at least willingness to try warily to accept some more education. He completed training for a trade and continues to upgrade and work. The older sister two doors up, who told me she was the class problem, is entering university this fall.

The Camel

When Man first saw the Camel, he was so frightened at his vast size that he ran away. After a time, perceiving the meekness and gentleness of the beast’ temper, he summoned courage enough to approach him. Soon afterwards, … he assumed such boldness as to put a bridle in his mouth.^[xviii]

Footnotes

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

[ii] 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

[iii] 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

Cherry, Kendra “Theories of Intelligence in Psychology” ww.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-biology-of-human-nature/202207/seeing-dyslexia-as-a-unique-cognitive-strength-rather-than Updated on November 03, 2022

Taylor, Helen “Developmental Dyslexia: Developmental Disorder or Specialization in Explorative Cognitive Search” Study Argues Developmental Dyslexia Essential to Human Adaptive Success University of Cambridge June 24, 2022 https://neurosciencenews.com/developmental-dyslexia-exploration-20902/

Grandin, Temple Visual Thinking: the hidden gifts of people who think in pictures, patterns, and abstractions Riverhead Books, 2022, 60, 159-160, 184

[iv] 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.

[v] Fisher, Naomi A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 33, 34

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

“Making Accommodations” Maclean’s February 22, 2016, 58-60

[vi] Kale, Sirin “The Battle over Dyslexia” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/sep/17/battle-over-dyslexia-warwickshire-staffordshire, 2020

[vii] Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D. Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 140, 150, 170, 173, 174

[viii]Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D. Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020,152, 159, 160, 184-187, 199-202

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

[ix] https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/learning/conditioninfo/signs

[x] Newsdesk “Learning disabilities increase risk of children breaking the law, research shows” 17/01/2020

[xi] Perry, Bruce D., MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook: what traumatized children can teach us about loss, love, and healing Basic Books, 2017, 166-169

[xii] Perry, Bruce D., MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook: what traumatized children can teach us about loss, love, and healing Basic Books, 2017, 166-169

Perry, Bruce, M.D., Ph.D and Oprah Winfrey What happened to you: conversations on trauma, resilience, and healing Flatiron Books: An Oprah Book, 2021, 221-222

[xiii] Redford, James The Big Picture: rethinking dyslexia: the myths, the stigmas, the truths revealed docuramafilms, Cinedigma Canadian Entertainment Corp, Inc., 2013

Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D. Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 130, 131

Saltz, Gail The Power of Different: the link between disorder and genius Flatiron Books, 2017, 210

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

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

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, 182, 183, 184, 185

Firth, Nola, Daryl Greaves, and Erica Frydenberg Coping Styles and Strategies: A Comparison of Adolescent Students With and Without Learning Disabilities Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia Journal of Learning Disabilities 43(1)

[xiv] Alexievich, Svetlana Secondhand Time: the last of the soviets, an oral history Random House, 2016, 403, 409

[xv] Tantrum, Barbara Cummins The Adoptive Parents’ Handbook: a guide to healing trauma and thriving with your foster or adopted child North Atlantic Books, 2020, 215, 216

Gray, Deborah D. Attaching in Adoption: practical tools for today’s parents Perspectives Press, 2002, 342-347

Crook, Marion. Thicker Than Blood: adoptive parenting in the modern world Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016, 9

[xvi] 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, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 190

[xvii] Lancaster, Kathy Keys to Parenting an Adopted Child, 2^nd ed. Barrons Educational Series, 2009, 65-71

[xviii] Aesop’ Fables Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1968, 132-133

Post #15 Learning Disabilities So What Now Has Changed?

Principles 4 and 5 of ‘The Five Basic Principles of Neurodiversity’ say that success on one’s life journey depends on adapting one’s brain to the needs of the surrounding environment… modifying your surrounding environment to fit the needs of your unique brain.^[i]

This post is about the ‘Now’ worried over in the journal entry introduced in ‘So What Now is Still the Same’. If success depends on adapting and modifying, in what ways is that possible now? If the 21^st century is together taken as the present, what has changed since the early days in the 19^th and 20^th centuries for learning disabilities? What actual ‘adapting’ and ‘modifying’ has happened in attitudes, rights and educational practice to offer success to LDers?

Positive Changes

In an earlier post I mentioned the treatment of a young girl whose IEP was forgotten during a math test. Later the teacher apologized for his failure to respect her need of extra time. That is refreshing change.

NASA has a hiring program for autistic people, recognizing the value of their ability to focus on analyzing large and complex datasets. They also may see the data differently, leading to new measuring techniques. That is inspiring change.

Learning Disabilities are recognized and viewed more positively

The mother of an autistic artist has progressed to recognizing a need to change her perspective on her son’s abilities: One of the most important things I learned from his teachers was to work with his strengths rather than trying to correct his deficits. [We] were always focused on what Mark couldn’t do – ‘If only he could talk’. Then he’d learn to talk and we’d move on to ‘If only he could read!”^[ii]

This change in focus has come not only for parents and teachers but for people with learning differences themselves as Phil Hanley noted, I needed time for my belief in myself to catch up to my ability.^[iii]

However limited to individual interactions, an apology, or a change in perception, there is definite progress in how we view the neurodivergent. Accommodations are expected. Teachers and parents today are much more aware of neurodiversity, trauma-informed teaching and strengths-based approaches to learning differences. We are far more supportive.

Learning Disabilities are actively advocated for and legal support is provided

Teachers, parents, and disability advocates are actively pushing governments to improve services. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), 2006, stated that students with disabilities have a right to inclusive education. This human rights proclamation opened the door to challenges against excluding students from regular education.

In a case in 2012, the parents of Jeffrey Moore challenged the expectation that they must bear the costs for private education for him, something that never entered our heads when we sought support for Yasik. The Supreme Court of Canada backed them, ruling that access to meaningful education for students with disabilities is not a “special service” but a necessary accommodation. Schools throughout Canada got busy re-evaluating their policies.^[iv] In time, by word of mouth, we too heard we could apply for tax credits for the expenses involved in Yasik’s education.^[v]

Learning Differences have the right to inclusion, educational support and funding

This is 2026. In the 1950s the value of inclusion, educational support and funding was already hoped for. If one factor is significantly useful, it is a sympathetic and tolerant reception by the school, … Those of our children who have improved have been extended extraordinary consideration by their teachers.^[vi] It took many decades to work out how to show extraordinary consideration as a cultural and societal perspective.

About 30 years ago, to gain acceptance into the teaching program at SFU, I needed some experience in an actual classroom. My options were limited. Someone at my part-time job knew someone who might get me at least a 2-week stint in a school. I took the offer imagining I would be given an opportunity to teach a history class, my major. Of course, no such option was on the table at that school. I was directed to a class for the learning disabled instead. For two weeks I followed neurodivergent teenagers about a room off a hallway from the main classrooms. I was ‘supervised’ by a young male teacher who told me he was only holding down this position until a ‘real’ teaching position opened. In his mind, this was merely his door into ‘real’ teaching. I fulfilled my required experience in ‘teaching’ but I do not remember any ‘real’ teaching happening in all the time we were there. We merely minded these students until the end of each day. I spent the time doing much the same as I did when I worked shifts for the disabled in my part-time job.

Today rather than denying an LD student a seat in a school or relegating them to a classroom away from the heart of a school, educating the neurodivergent in an inclusive environment means being educated in regular classrooms in neighbourhood schools. Whenever possible, inclusion means LDers are educated with their peers with accommodations, IEPs, assistants, therapy and resource teachers as needed.

Apparently among the Canadian provinces, New Brunswick has been the leader with ‘system-wide inclusion’, educating all students in regular classrooms with the appropriate supports needed.

Learning Disability Programs

Yasik was given two psycho-ed assessments during the time he was in elementary school. The first one was provided by his school district while he was in grade three. By the time he was in grade 6 it was evident he needed more than public schools were offering at the time. In fact, the staff at the public school he was attending at the time supported our move to a private school as budget cuts for specialized programs were coming their way. The second psycho-ed, provided by a private company at our expense, was a requirement for acceptance at the primary option at the time, the Orton-Gillingham school, which offered a multisensory approach to educating. What Yasik appreciated the most about this school: “They ask you if you understand right away. They ask you again later and then they ask you at the end”.

Orton Gillingham schools continue to help kids out of a learning disability tar pit. But they are now not the only option available. Over time programs to accommodate learning differences have evolved to reflect different approaches.^[vii]

These programs may include access to social-emotional learning programs, sensory rooms or calm spaces, trauma-informed teaching, neurodiversity-affirming approaches. Then again sometimes all that is needed is a simple adjustment like extended test time, alternative assignments, modified grading, or quiet test spaces. There are also a wide variety of technology-based supports such as speech-to-text, text-to-speech, audiobooks, predictive typing, accessibility tools, organizational apps, digital textbooks, and a multitude of online offerings of help.^[viii]

But then again the need could be quite simple. One parent just read to her son bedtime stories about others with like struggles. Storytelling became the same light in the dark for [him] …the path to find our way, the hand held out to us so we’re not alone. … A book is possibility, what we are capable of enduring, shared emotion and struggle that runs like a thread of meaning though our lives. Maybe like Forrest Gump was for Yasik.^[ix]

As mentioned above, as part of the shift to inclusion, some provinces’ education ministries are offering what they term “complexity teams”, to work with the classroom teacher to aid in calming a class or to help with the accommodations needed for individual students. A complexity team might include educational assistants (EAs), learning support teachers, school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists.^[x]

In sum: Mere decades ago there was more segregation, fewer diagnoses, limited accommodations, weaker legal protections, and less awareness. This is not to say, that even today, there are not also programs that promise great success based on anecdotal encouragement rather than evidence-based programming.^[xi]

Attempts to side-step science aside, today research, advocacy and likely pure and simple human caring have eased the life journeys of many LDers. The work of each person, each community, each society, whether focusing on structured literacy or cognitive retraining, has sought to hold to evidence-based education that meets the needs of many more learning differences.^[xii]

Today the neurodiverse community has much stronger legal rights, inclusive education philosophy, better identification of learning differences, assistive technology, greater social awareness.

Negative changes

The perverseness of it all. While we applaud progress for LDers, too much of a good thing threatens. Alongside these gains, there are emerging tensions and contradictions.

Some researchers are now expressing concerns that we have become too inclusive. The parameters of the definition are being questioned. Dame Uta Frith, who pioneered much of the research that underpins autism, warned that … the drive for ‘inclusivity’ had caused the concept of the autism spectrum to become so ‘stretched’ that it is now ‘meaningless’… and a diagnosis has become somewhat desirable’ [making it no] longer useful as a medical diagnosis. Cool eh.^[xiii]

Too much of a good thing is also apparently threatened.

More inclusion is not always translating into more actual support? While the numbers of learning different individuals expand, inclusion in Canada serves [l]ess than half of students with intellectual disabilities, often remaining dependent on funding and the need for more staff, particularly when faced with multiple and complex needs as diagnoses are provided faster than supports.

In fact!, some adult LDers, perhaps with some sugar coating over their memories, believe that even without the supports 20 to 30 years ago, getting educated was easier because the structure and expectations were different. As they see it, [s]tudents are expected to master skills like reading and writing earlier in elementary school. More homework, projects, and assessments are common with constant switching between subjects and between analog and digital formats. Grade level work is expected in an inclusive classroom, with accommodations rather than reduced expectations. Multitasking, organization and time management are necessary. Autistic students are confronted with social situations, even as innocuous as group work, and distracting environments burning up valuable energy.

More adapting and modifying has happily led to changes in attitudes, rights, and educational practice. In many cases, it also means higher expectations, greater complexity, and new kinds of demands.

Another essential paradox.

Footnotes

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

[ii] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 477

[iii] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 223

[iv] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 266-271, 296

[v] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 266-271, 296

[vi] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 218

[vii] Berg, Jessica “My teen couldn’t read for years: dyslexia diagnosis changed everything” Jan 2, 2026 Change: https://www./businessinsider.com

[viii] Eaton, Howard. “Looking Into Our Past For A Better Future: Learning Disability Intervention Then and Now”

https://howardeaton.com/2018/02/looking-into-our-past-for-a-better-future-learning-disability-intervention-then-and-now/

Wright, Margaret J. and Fiona Mullan Dyslexia and the Phono-Grafix reading programme Support for Learning 21(2):77 – 84 DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9604.2006.00408.x May 2006 QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227684212_Dyslexia_and_the_Phono-Grafix_reading_programme

[ix] House, Cindy Mother Noise: a memoir Scribner/Marysue Rucci Book, 2022, 106

Brown, Brené Imperfect: the gifts of imperfection Hazelden Publishing, 2020, 3

[x] French, Janet. CBC News “Alberta looks to Saskatchewan’s model for tackling classroom complexity in schools. Saskatchewan initiatives a good start but need more funding, some leaders say” Feb 23, 2026

[xi] Hupp, Stephen and Jeremy Kewell Great Myths of Child Development (Great Myths of Psychology) Myth #21, Myth #22, Myth #21

Hardach, Sophie “Writing in English can be a challenge – even if it’s your mother tongue” https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230302-can-dyslexia-change-in-other-languages March 9, 2023

Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D. Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 39, 119, 120

Davis, Ronald D. with Eldon M. Braun The Gift of Dyslexia: why some of the smartest people can’t read … and how they can learn Tarcher, 2010

Blyth Hall, Sue Fish Don’t Climb Trees: a whole new look at dyslexia: understanding and overcoming the challenges-enjoying the gift. FriesenPress, 2020

Stainsby, Mia “The Davis Method claims a high rate of success in teaching dyslexics to read”. Southam Newspapers; Vancouver Sun January 20001 https://www.dyslexia.com/articles/living_with_dyslexia.htmlLiving with Dyslexia

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

[xii] Eaton, Howard. “Looking Into Our Past For A Better Future: Learning Disability Intervention Then and Now”

https://howardeaton.com/2018/02/looking-into-our-past-for-a-better-future-learning-disability-intervention-then-and-now/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227684212_Dyslexia_and_the_Phono-Grafix_reading_programme

[xiii] 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

Shrier, Abigail Bad Therapy: why the kids aren’t growing up Sentinel, 2024,18, 19

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

Hupp, Stephen and Jeremy Kewell Great Myths of Child Development (Great Myths of Psychology) Myth #21, Myth #22, Myth #21

Hardach, Sophie “Writing in English can be a challenge – even if it’s your mother tongue” https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230302-can-dyslexia-change-in-other-languages March 9, 2023

Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D. Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 39, 119, 120

Davis, Ronald D. with Eldon M. Braun The Gift of Dyslexia: why some of the smartest people can’t read … and how they can learn Tarcher, 2010

Blyth Hall, Sue Fish Don’t Climb Trees: a whole new look at dyslexia: understanding and overcoming the challenges-enjoying the gift. FriesenPress, 2020

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

Post #15 Learning Disabilities So What Now is Still the Same?

In my journal, as Yasik entered grade 6 in a new school, no longer with the kids he considered family but still marked by his underdeveloped reading, I acknowledge my fears. It was not yet clear, even with assessments what he was capable of. How would he handle his struggle? Would he be getting the kind of effective support needed to help him cope in a world that depended so much on communicating via reading and writing? Would he still be considered ‘different’ as in having a ‘disorder’ or handicap? How prepared was he for adulthood? What would he continue to struggle with? Fears I express in my journal entry in the early 2000s show I was asking these questions for Yasik and Dave and I. They have ignited this study.

I must also ask, how many of these questions, despite changes in language and awareness, can be expanded to the lived experience of the wider world, to LD children in general in the 21^st century?

Still no consensus

The sources I have accessed to learn what has not yet changed in the 21^st century have dates ranging from 2002 to 2026. Yet as I write in the Introduction post of these Learning Disability posts, I continue to come across the 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]

For example, a 2018 review stated there was yet no consensus on precise diagnostic criteria to determine a learning disability.^[ii] If diagnosis remains unclear, it is not surprising that misunderstanding persists in how these children are perceived.

Even the learning difference that perhaps has been given the most attention, dyslexia, has been given no universally accepted diagnostic criteria, though there is consensus that dyslexia typically involves difficulty with word recognition, decoding, spelling linked to phonological processing deficits. And yes, this difference continues to be considered a deficit. And a ‘deficit’ still carries the weight of stigma.

Still framed as deficit

Those ‘downer D’ words, front-loaded with stigma, have been able to hang on in our shared discourse. Steve Silberman wrote in 2016; words heavy with negative connotation were still being applied to ‘geeky’ behaviour. The socially awkward odd ball playing the friend of the main character in a script is still the comedic relief. If a person is intensely focused on something, it isn’t always considered healthy curiosity possibly leading to a useful study. Too often it is still diagnosed as problematic perseveration, a deficit.^[iii]

In March 2026, Donald Trump on hearing of California governor Gavin Newsom’s dyslexia, opinioned: “I think a president should not have learning disabilities, OK?”^[iv] OK?

Still ineffective coping patterns or compensation

Nor has the way a LDer copes changed for many. A study conducted in 2010 applied The Adolescent Coping Scale to some 12- to 15-year-old teens. The study found that many of these LD teens tended to ignore their problems with learning or relied on strategies that did not help or simply gave up. Others, not coping academically, compensated by turning to sports or art which they could make work for them. There have always been stories of people who, while giving up on coping academically, have found success in other ways.^[v]

With the message that he was an academic failure securing a strong hold in his mind from grade one on, Phil Hanley could not see for himself any career options that involved his brain. Whether he wanted to be a model or not, he believed he could compensate with a career using his body.[vi]

Still lagging academic outcomes

This century left the last century with the same message: catching up is still difficult for a child who is a poor reader or struggles with other academic expectations in the early grades, whether because of a learning difference, some disability, some social/environmental disadvantage or personal struggle. Now we define this ongoing and even accumulating disadvantage lag with something that comes off as a sanctimonious cover to me: The Matthew Effect, taken from the Gospel of Matthew 25:29: For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken. For all that it makes me uncomfortable, I’m sure it is simply labelling a reality. Too often someone who does not read to the expectations of grade 1 to 3, will continue to lag behind in reading expectations unless they are provided with support.^[vii]

Still inadequate support systems

Inadequately trained or resourced support options must also be factored in. I’ll leave you to get a copy of Phil Hanley’s Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith, Henry Holt and Co, 2025, 242, to check out his opinion of this component of the equation. Oliver James’ book, Unread: a memoir of learning (and loving) to read on TikTok, just came out and carries the same message of little to no reading help in school.

For all that the times have changed in terms of introducing concepts like neurodiversity, when Rebecca Wilcox looked for adequate schooling for her children, they were actually turned down by one school because they were academically ‘retarded’.^[viii] We are talking 2026 here.^[ix]

Steve Silberman wrote specifically about the lack of adequate educational opportunities for the autistic in 2016.^[x] For British Columbians it is even more immediate. February 10, 2026, the British Columbia government announced a major overhaul of its Children and Youth with Support Needs (CYSN) funding model, which includes phasing out the current direct autism funding program by April 1, 2027.

While the government frames this as a “redesign” to expand services to more children with various disabilities, it has resulted in significant controversy, with advocates and parents expressing fear that some families will see their funding cut.^[xi]

Continuing to be left out of publicly funded education leaves parents to take on the costs to educate their children themselves. We watched families interviewed after the BC government’s decision to cut back funding for autism. Parents could see no other option than to pay for their child’s educational needs themselves.

Added to this, as we hear on the news, classroom sizes increase in various provinces with energized economies, as in Alberta, with people moving to the province for jobs. Or the reverse, people leave the provinces, as in BC, for ‘de-energized’ economic reasons, leading to a budget shortfall. In the wake either way, funding and supports have not kept up to special-education needs.

And even though LD children have the same rights as other children to educational opportunities, evidence continues to abound that when disabled children do access these opportunities in educational settings, they are still excluded, physically restrained or not properly supported. They might be allowed to attend school for only half a day or denied attendance for longer periods of time because the administration at a school is unprepared to meet their needs. Improperly trained staff may resort to inappropriate physical restraints, calling the student’s different way of communicating a discipline problem.

These reactions to a child’s learning differences are concerning. However, from time to time, we read news reports of investigations into these attempts to thwart a rightful education so perhaps there is some progress here.

Still long-term personal consequences

Like Phil Hanley becoming a model, Oliver James was simply trying to compensate within his world for not being able to use his brain effectively. For young James, this led to serious misunderstandings. Taking what he understood to be an available option took him where it is too often taking young LDers. Without the heads that might have been available to him via a strong education, he got caught up in criminal activity. Unless or until support meets LDers where they are at in their life journey, they will go with whatever is at hand in order to cope.[xii]

Data drawn from Correctional Service Canada reports and related Canadian research on inmate education and cognitive functioning suggest: learning disabilities and related cognitive difficulties are significantly more common in Canadian prison populations than in the general population. 7%–25% of inmates in Canadian federal prisons are estimated to have a learning disability. In the general population, about 5%–10% of people have learning disabilities. 79% of people entering Canadian prisons do not have a high school diploma. 82% test below Grade 10 academic level.

Too often these people come into the criminal justice system with histories of undiagnosed or unsupported learning differences during their formative years.^[xiii]

To these stats, Phil Hanley says, When you’re asked to do something like read, something that most people do effortlessly and that you simply can’t do, it affects how you feel about yourself and it also affects how you feel about the world. It feels so unfair to be mocked, belittled, isolated, and publicly shamed for not having a skill like reading, especially because it’s not for lack of trying… That frustration builds, and it is human nature to lash out – to shoplift or vandalize something with misspelled graffiti.^[xiv]

For me personally, still many unanswered questions

I woke this morning to be met in my mind by this post. No surprise there. What was at the very least bothersome was being confronted by my mind with the realization that I still have many unanswered questions. Not necessarily the fault of any literature out there, but rather, my own lack of sufficient study. Nearing the end of these Learning Disability posts be damned.

Coming to this awareness this morning may have a lot to do with reading Unread: a memoir of learning (and loving) to read on TikTok. I am about half way through the book. With each chapter so far, Oliver James is talking about a particular book he has read and what impact it has had on his life. He is reading these books yet every so often he reminds the reader of his ongoing struggles with reading. Somehow, with the help of TikTok he has learned to read. He has not yet written about how that happened. I will probably have to update this post soon, but the point, thus far made clear to my mind, is that for all the reading I have done about difficulties with reading or learning differences, I still don’t know, when learning does take hold, how that happens. On the one hand, I read some say very categorically, as Phil Hanley says, When you’re asked to do something like read, … that you simply can’t do. And then I read a book by James about the books he is reading though through all his years of education he could not read. Hanley still tells the waiter he will have what the others at his table are having. James read 100 books in one year.

If, for example, this ability to translate squiggles on the page into language is something that some can’t do, is an actual brain ‘glitch’[xv], how is that with training some say they are now reading? Once the Shaywitz family could see, with functional magnetic resonance imaging, that there was a difference in the way the brains of some children process the symbols on a page, they then began to ask questions. Do the brain’s pathways change? Or does the child learn to use an alternate pathway? And what might that pathway be?

Maybe I am finally at the point they were at back in 1998.

Do some people, with support or not, continue to see only squiggles? Or can the brain be helped to change in some way? How much and for how long do the lived experiences impact learning differences?

Do people like Yasik learn an alternate pathway to reading, going from A to C and then back to B?

Footnotes So What Now is Still the Same

[i] 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, 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

[iii] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 399, 458, 472

[iv] Bishop, Holly “Newsom’s wife torches Trump after he mocked dyslexia” March 19, 2026 https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/trump-gavin-newsom-wife-dyslexia-video-b2941676.html

[v] Firth, Nola, Daryl Greaves, and Erica Frydenberg Coping Styles and Strategies: A Comparison of Adolescent Students With and Without Learning Disabilities Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia Journal of Learning Disabilities 43(1) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20023178/ J Learn Disabil 2010 Jan-Feb;43(1):77-85.doi: 10.1177/00222194

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

[vii] 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, 72

https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/learning/conditioninfo/signs9/11/2018

Pagerols, Mireia; Autet, Aurea; Prat, Raquel; Pagespetit, Èlia; Andreu, Maria; et al. The negative impact of neurodevelopmental disorders and multiple co-occurring conditions on academic performance of school-age children and adolescents Scientific Reports (Nature Publisher Group); London Vol. 16, Iss. 1, (2026): 2406. DOI:10.1038/s41598-025-27769-1

[viii] Wilcox, Rebecca Bea’s wrong: we shouldn’t wish dyslexia on anyone: As Princess Beatrice claims dyslexia is a ‘gift’, TV presenter REBECCA WILCOX says… Daily Mail; London (UK) [London (UK)]. 19 Aug 2021: 42.

Compton, Alisha B., Carlomagno C. Panlilio, Kathryn L. Humphreys “What’s the matter with ACEs?: recommendations for considering early adversity in educational contexts, child abuse & neglect” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2023.106073.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213423000546 Https://wrap2fasd.org

[ix] Berg, Jessica My teen couldn’t read for years: dyslexia diagnosis changed everything Jan 2, 2026 Change: https://www./businessinsider.com

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

[xi] CityNews Vancouver

[xii] James, Oliver Unread: a memoir of learning (and loving) to read on TikTok Union Square& co, 2026, 25 – 30

[xiii] Newsdesk “Learning disabilities increase risk of children breaking the law, research shows” 17/01/2020 Daily Mail

https://www.charitytoday.co.uk/learning-disabilities-increase-risk-of-children-breaking-the-law-research-shows/

[xiv] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 245-246

[xv]https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/030398sci-dyslexia.html

Post #15 Learning Disabilities Why? Germinated Beliefs

…If suffering comes from perception, as the Buddhists say, then we must look to find the filters (stories) that hold our expectations about the world, for we see what we expect to see. Our expectations tell us where to direct our attention…. Our expectations arise from the stories we repeat to ourselves, the stories that formed our beliefs.

Identify a belief, and we should be able to find stories that exemplify that belief.^[i]

These beliefs are germinated (to continue the metaphor) at times in soil that celebrates difference and encourages healthy growth. Other settings or soil denigrate the difference, still seeing a learning difference as abnormal. Either germination develops into lives, ways of being in their world. There’s a word I recently came across for what you believe about how to belong, how to be in your world – ‘introjection’. Consciously or not, we soak up other’s beliefs about ourselves. The messages we pick up from our parents, friends, educators take hold within to become our beliefs about ourselves.^[ii]

Let me interject a bit here though. I have read research which pretty much categorically states that introjects become hardwired, embodied, permanent.[iii]. I don’t know what to think of that for I have also read a great deal about our capacity as humans to change, to grow.

Jessica Berg’s son believed that he was beyond help. With good help he did “unlearn” this belief and in time found school “easier”.^[iv]

Carol Dweck, a social psychology researcher, uses two different terms: ‘fixed mindset’ and ‘flexible mindset’ or ‘growth mindset’.^[v]

…the way children think about their abilities or intelligence … can dictate to what extent they are able to overcome fears of failing and triumph through academic difficulties or other cognitive tasks.

Children who believe that intelligence and ability are malleable or flexible (able to change and grow) have far greater success in their lives… [they see] failure as a challenge to keep trying and … mistakes as a part of … learning.

Children with a fixed orientation tend to believe that people’s intelligence or ability is limited to what they are born with, for example, believing they are “not good at math”. This fixed mindset lends itself to giving up when encountering difficulties.^[vi]

Ed Latimore, from his personal experience as well as study, adds this observation: It doesn’t matter which mindset is a more accurate representation of reality. The only thing that matters is which one you believe to be true, because that belief will affect your approach to life’s challenges.^[vii]R C

Can it be that some of the tragic stories we so often read in news reports are of lives holding beliefs germinated/absorbed from the definitions of ‘abnormal’ stamped on them by the society they live in? But what about those stamped ‘abnormal’ who found their way to more hopeful perspectives?

Following are comments taken from observers of people living with learning differences and others are comments by neurodiverse people themselves about the beliefs that have germinated in their lives. It strikes me that, though I have read many accounts of neurodiverse people who have dark stories, in the following stories in environments hardly conducive to a ‘flexible’ mindsets, these are people who have found a way to more successfully handle their challenges.

Living in a learning environment that taught him he was different from other kids without offering a navigator through the differences, to help him adapt or compensate, Philip Schultz wrote: …Perhaps it is necessary to suffer greatly before we can reach this place of recognition and sensitivity, and appreciate what is special and worthwhile about us and behave accordingly.^[viii]

Andrew Solomon, in his book, Far From The Tree: parents, children and the search for identity, in telling stories of neurodiversity, notes that while we as a society should do all we can to support differences, we cannot ignore that … Many [of those Solomon interviewed] …said they would never exchange their experiences for any other life. Having a severe challenge intensifies life for both children and parents. The lows are also most always very low; the highs are sometimes very high… Some people think that without suffering, the world would be boring. …life is enriched by difficulty. …^[ix]

And of course, there are many memoirs and other accounts of people who took on awe-inspiring challenges, in all realms of human endeavor.^[x]

As the Artemis II Space Mission just completed a trip around the moon, I read that the head of NASA is a high school drop out!

Phil Hanley believes School had prepared me for struggle. I was programmed to expect adversity and to assume life would be hard. [Yet]… Kids need to know that, with a slight change of parameters, dyslexia has been proven to be a positive. If I could pick a standard brain or a unique one, I would pick mine. Every time…. [However] I needed time for my belief in myself to catch up to my ability.

Today I continue to deal with dyslexia. But it’s no longer a battle. I’ve made peace. I work around it… I no longer slither and hide…. Now Philip Hanley tells current students that dyslexia is not a curse… The path to moving from a fixed mindset according to Hanley comes when kids who struggle are shown a light at the end of the tunnel. Otherwise, their current misery will seem everlasting.^[xi]

We can hear in some of these back and forths a bit of Little Britain’s Vicky excusing herself with “Yeh but, no but”. Essential paradoxes.

Yeh but, the experiences of life with an LD, may be like a cart an individual must pull alongside through a life journey.

No but, the cart may not always ultimately be seen as a burden. To come back to the soil germinating beliefs which lead to stories of life experiences, when an LDer is offered little hope or healthy support, too often the story of a life journey is tragic. When the story speaks of helpful perspectives and support from others, it becomes noticeable, as the story progresses from detailing the struggle and the negative beliefs, that a change in perspective has begun. The LDer comes to a place of acceptance and ever-growing strength.

You can hear the paradox in Emil Sands’ Yeh but, No but. He has cerebral palsy and struggles with shame about his body. His beliefs are evolving to at least a compromise he is choosing to live with… I am still grappling with the ways I have been made to feel that my body does not belong – and with the conviction that it is easier for everyone that I be a failing normal rather than a normal disabled. I know more than most that difference must be celebrated, and that each time I hide, the shame builds – for me, for others like me…I am not sure I want to hide anymore. I’d rather embrace my disability than fear its fallout. But it would be a lie to say I love every part of my body.^[xii]

Yeh but, at 21, worn out with the burden of his LD, Yasik said, “I never have to learn again.” No but, as an adult, Yasik, with ever-growing strength, ‘psyched himself up’ enough to complete a training course that led to a satisfying job. He has found ways to work around a learning disability or to work with it. Although he is still sometimes reluctant to meet the expectations of conversation, rather than letting others speak for him, he tries harder to express himself in conversation.

Footnotes

[i] Mehl-Madrona, Lewis, M.D., Ph.D. with Barbara Mainguy, M.A. Remapping Your Mind: the neuroscience of self-transformation through story Bear & Company, 2015, 84-85

[ii] Bond, A.J. Discomfortable: what is shame and how can we break its hold? Penguin Random House, 2021, 38, 44, 205

Perry, Bruce, M.D., Ph.D. and Oprah Winfrey What happened to you: conversations on trauma, resilience, and healing Flatiron Books: An Oprah Book, 2021, 221-222

Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness Penguin Press, 2024, 70-71

[iii] Bond, A.J. Discomfortable: what is shame and how can we break its hold? Penguin Random House, 2021, 38, 44, 205

[iv] 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

[v] 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, 182 – 190

[vi] Armstrong, Thomas, PhD The Power of Diversity: unleashing the advantages of your neurodivergent brain, 2^nd ed. balance, 2025, 100

[vii]Latimore, Ed Hard Lessons from, the Hurt Business: boxing and the art of the life Portfolio/Penguin, 2025, 72-73

[viii] Schultz, Philip My Dyslexia WW Norton, 2012, 37, 50-51, 116

[ix] Solomon, Andrew. Far From The Tree: parents, children and the search for identity Scribner, 2013, 15

[x] 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 /

[xi] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 194, 223, 238, 240, 241, 243

Haddish, Tiffany The Last Black Unicorn Gallery Books, 2017, 6, 7

Wilcox, Rebecca Bea’s wrong: we shouldn’t wish dyslexia on anyone: As Princess Beatrice claims dyslexia is a ‘gift’, TV presenter REBECCA WILCOX says…Daily Mail; London (UK) [London (UK)]. 19 Aug 2021: 42.

[xii] Sands, Emil. The Atlantic March, 2023, 63

Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 437, 446, 454

Post #15 Learning Disabilities Why? Lived Experiences

I was a ‘nuts and bolts’ English teacher. When teaching imagery in poetry I focused on one easily identifiable aspect. The power of certain letters in the alphabet to convey negative messaging was easily identifiable. Langston Hughes’ poem “What happens to a Dream Deferred?” was in the textbook, it was short and I needed to wrap up the lesson in 20 minutes or so. I led with, “Notice the (admittedly only 3) ‘D’ words used. What image do you sense?”

Downer ‘D’ words are prominent in LD messaging too. Case in point disability or deficits, disorder, defective, disease or the words that lay in a liminal space like different, diagnosis, degree, diversity. The names for the types of LDs are either fronted with a ‘D’ or carry a ‘D’ in the name: Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Developmental Language Disorder[i].

I acknowledge other letters of the alphabet have not been left out. Downer words are fronted by lots of letters: stress, shame, blame, control, impairment, pressure, problem, punish, push (‘P’ words could give the ‘D’ words competition) and front liminal words too: pragmatic, labels, standard, special.

These words, saturating the concerns in the questions who, what, where, when, and how conjure questionable if not negative images. And images reflect ideas. Words to images to ideas have led me to ‘Why’? Why is a negative self-image germinated in a child trying to explain to a parent, “You know how I am not perfect”, a child’s explanation of obstacles to learning and growth?

Why these words, stamped over the lived experience of some LDers to explain their lived experience, have generated the belief that they are weak, failures, inadequate, imperfect initially prompted my questions. Rereading Rebecca Weston’s essay about her family’s experience with dyslexia, I saw an added note. She would rather she and her family were not blessed with dyslexia nor does she call it a gift, but her belief about her and her family as people living with dyslexia is not entirely negative. A further question surfaced: Why does the lived experience of some LDers also suggest a strength, if not a positive note, in their belief of themselves? The question becomes—why do these words take root so deeply for some, and not for others?

These words reflect the “lived experiences” which, in turn, germinate the beliefs that sway each of us in our negotiating of our individual worlds, encompassing individual Sets and Settings.

If humans could be imagined to be packages of seeds ordered, the package assembled ready to be delivered to a life on earth includes seeds, each with a set of genetics, epigenetics, biological predisposition, temperament. Once delivered to a door, each human package is then tucked into a soil mixed together by a particular physical, social and cultural setting, to germinate human beings with personality, values, mindsets, thoughts, moods or emotions, expectations, tendencies, individual choice. What we value germinates our perspectives.

If the ‘soil’ of a society is composed of a certain view of ‘normal’ for the society, then what is left out of that definition it seems must be relegated to definitions of ‘abnormal’. Numbers 3 and 4 of Thomas Armstrong’s Five Basic Principles of Neurodiversity say the definition of ‘normal’ and its counterpart ‘abnormal’ are written by what each time and society values. …Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), for example, appears to violate the Protestant work ethic in America…. Dyslexia violates our belief that every child should read…autism (sociability), depression (happiness), anxiety (tranquility), intellectual disabilities (intelligence), and schizophrenia (rationality). [ii]

Steve Silberman relates the lived experience of an autistic fellow:

After his Asperger’s diagnosis at age twelve, … He hadn’t changed, but the attitudes of everyone around him seemed to be transformed overnight. Suddenly I went from being someone that people believed had a lot potential, … to someone who surprised people by any positive attribute that I might display. Before, everyone focused on the things that I was good at,… After I was diagnosed, everybody focused on the things I struggled with, and the things that made me different, which were often the same things that people had framed as positive before.[iii]

Perhaps one of the most extreme ‘violations’ of our idea of ‘normal’ are intellectually challenged people. Adelle Purdham, a mother of a Down’s child, writes, In many cultures, having a child with Down syndrome is viewed as a bad omen, an ill fortune. … some version of this belief had a hold in my own Western culture. Why else are babies with Down syndrome aborted at a staggering rate of 80 to 90 percent, if not to suggest that our society views having a disabled child as a “bad thing”.[iv]

Rebecca Wilcox says that in the 1990s, dyslexia was still not widely accepted; it was seen as a middle-class way of making excuses for children who are less bright. Research has shown that learning differences are found across the intellectual spectrum. ‘But’ stigmas persist. If someone wants to distort a word, any word is fair game. Check out that special word ‘special’, twisted by Dana Carvey’s condescending church lady, “Well, isn’t that special?”.

When Wilcox was separated from the rest of her class to go to a ‘special needs room’ to write exams she tried to smile, but inside I felt like crying with embarrassment, …feeling anything but ‘special‘…[v]

Britain now has a Special Education Needs department to help learning different children negotiate their education. In B.C. it is called the Inclusive Education Branch and addresses the needs of people with ‘designated disabilities or learning differences’. Is there room in these titles for twisted, negative images to slip through?

And what a surprise. Planted in poor soil, seeds have difficulty growing into healthy plants. Children seeing themselves as somewhere between different and disordered have difficulty coping with learning.[vi]

The teacher is coming around to each desk handing out copies of the test. In a moment she will give the signal to begin writing. Most students will quickly pick up a pen or pencil and begin. A learning-disabled student will need one more permission to begin: a brain needing release from fear before attempting to translate the squiggles on the page.[vii]

‘Lived experiences’ may be as seemingly innocuous as changing schools or as devastating as many of the types of abuse that do not cease to shock people whether experienced while yet in the womb or in infancy and childhood. Yes we know that many children weather being ignored, misunderstood, neglected and yet grow into strong adults but it can’t be ignored that emotional neglect[viii] can divert thinking space to the hamster wheel of anxiety, to living in an environment of stress making it difficult to rise to potential.[ix]

One of the first things Yasik told us about the Orton Gillingham school we enrolled him in was his appreciation of the teachers’ repeated instructions, giving his tense brain time to hear and understand. Not sidelined in the classroom anymore, he came home and said, “You know what is different – they ask if you understand while you are doing it, a little later they check, and then again before it is over”.

Dr. Bruce Perry calls his readers to imagine a child living in a stressful environment at home or with communication difficulties or differences about to enter a school which… will expect this child to “act” typical. But that is impossible for the child. … In this overwhelmingly distressing situation, they will shut down or blow up. Either way, they don’t get the full benefit of the social, emotional, or academic learning.[x] They fall further behind, not meeting expectations, trying to mask their struggles, either by not entering conversation or by being the class clown.[xi]

As I have quoted in other posts, Phil Hanley found [e]ven writing a few words was exhausting. But no support or even concern was offered. He says of his school life, I had always been guarded. Played it cool. When you can’t read, you have to put on a brave face… As noted in an earlier post, even when it is something as simple as reading a few words on a menu, Henley covered with, “I’ll get the same.”[xii]

Tiffany Haddish’s lived experience … Before high school, I was told I was stupid every day. My stepdad used to tell me I was stupid all the time. My mama said it every day. My grandma sometimes. Definitely other kids at school. … I would want to fight you for calling me stupid.[xiii]

Philip Schultz’ lived experience: when another boy at his school called him a dummy, he did what his father did, he fought the kid …. These daily indignities fostered fear and angry reaction because of his anxiety over his difference, his dyslexia.

Yet we can hear a strength in …. I’d learned to accommodate and live around my compromised self in a somewhat comfortable and acceptable manner. Since I was ten I’d taught myself to live a life of opposites – because I couldn’t do this I learned to enjoy doing that, … [xiv]

I mentioned above, there is that ‘essential paradox’ for in the negatives, maybe like ‘diamonds in the dung’, there are positives. Yasik came out of the private school for the learning-disabled private school with an ability to read and more confidence about how to cope in a classroom. As he said, the teachers showed him how to manage his own learning, to make use of alternative ways to learn and order at a restaurant. He was confident enough to offer me ideas for helping my students.

This is the heads up from Rebecca Weston I could not ignore. There are positives in some people’s telling of their experiences. Weston is very clear about the burden of dyslexia in our present society, but with the diagnosis her parents sought for her, doors to being considered as something other than a dumb blond were opened, doors that gave her time and space to develop so that I could start to keep up with my peers, just as with Yasik. Looking back Westons says, I did well enough to thumb my nose at the naysayers.

Her sons now live in the world of neurodiversity with more acceptance, yes, but still encountering educators uninformed or short sighted and unwilling to adapt or change from standardized expectations. [xv]

Phil Hanley’s school experience is the stuff of his comedy routines now, but then comedians do that, don’t they? Living that comedy routine as a child was not funny, it was a misery. The diamond in his dung was his mother as she stood up in his defense before his educators, even if at times she could only come up with that I was “good with people”, a compliment reserved for friendly dogs. She … would annually present the argument to my teachers that I shouldn’t be forced to repeat whatever grade I was about to fail. She would insist I was smart- I just had a yet-to-be-determined problem.[xvi]

Jessica Berg, a mother and an educator, also knew there was a ‘yet-to-be-determined-problem’ which led to years of misery in school and a steady disintegration of her son’s engagement in a world of exclusion from classmates. He developed alopecia which belied his attempts to mask his inability to read and was swamped by anxiety and depression by the age of 12. The educational supports in place were not meeting his needs.

Berg’s son for all the struggle of his early years, is years younger than Hanley. Support is being better understood ad becoming more available. When his mom came to the rescue, she was more armed to stand for her son than Phil Henley’s wonderful mom. …The turning point, for Logan, came when … [his mother]…asked him to segment the sounds in the word “cat.”… He couldn’t do it. As an educator she had more awareness and resources to turn to. For her son, actions were taken within his school to provide an Orton Gillingham-based program of explicit, systematic phonics instruction.[xvii]

Shifts in perceptions are leading to shifts in support, enriching the soil of the neurodiverse. But because I am asking questions of learning disabilities most specifically in terms of adoption, I need to explore available and current research about the lived experiences for adoptees. I came across an article titled, “The Paradox of Adoption”.

As I have noted many times, people into the more mature years, generally well educated and situated at least in the middle-income bracket, are the most common definition of adopters in the West. They believe strongly in education and willingly provide all they can to give their adopted child the best advantages possible. And here is the paradox. These are the children most often struggling or indifferent academically and causing ruckus with classmates. The article offers the following: Possible reasons why family resources do not always produce great outcomes may be found in attachment theory, traumatic stress theory, and behavior genetics.[xviii] Maybe, likely, almost certainly, the soil is mixed with elements difficult to sift out.

Deborah Gray, whom I continually refer to offers these suggestions.

The child, usually after a stressful start to life, enters a new world no longer referenced by the first culture, with a new language. As she says: Children are not able to exert control over their lives through language, which frustrates and confuses them … the meaning of things changes[xix] even though they will likely continue referencing some meaning in the new language from the culture and language they still know best.

We know little of Yasik’s genetic makeup other than he certainly looks like his bio-sister, he spent little time with his bio-parents, missing out on parental nurturing, and however sweet the staff at his orphanage seemed, he did not receive the nurturing of a loving family. We do not know how deeply this has impacted his beliefs about himself. It seems Yasik boxed up his memories of his life in Russia and stamped ‘Do Not Open’ over it. Even so, fairly soon after coming into our home Yasik asked questions that showed he was aware of differences between himself and his buddies. He knew he had a different experience of family, that he wanted to separate himself from the pictures of his former life, the little book of photos recommended by adoption counsellors. He did not want the little photo album on his night table anymore. He wanted his friends to be the kids at his little school above the park. His early progress reports called him a social butterfly, perhaps as segue into saying he needed to do his own work, but it was obvious he made friends quickly. Yet he was never the one in the group actually doing much of the talking. He was smiling or laughing but left the chatting to others. Did his earliest years short circuit his language development or was the process of learning a second language leaving him uncomfortable with exposure in conversation?[xx]

Into this mix can be added another factor noticed by researchers. Yasik was born in November and one of his buddies was born in December. Both were accepted into kindergarten with the kids born early in the year. Yet when it came to a division of classes to reduce the load on the grade 2 class, he and his buddy, were kept back with the grade ones. Concerns have been written about for years that kids born later in the year are not as school-ready as kids born in the first few months.[xxi] With that awareness, the division makes sense, but to a six-year-old brain, how is ‘being left behind’ interpreted, especially as in Yasik’s case being seen as different already because of adoption, because of being ESL/EEL/EAL, because it was becoming apparent that he needed help with reading?

Over the years, as I have noted, there was a steady flow of messages posted to his psyche, telling him he was different in diminishing ways. Yes, it is an essential paradox, for these messages, sometimes subtle, sometimes direct, were largely aiming to aid. Choosing to send a child to a private, ‘special’ school for the neurodivergent or those with a learning difference, was the best option for helping Yasik catch up with the phonetics of language, just as Rebecca Weston‘s parents chose for her and she for her children. These schools did help Yasik and Rebecca. However, in the public mind, the designation ‘neurodivergent’ or ‘learning differences’ attached to these schools can sometimes be somewhat pointless; for many, these terms still register negatively as schools for the learning disabled. Throw in a set of proper pants, a crisp white shirt and a sweater when all your friends are in jeans and hoodies and a subtle message of weird, uncool is the cherry on top.

Essential paradoxes–there is a problem that needs addressing, given language, but with it comes support tainted with downer Ds…

Footnotes

[i] Mehta, Vishal “Why D Is the Most Negative Letter of The Alphabet” Apr 4, 2022

https://medium.com/the-shortform/why-d-is-the-most-negative-letter-of-the-alphabet-ace24a606222

https://fifthelementlife.com/blogs/blog/negative-words-that-start-with-d?srsltid=AfmBOopYzHBAwo 1020 of them

[ii] Armstong, Thomas The Power of Neurodiversity: unleashing the advantages of your differently wired brain, 2nd ed. Balance, 2025, 12, 13, 8-15

Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 303, 304, 399, 431, 454, 458Z

[iii] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 437, 446, 454

[iv] Purdham, Adelle. I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself Dundurn Press, 2024, 196, 197

[v] Wilcox, Rebecca Bea’s wrong: we shouldn’t wish dyslexia on anyone: As Princess Beatrice claims dyslexia is a ‘gift’, TV presenter REBECCA WILCOX says…Daily Mail; London (UK) [London (UK)]. 19 Aug 2021: 42.

[vi] Letourneau, Dr. Nicole with Justin Joschko Scientific Parenting: what science reveals about parental influence Dundurn, 2013, 166-168

[vii] Lau, Nathan T T & H Moriah Sokolowski “If you think you are ‘just not a math person’ then think again” https://psyche.co/ideas/if-you-think-you-are-just-not-a-math-person-then-think-again?utm_source 16 December 2024

[viii] Perry, Bruce D., MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook: what traumatized children can teach us about loss, love, and healing Basic Books, 2017, 19

YouTube Video: Oprah Winfrey & Dr. Bruce Perry in Conversation | SXSW EDU 2021 – YouTube

https://www.marshall.edu/bmhtac/files/2021/08/Faciliated-Viewing-Guide-for-Bruce-Perry.pdf

Dr. Bruce Perry Trauma-Informed Care: Bringing Trauma Concepts to Education, 8-17

[ix] Fisher, Naomi A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 33

[x] Perry, Bruce D., MD, PhD, and Maia Szalavitz The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook: what traumatized children can teach us about loss, love, and healing Basic Books, 2017, 19

YouTube Video: Oprah Winfrey & Dr. Bruce Perry in Conversation | SXSW EDU 2021 – YouTube

https://www.marshall.edu/bmhtac/files/2021/08/Faciliated-Viewing-Guide-for-Bruce-Perry.pdf

Dr. Bruce Perry Trauma-Informed Care: Bringing Trauma Concepts to Education, 8-17

[xi] Margalit, Malka Loneliness and coherence among preschool children with learning disabilities Journal of Learning Disabilities Austin Vol. 31, Iss. 2, (Mar/Apr 1998): 173-80. DOI:10.1177/002221949803100207 Top of FormBottom of Form

[xii] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 126,127, 140, 223, 252, 253

[xiii] Haddish, Tiffany The Last Black Unicorn Gallery Books, 2017, 5, 6, 7, 9

[xiv] Schultz, Philip My Dyslexia WW Norton, 2012, 24, 31, 44, 46-47

[xv] Wilcox, Rebecca Bea’s wrong: we shouldn’t wish dyslexia on anyone: As Princess Beatrice claims dyslexia is a ‘gift’, TV presenter REBECCA WILCOX says…Daily Mail; London (UK) [London (UK)]. 19 Aug 2021: 42.

[xvi] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 140, 223

[xvii] 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

Grandin, Temple Visual Thinking: the hidden gifts of people who think in pictures, patterns, and abstractions Riverhead Books, 2022, 170

[xviii] Zill, Nicholas the-paradox-of-adoption https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-paradox-of-adoption/

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

[xx]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

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

Post#15 Learning Disabilities How some neurodivergent people evaluate their education

Let’s introduce these people with a straight up irony.

The interesting adults are always the school failures, the weird ones, the losers, the malcontents.^[i]

Needing no further introduction, I give you …..

Phil Hanley: I had always been guarded. Played it cool. When you can’t read, you have to put on a brave face. In school, I adopted a first-day-in-prison mentality. Never cried when teachers tried to teach by humiliating me.

I didn’t question my comedic ability. I questioned my ability, period.

Even writing a few words was exhausting… School had prepared me for struggle. I was programmed to expect adversity and to assume life would be hard.^[i]

Brian: I failed grade 9 because I stopped going to school. I had come to hate school so much that I began to feign sickness in order to avoid attending school. Whenever someone tried to force me to go to school, I simply told them that I had a severe headache. …I still believed myself to be that which the school system had conditioned me to be – a withdrawn, below-average student unlikely to achieve much educationally. …That I continue to doubt my own ability to achieve academic success, even after years of doing so, serves as a good example of the power early socialization experiences have on the human being.^[ii]

Philip Schultz: …I’d grown accustomed to seeing myself as someone who, if fallible and unworthy, had nevertheless managed to do one thing well enough to get recognition for it. I’d learned to accommodate and live around my compromised self in a somewhat comfortable and acceptable manner. Since I was ten I’d taught myself to live a life of opposites – because I couldn’t do this I learned to enjoy doing that, …

…I often read a sentence two or three times before I truly understand it; must restructure its syntax and sound out its syllables before I can begin to absorb its meaning and move on to the next sentence. And when I make the mistake of becoming aware that I am reading, and deveining in a way that enables this mysterious, electrically charge process to take place, my mind balks and goes blank and I become anxious and stop.

For reasons I’ll never fully understand, or perhaps don’t even want to, I dislike the peculiar, obstinate, slightly out-of-control way in which my mind behaves when I’m reading.

I understood that I was different from other kids… (the fear he struggled with) …was my anxiety about being different, most likely related to my dyslexia, that fostered this fear.

At a restaurant he ordered the same thing every day, even though he detested it, …because I’d overheard a man ordering it on my first afternoon there and I couldn’t read the menu and was too embarrassed to ask the waitress. Phil Hanley made adaptations or masked in this way also. It used to break my heart to watch Yasik do the same when we would be at a restaurant. At the same time, I admired his smarts at inventing this adaption for himself.

Even in a helpful school Schultz knew he was on his own. He and the other students knew through experience that they had to learn to compensate for their inability to immediately process written and spoken language and that regardless of the quality and sensitivity of the education they receive, they have to learn how to adapt independently to each difficult situation. Schultz finishes by saying his experiences are not unique to him and his friends. Children and adults alike “say they are in pain”.^[iii]

Clarence Cachagee and his foster brother: By 1972, when Clarence [a foster child] was seven years old and in grade two, he had outgrown his speech impediment but was still insecure at school. Learning to read and write was proving difficult, and he was struggling to make new friends. At the end of the school year, due to his poor marks, the school administration decided to hold him back from the next grade. I think my first experience with failure was when I was seven years old. All those friends that I made through those few early years, I lost them because they held me back. I remember how devastating that was, internally, watching those people move forward, knowing they were going into grade three and knowing that I wasn’t going.

After this Clarence became angrier at school. Other children would sometimes make fun of him for his learning challenges. He started getting into fights… Clarence was beginning to think about himself as an outcast, an ill-fitting piece to the puzzle of his school and family life… I became a bully because I wanted some of those children in school to experience the pain that I was experiencing…^[iv]

Dave too was made to feel stupid for a time in his elementary years, and not understanding the bullying, got good at fighting back.

Alex Plank of WrongPlanet: He had also suffered the same kinds of bullying, ridicule, and exclusion as many of his atypical peers. [but] … felt confident that his social status as a dork was the inevitable side effect of being highly gifted. [Then he finds the diagnosis of Asperger’s and] then I got this label that made me feel like a loser…^[v]

Rebecca Wilcox: When I was at Oxford University, my friends teased me mercilessly about being dyslexic. …at the time, the bullying feels like the worst thing in the world and not worth living through.

Other children can be horrible if they sense weakness. I don’t care if overcoming challenges makes you stronger in the long run, because at the time, the bullying feels like the worst thing in the world and not worth living through.

And this from a school she sought for her boys at the time of writing: I received a call from the school secretary saying they wouldn’t take them. Their education was vastly delayed, she said, their handwriting terrible, reading appalling. I stopped listening and started to sob when the phrase ‘retarded learning’ was mentioned… ^[vi]

Blyth Hall’s son: …this little boy with his insatiable love of learning, entered school and disintegrated. Prior to school, his curiosity had been constant … ^[vii]

Emil Sands: (Sands has cerebral palsy and struggles with shame about his body) Today, hardly anyone knows I am disabled. I tell no one because I believe people will like me less. …Or maybe I should rephase: I believe people will like me more if they think I am like them. So I go out of my way to keep my disability private…. I know more than most that difference must be celebrated, and that each time I hide, the shame builds – for me, for others like me.

I am not sure I want to hide anymore. I’d rather embrace my disability than fear its fallout. But it would be a lie to say I love every part of my body. I am still grappling with the ways I have been made to feel that my body does not belong – and with the conviction that it is easier for everyone that I be a failing normal rather than a normal disabled.^[viii]

In a poem called “Floodgates” by Alice Alsup a year before she died, she laments that the ways in which people dehumanize her for her difference, making a modest but vital claim: I’m pretty sure my heart works/the same way as theirs.^[ix]

In a meeting with one of the learning assistance teachers working with Yasik, we sat together around a low table on children’s chairs though even Yasik’s knees were halfway to his ears. This likely certified learning assistance teacher, told Dave and I in front of Yasik, he will never be more than a carpet layer. She disgusted me. But just in case someone investigates, full disclosure, one of Yasik’s first paying jobs was as a carpet layer.

While in the Orton-Gillingham school, Yasik gave me advice for my students with learning struggles. He told me to give my students a paper to follow so they won’t be embarrassed when they don’t know. My journal says I guessed he was realizing that this support was helping him.

Yet, … Struggling with an individual learning difference, each of these people have learned in many little and big ways, they were not perfect. I am currently reading Unread: a memoir of learning (and loving) to Read on TikTok by Oliver James. It was published this year, 2026. I think it is not a stretch to suggest it may not be the last written about the life experience of someone with a learning disability.

At 21, Yasik never wanted to learn again.

Footnotes

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

[i] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 126, 127, 194, 223, 239

[ii] Goodin, Brian “Socialization via Schooling: how schooling helped me believe I was a failure” Education 240-3 Simon Fraser University, 1989

[iii] Schultz, Philip My Dyslexia WW Norton, 2012, 24, 26, 37, 44, 46-47, 50-51, 75

[iv] Cachagee, Clarence, Seth Ratzlaff North Wind Man Gelassenheit Publications, 2023, 17, 18

[v] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 454, 458

[vi]Wilcox, Rebecca Bea’s wrong: we shouldn’t wish dyslexia on anyone: As Princess Beatrice claims dyslexia is a ‘gift’, TV presenter REBECCA WILCOX says… Daily Mail; London (UK) [London (UK)]. 19 Aug 2021: 42.

[vii] Blyth Hall, Sue Fish Don’t Climb Trees: a whole new look at dyslexia: understanding and overcoming the challenges-enjoying the gift. FriesenPress, 2020, 5

[viii] Sands, Emil. The Atlantic March, 2023, 63

[ix] Rebolini, Arianna Better: a memoir about wanting to die Harper, 2025, 172

Post#15 Learning Disabilities How a neurodivergent student’s support for learning difference is provided

Psychology may have moved on from many of Skinner’s behaviorist principles over the past many decades, but… when it comes to the running of a classroom and school, some remnants remain for discipline, routines, and skill-building in structured settings. As recently as 2021 the U.K. Education Secretary said, We know much more now about what works best: evidence-backed, traditional teacher-led lessons with children seated facing the expert at the front of the class are powerful tools for enabling a structured learning environment where everyone flourishes.^[i]

Being free to self-direct from morning to night between the ages of 5 and 15 is not even encouraged in Authoritative Parenting. Yet Naomi Fischer believes children who struggle to read should not be made to learn to read until they show interest in reading.^[ii] What is a teacher to make of that when she sets up her lesson plan for the day? I am not being facetious.

There is an undeniable rationale behind the choice to retain the behavioural principles: many of us have a deeply embedded respect for the need of “compulsory structured learning” in a school setting. Children are expected to manage themselves in a large group of peers, control their impulses, sit down when told, pay attention on demand, listen to what the teacher is saying, make transitions all day from subject to subject, room to room, and keep track of all that is expected.^[iii] Check out “The Five Golden Rules for the Classroom” online.^[iv]

As Yasik saw it when we would ask what he did that day at school: “work, work, work, play, play, work, play, work, work”.

A classroom filled with compliant students is an uncomplicated way to deliver education as the U.K. Education minister proudly affirmed: teachers teach and children learn in an efficient model relied on across the globe.^[v]

I texted the high school girl two doors up to ask if any of her classrooms are traditionally arranged with rows of desks facing the teacher. She texted back to say that some are and some are not. The trope of the traditional and unyielding teacher standing before straight rows of desks and less than thrilled students in endless movies may make parents wince. Fortunately or otherwise, a quick google shows that arguments for the desks in rows facing the teacher, for some situations of classroom management, have validity.

A blogger who came into teaching determined to shake up traditional classroom management eventually bowed to some old timey ‘tried and true’ wisdom for some methods.

It turns out it’s very hard to lead direct instruction or deliver complex instructions when half of your students are sitting in groups facing the other direction…. Or have you ever tried to help a neurodivergent student focus when they are surrounded by posters and artwork covered in text and images? … Me neither, and my abundant artwork led to a neurological overload for a number of my students…Of course there are aspects of the industrial model of classroom design that need to be updated, … but some are tried-and-true… For instance, when giving a lecture, which still belongs in the modern class, the best orientation is one that is focused on the lecturer…. The audience benefits from having a direct view of the speaker, allowing them to observe body language and hear clearly.^[vi]

And it is a wide spread concern. Cozy crime novelist, Ann Cleeves, even got into the debate in her 2025 novel with an argument from a character who was a principal: When you’re new to a school, or even to a class, I’ve always thought it important to go in tough. It’s possible to relax later, but it’s almost impossible to start off as if the rules don’t matter and then try to tighten up… It would be much harder trying to treat nine hundred pupils and nearly a hundred staff members as individuals. ^[vii]

Consequently, schools continue to apply some behaviourist principles. When a child on the class list presents with learning differences, how often is noticeable lack of focus first interpreted as … not concentrating on what a teacher wants you to concentrate on…? What is a teacher to make of that when she sets up her lesson plan for the day? I am not being facetious.

Teachers make lesson plans guided by curriculum as is the expectation of parents and the education system. An interruption in delivery has to be dealt with. When one or more children in the classroom struggle with the delivery, it is not surprising that initial reaction is to question the child. It is not a leap to the next question. How often does the question then become how can we change this child so that they fit the environment better? ^[viii]

As early as 1911, a psychologist, Erwin Lazar, working with students challenged by the education system, questioned the system. Instead of seeing the children in his care as flawed, broken, or sick, he believed they were suffering from neglect by a culture that had failed to provide them with teaching methods suited to their individual styles of learning… The system needs to enable through whatever means, not demand one way or the highway.^[ix]

If one factor is significantly useful, it is a sympathetic and tolerant reception by the school, … Those of our children who have improved have been extended extraordinary consideration by their teachers.”^[x]

Despite such early awareness, it took more decades to move from change the child to change the system. O. Ivar Lovass, a psychologist of the 1960-80s, however much he personally appreciated the learning differences of autistic children, thought at that time it was likely hopeless for advocators of the autistic to rail against the education system. Lovass suggested those (in particular for him autistic children) who did not communicate with their world in the “normal” way, would none the less have the best hope of success if they [aspired] to become “normal” – purged of all visible traces of autistic behavior (with intensive training).^[xi]

And most of these efforts to help were, if not altruistic, pragmatic: to present as normal is a normal human aspiration. The question then became how do we get this child to be normal?

Today I noticed an article that said a percentage of young parents continue to spank their young children[xii]. That may make some eyes pop, but it does make it easier to accept that some continue to be determined to change or blame the child with a learning difference.

I walk a trail that offers a short cut to town. It starts just across the street from our home, wide and easily traversed. All along the trail are narrower, less accessible trails often made by deer or rabbits. Curious, I tried one that as the crow flies was parallel to the main trail. Maybe I could change up my dog walks. The trail went here and there, breaking off, ending in bogs, and generally led me in frustrated circles. Abandoning my bright idea for an exciting new trail, I had to call my husband to come along and give me an orientation point to clomp back to sanity.

Attempts to find different approaches to supporting the different has also led to exploring some equally messed up trails, some even horrifying. Check out the therapies applied in California in the 70s/80s in attempts to rescue autistic people from a life sentence in an institute because they were not coming off as normal. One behaviourist technique was strategically called ‘aversive stimuli’ in hopes of disguising its inappropriateness, verging on, if not actual, cruelty. Sometimes attempts to normalize or even to being given ‘extraordinary consideration by their teachers’ has led to some erratic ‘best practices’ pendulum swings,^[xiii] even opening the door to abuse.^[xiv]

This was Phil Hanley’s experience in grade one.

I sat at the back of the room and was flooded with a memory from the beginning of first grade. Mrs. Skeen collected the spelling test and saw that I got zero and I’d marked Danny Birch’s test incorrectly. She turned red, slammed her hand down on her desk, and shouted, “Phillip, you can’t do anything right.” Then she stomped across the classroom, grabbed my desk with my little body still in it, and dragged it across the room. Only the back legs of the desk and the tippy toes of my sneakers touched the linoleum floor. She slammed it down facing the back wall.

“If you turn around you’ll wish we never met,” she screamed, so close to my face that I could smell the cigarette-and-coffee combination that polluted her breath.

She then composed herself and announced to everyone: “In all my years of teaching there’s always only been two reading groups. The A word group and the B word group. But now because Phillip can’t keep up we’re going to have a third reading group just for him called the C word group.”^[xv] Dave remembers similar experiences with cigarette-and-coffee breaths in his face.

I met a fellow in one of my third year Education classes at Simon Fraser University who found sufficient courage to climb over the shame heaped on him to go to university. In his grade school, he experienced a response to his difficulties similar to Phil Hanley’s.

Brian (incidentally, a first nations child in a time when that carried absolutely no cool in this Fraser Valley community) was a student of the same teacher my youngest sister sat under in grade one and two. My grade one teacher [who came with cred as the daughter of the school’s founder], saw me as a …below-average child…who … requires frequent discipline. The discipline was a whack on the head with a pointer meant to remind me that I had misspelled some word and that I was, as she said, “…not paying attention”. Soon she started using me as an example to the other children, a person whom they should not emulate. I remember my classmates avoiding me and making me feel very alone…From being an active child, I became quiet and withdrawn.^[xvi] I too remember the pointer as a handy dandy extension of a teacher’s hand; I ducked faster than his hand could swing.

It took many years for Brian to climb over his experience of education in his elementary and high school years. Of those years he said, My grades remained low and the lectures at home gradually decreased as both my parents and new teachers concluded that I was simply another dull boy… I received no special attention and remember classes as being long and boring.^[xvii]

Even if there seemed to be a brain difference, if a child did not speak, at least in the conventional understanding of speaking, it didn’t readily occur to researchers and therapists that there was more than one way to communicate. Temple Grandin screamed. Others spin or even destroy things. That was not seen as effective or appropriate communication and had to be changed. Teachers understood that the child must be made to speak as others did. How to make that happen? My grade one teacher, in 1955, whose smirk told me she thought she was clever, put me in a closet for roll call. I spoke too softly, being new to the class. I guess she was either a trendsetter though or a follower of the therapies of the day. In one particular example, a student who sought to communicate, but in a manner not understood as a way of communicating, was hit by teachers with rulers, and like me, was locked in a closet.^[xviii]

Phil Hanley was a student in the 90s. He saw the response to his learning difference as stuck with a choice between blaming the child’s behaviour or putting it down to the child having a brain deficiency, the ‘blame or brain’ theory. Either way it’s on the child.

My teachers felt they had pinpointed the issues. They were convinced I took so long to read and write because I was lazy, which is as logical as suspecting an alcoholic drinks so much because they’re thirsty. Looking at the zero-out-of-ten spelling test results and thinking, “The boy is idle,” is as ignorant as observing a flaming car wreck and concluding, “The driver must have been parched.”^[xix]

As Phil Hanley sees it even today (2025) , …the school system is not designed for us… It’s not our fault. Schools need to change. So do society’s views on people with dyslexia. I know firsthand that students’ learning problems are often overlooked or dealt with incorrectly. … until my final year of high school, the only reassurance I ever got from teachers when they found out I was dyslexic was, “Hey, Tom Cruise is dyslexic,” to which I responded, “Oh cool, well then I’ll just star in Top Gun.”

…Like drug addicts, dyslexics face a lifetime of people who will never walk a mile in their shoes but are quick to give flippant directions. To laymen, spell-check and books on tape seem to be cure-alls. These solutions are about as helpful as telling a drug addict to “Just say no.’”^[xx]

Some with learning differences would agree with Hanley. Some would say, no, with time and advocacy, educators continue, as much as understanding, and available resources allow, seeking to extend acceptance and support. Barely 10 years after Lovass’ time, in the 90s and also a student of the Canadian system of the 90s, following an assessment and diagnosis, Yasik was offered a much more supportive response than Hanley. The write up of his psycho-ed assessment offered explanations, recommendations, adaptations, accommodations, though with a dash of accusation on his quarterly progress charts.

It could be argued that with the demands of the classroom and limits on resources, it was hard to entirely sift out behaviorist principles. In hopes of maintaining a normal classroom, Yasik’s early progress charts would suggest rather innocuously that Yasik merely needed to ‘try harder’ or ‘be more focused’. One of Yasik’s first progress reports added a note saying Yasik needs to stay focused (explanation) and get work done on time (recommendation) and he needs to do his own work (accusation) – not get others to do it for him (his adaptation). To help with that the teacher would no longer let him sit with his best buddy (accusation) who was helping Yasik find answers (his adaptation). Translation: Yasik needs to try harder. Still some grains of blame the child needing sifting?

As educators have sought to move beyond blaming a child, they haven’t entirely sifted through the intricacies of the support offered to the neurodivergent. Yasik was supported with ESL help, the attention of a speech pathologist, resource teacher, and classroom assistant, along with the classroom teacher. He was not always thrilled. As helpful as the intention was, it was a double-edged sword. First of all, he was taken out of the classroom for he was relieved not to be seen stumbling in class and in need of focused, individual help, more help than his buddies needed. But being taken out of the classroom tooted out that there was at the very least something different about him or any of the many with a learning difference anyway.^[xxi].

Rebecca Wilcox recalls being called out of the main crowd [at Oxford] to go to my assigned seating and my supposed friends around me reeling off the litany of insults. ‘Dyslexic’, ‘thicko’, ‘Becca’s off to her special needs room’. … I tried to smile, but inside I felt like crying with embarrassment … ^[xxii]

Yasik and the support staff sat together on a little, worn couch in the hallway, within view of anyone on a bathroom break. He would be helped to read with lots of repetition. Structured literacy programs like Orton-Gillingham also use repetition as well as offering more time for thought processes.

Repetition is about the value of practice to strengthen reading skills. Should repetition begin to rot into mindless memorization it becomes a hollow gain.[xxiii]

One day Yasik was sitting on the little couch in the hallway reading with the school secretary – a rather imposing looking woman who seemed to be the de facto principal – certainly parents give her due, and were somewhat in awe of her. She had already tangled with Dave because she thought reading should be fun and didn’t want to over push Yasik when Dave wanted tougher stuff for him. That day, (Yasik’s version) she sent home a note saying “Yasik has been uncooperative today”. At first he didn’t want to tell Dave so Dave said “I’ll only punish you if you don’t tell me. I won’t punish you for telling me what happened”. Yasik said, “Even if it’s nasty?” Getting Dave’s assurance, Yasik continued, “She was making me read something over and over and I just didn’t want to read the same thing over and over. I didn’t say anything bad. I just didn’t read.” She thought that was fun?!?

The journal says Yasik still fought reading, saying it was boring. Maybe it was. Perhaps neither we nor the school offered enough of the kind of reading that would have drawn him in.^[xxiv]

It should be noted, however that Tiffany Haddish used memorization to do quite well in high school. She laughingly boasts, …I was in AP classes (where you can get college credit in high school), while not being able to read!^[xxv]

But was that laughter also hollow? A documentary on dyslexia focuses on some of the difficulties a learning disabled or different child must face… some may feel that if they just memorize what others around them are saying or doing, they will be able to hide, a sure-fire way to feel an imposter. Imposter syndrome takes firmer hold when being given extra time on an exam is seen by other students as unfair. For the learning disabled student it too often becomes simply easier to suck up failure, and above all, become ashamed of their struggle.^[xxvi]

Yes the pendulum has been erratic, but not only in a bad way. Yes we continue to read of ineffective, poorly administered systems and practices, but that pendulum just keeps on swinging as time moves on. Changes continue. About five years ago in our town, a math teacher became frustrated that one of his students was taking too long on her math test. He shouted at her in front of the class. Later, when he was reminded that she had an IEP allowance to take longer, he apologized for forgetting her accommodations.

Parents, therapists and educators employ IEPs, extra support systems, and increasingly seek to acknowledge and accept difference, bringing into mainstream discourse the idea of neurodivergence.

Footnotes

[i] Fisher, Naomi A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 51

[ii]Fischer, Naomi. Changing Our Minds; how children can take control of their own learning Robinson, 2021, 79

[iii] Fisher, Naomi A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 50, 187, 196, 209

[iv] https://roomtodiscover.com/desks-in-rows/

https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2021/05/29/seating-students-in-classrooms-clues-to-understanding-how-teachers-teach/

[v] Perry, Bruce, M.D., Ph.D. and Oprah Winfrey What happened to you: conversations on trauma, resilience, and healing Flatiron Books: An Oprah Book, 2021, 221-222

Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 431

[vi] Muir, Trevor. https://www.trevormuir.com/blog/rows

[vii] Cleeves, Ann The Killing Stones Thorndike Press: Gale, a Cengage Company, 2025, 254, 255

[viii]Fisher, Naomi A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 289, 31, 32,33, 62, 63, 197

Grinker, Roy Richard Nobody’s Normal: how culture created the stigma of mental illness WW Norton, 2021, 330

[ix] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 84, 298

[x] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 218

[xi] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 324

[xii] Kirkey, Sharon “About 20 percent of gen Z and millennial Canadians still spank their kids. Is that even legal?”

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/spanking-laws-in-canada April 08.2026

[xiii] Saltz, Gail The Power of Different: the link between disorder and genius Flatiron Books, 2017, 22

[xiv] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 306-309

[xv] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 223, 230-231

[xvi] Goodin, Brian “Socialization via Schooling: how schooling helped me believe I was a failure” Education 240-3 Simon Fraser University, 1989

[xvii] Goodin, Brian “Socialization via Schooling: how schooling helped me believe I was a failure” Education 240-3 Simon Fraser University, 1989

[xviii] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 302-303, 425, 298

[xix] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 223

[xx] Hanley, Phil. Spellbound: my life as a dyslexic wordsmith Henry Holt and Company, 2025, 239

[xxi] Fisher, Naomi A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 40-41

[xxii] Wilcox, Rebecca Bea’s wrong: we shouldn’t wish dyslexia on anyone: As Princess Beatrice claims dyslexia is a ‘gift’, TV presenter REBECCA WILCOX says… Daily Mail; London (UK) [London (UK)]. 19 Aug 2021: 42.

[xxiii] Grok

[xxiv] Fisher, Naomi A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 54, 56

[xxv] Haddish, Tiffany The Last Black Unicorn Gallery Books, 2017, 5

[xxvi] Redford, James The Big Picture: rethinking dyslexia: the myths, the stigmas, the truths revealed docuramafilms, Cinedigma Canadian Entertainment Corp, Inc., 2013

Post#15 Learning Disabilities How a neurodivergent student’s educational progress is determined

When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he came through before he got to where he is. (Raisin in the Sun– L. Hansberry)^[i]

I ask: How does an 8- or 9-year-old get the message that he is not perfect?

Or a neigbour girl, at about the same age: How does she get the message that she is the class problem?

Or the son of a friend: How was it that he would come home each day after school burned out trying to be good when he felt he was a problem in the class?

How was it that when Yasik’s coach wouldn’t let him be goalie, telling Dave Yasik was too small, Yasik automatically thought he had done something wrong, come up short again……

Somehow, somewhere, parents, for the most part, accept that once children are ready to enter kindergarten, parents are expected to hand over the education of their children to the nearest school. We complied immediately when Yasik’s school urged us to enroll him, another parental responsibility off the checklist, except, of course, for the homework sent home. It was the job of the school system to educate our child.^[ii] `

Most researchers assume they know what happens if you don’t go to school: you don’t learn and you won’t succeed. They equate no school with no education, and leaving school with ‘dropping out’.^[iii] I think it is likely ‘most researchers’ are joined by most educators and most parents. [I]t’s the teacher who tells the parent how the children are doing on Parents’ Evening…. They see education as something that happens at school.^[iv]

The weekend following Yasik’s first week of school, we were doing the evening stroll endorsed since the days of Dick and Jane, walking past his new school. We pointed it out to him as I guess one sure way to ruin a weekend. Yasik wrinkled his nose, a very cute nose, and stuck out his tongue. But come Monday he went without a fight.

But first, a heads-up. This is not a diatribe against educators or the education system. Poke your head into any classroom or school office and you will find human beings. People who are full to the brim with caring and a desire to do their jobs to the best of their ability with the understanding and tools available.^[v] For the most part they work from the foundation trending during their professional times.

I too was a teacher who wanted to be helpful but I held to the curriculum of the time, at times over the individual student’s needs, as the more pragmatic choice or ‘essential paradox’. I think I believed, ultimately that was the only way students were going to get anywhere. Preparing lessons plans from this premise, I too got some things right and other things wrong. I met needs and I failed to meet needs. But hey, I did allow one student with physical struggles to walk around a mall rather than jog around a track to complete her PE 12 requirement.

Based on articles and books I have come across, I will consider how schools get some things right and other things wrong as they define “normal” and how children get measured against it.

By age/peer expectations

We think about what others of their age are doing, and we judge it accordingly.^[vi]

For the first years Yasik was passed along to the next grade with the assurance that he was “performing within the widely held expectations for his age group in most areas of the curriculum”.

‘Widely held expectations for his age group’ meant that kindergarten children are expected to recognize letters and sounds, count and sort numbers; grade one children are expected to read simple texts and add and subtract; grade two children are expected to be gaining reading fluency, writing skills and more complex mathematical concepts. I remember Yasik showing me how to count and do other arithmetic with finger math (chisanbop) or folding the 4^th finger to do multiplication. In grade three, children are expected to no longer be ‘learning to read’ but ‘reading to learn’. From then on, Yasik was expected to be showing more and more independence in learning and the ability to deal with complex problem-solving assignments.

And if a child doesn’t meet those expectations, the next question becomes: what do we do about it?

Maybe that is a large part, and for the most part sensible reason, why we go with the flow and let the schools take over the education of our children. The educational system seeks to cover the bases most parents are not equipped to handle.

By Assessment

In grade three, Yasik was reading at a grade one level based on the above curriculum expectations for children his age. Recognizing this discrepancy, like Superman swooping in to rescue a child falling from a bridge, Yasik’s community school, bless them, found a way to get Yasik on the school-based assessment list for the testing available in the 90s. Then and now, the tests measure reading, writing, math skills and include measures of working memory, processing speed and executive functioning, along with tests for non-academic influences, such as emotional barriers to learning.^[vii] Yasik will not have had as much opportunity to develop a test-taking comfort as the peers he was measured against but he certainly had developed a lowering of his self-esteem and a good dose of anxiety.^[viii]

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), in particular, is a test of general cognitive or reasoning ability (IQ) on which the student’s performance is compared with the performance of other students of the same age. And as a reminder, addressing dyslexia specifically, Sally and Jonathan Shaywitz are quite clear that IQ is peer reference; IQ and reading difficulty are not linked.^[ix]

For a long time now, there have been questions about the use of IQ testing, arguing that the way tests are given and to whom and in what frame of mind will influence the score. Zeroing in on testing children with learning differences, the concern is the use of a questionable tool that compares them to the expectations normal for their age group.

The reading I have done suggests a whole lot of equivocating is going on.

Paul Bloom will tell you that Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience. It is not merely book-learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings, “catching on,” “making sense” of things, or “figuring out” what to do”.

But before you start in on the arguments which question IQ testing to evaluate intelligence, Bloom puts up a finger to halt your retort in its tracks, for a moment at least.

… You’ve probably heard people say things like, “IQ tests don’t predict anything important.” That’s absolutely true – so long as you don’t think grades, jobs, money, health, or longevity are important. The fact is that intelligence test scores are highly correlated with just about every outcome that human beings care about.

And then Bloom gives your question the floor.

Do these tests really measure what they are supposed to measure?^[x]

There are researchers who will tell you that IQ is genetic and fixed. There are researchers who will tell you that you may be able to increase your IQ. Apparently, confidence and test taking skill make a difference.^[xi] Your score may decrease. An autistic child, someone who was outside the understood norm yet having some noticeable precocious skills, was sent, at the age of 11, to a state hospital in the 1970s. From that point on she dealt with little more life challenges than completing jigsaw puzzles. Observers could not ignore that with little stimulation, she withered away. She and others have all lost their luster early after admission…. If at all responsive to psychological testing, their IQs dropped down to figures usually referred to as low-grade moron or imbecile.^[xii]

I came across an apt illustration making the point that the conditions in which a plant is grown make all the difference. Under good conditions plants thrive. However, regardless of the genes in plants, if they are raised in poor conditions they will not rise to their full potential. If children live in a healthy environment their IQ will reflect this support. If children live in an environment in which opposing forces seek to undermine their potential, their IQ will be adversely affected.^[xiii] Thus we have a concluding note in Yasik’s assessment adding the qualifier that ‘some individuals do have changes in their intelligence scores over time’. Possible instability in the scoring needle might be seen but no hint at which direction the needle might lean was offered nor was any assurance given that the supports offered would move the needle to the right.

Perhaps due to the controversy, Grok adds that IQ tests are not given the authority they have had in the past.

By diagnosis

Parenting a Struggling Reader wants the reader to know that the psycho-ed testing has no tests to specifically diagnose for learning disabilities. Rather the evaluator must piece together information from tests, along with less formal assessments. These writers also point out that when the tests show a discrepancy between the IQ scores and the child’s achievement, …a discrepancy is not a diagnosis. ^[xiv]

While in university I took a second year Research Methods in Psychology course. I don’t remember why but for some reason my enthusiasm for university ebbed that semester. I nodded blankly over lectures and textbook readings for T-scores and standard deviation. I have tried since to clue in but still glaze over at the numbers involved. I get that Yasik’s scores were in comparison to peers. I get that the scores showed his standing in language-oriented skills and performance skills. I get that he was frustrated with his limited vocabulary or when he could not read or write as quickly as his classmates. I get that the assessment recognized that he was getting ESL support and that he demonstrated low risk-taking and fear of failure. I get the conclusions reached.

I do not understand the methods used. I do not understand the assessments summary of ‘low range for verbal (language -oriented skills)’ needing more processing time but ‘average range for performance– visual-motor spatial and perceptual skills’. I am fuzzy about the comments in the assessment that note ‘a weakness in visual-auditory learning bearing on cognitive efficiency’. Yasik has always learned best by watching, isn’t that visual? And usually the watching included listening, isn’t that auditory? But if visual-auditory includes learning from charts or lectures, then yes that is not the same as watching Forest Gump over and over.

Would it have helped to pay closer attention in that psych class? Maybe, for after the tests had been evaluated and we were invited to the post-assessment review, we were told a specific diagnosis would not be given. The closest one evaluator came to diagnosis was to tell us that most people go from A to B to C in their brains. Yasik will go from A to C and back to B, learning differently but learning anyway. And actually this has turned out to be sufficient and helpful. It says he has a learning difference, not an inability to learn. It says that yes with a difference he would need learning support, but, and this is the what needs to be heard above all, he would learn.

But…that lack of a specific diagnosis leads to another question; to diagnose or not to diagnose. Said another way: to label or not to label.^[xv] If pragmatics, budget, efficiency and differences leading to diagnosis all matter then the debate over diagnosis leading to a label must be considered. While doing so we must remember, …a diagnosis is a description rather than an explanation.^[xvi]

Unless you are reading Sally Shaywitz and son. They are very clear that dyslexia is a neurological condition. It is real and it needs diagnosis as early as possible for it gives identity and opens the door to support. The argument is: When we hide a condition, we take away the chance to ask for help. Hiding creates stigma while openness erases it… Celebrities willing to reveal their disabilities is helpful.^[xvii] In the workplace, if coworkers don’t know about their colleague’s disability, how will they understand what is demanded of the disabled person to meet job expectations?^[xviii]

To say nothing about what learning disabled people are do with a struggle they deal with daily, and without a diagnosis, do not understand.

Others question the helpfulness of a diagnosis, saying that support should be less complicated. If children have reading difficulties, for whatever reason, anti-diagnosis advocates would head straight to support, skipping the hurdles of diagnosis for the support remains the same whether they have dyslexia or not.^[xix] The anti-diagnosis researchers fear that a diagnosis which attaches a label will actually create stigma. Once children are labelled they too often become seen as problems and become excluded… And add to all this the fact … that the student[s] end up adopting the world’s view of them. They are dumb, slow, or lazy. It’s a cycle of failure that chips away at their self-esteem until the student becomes so frustrated or ashamed that they give up.^[xx]

Another ‘essential paradox’? Doors open to understanding and support with assessment and diagnosis. Doors get slammed close with assessment and diagnosis.

Footnotes

[i] As introduction to Interpreting WISC-III

[ii] Fischer, Naomi. Changing Our Minds; how children can take control of their own learning Robinson, 2021, 111

Lancaster, Kathy Keys to Parenting an Adopted Child, 2^nd ed. Barrons Educational Series, 2009, 69

[iii] Fisher, Naomi A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 52, 111

[iv] Fisher, Naomi A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 111

[v] Fisher, Naomi A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 47

[vi] Fisher, Naomi A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 47

[vii] 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, 143-144, 166

[viii] Mukherjee, Siddhartha The Gene: an intimate history, large print ed., Thorndike Non-Fiction, 2017, 534-535, 536, 538

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

[x] Bloom, Paul Psych: the story of the human mind Ecco, 2023, 324-325

[xi] Burnett, Dean The Idiot Brain: a neuroscientist explains what your head is really up to HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd., 2016, 115, 116, 118, 151

Bohannon, Cat EVE: how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution Random House Canada, 2023, 250-251

[xii] Silberman, Steve Neurotribes: the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity Avery, 2016, 219-22

[xiii] Mukherjee, Siddhartha The Gene: an intimate history, large print ed., Thorndike Non-Fiction, 2017, 534-535, 536, 538

[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, 116 – 117, 119-120

[xv] 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

[xvi] Fisher, Naomi A Different Way to Learn: neurodiversity and self-directed education Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2023, 29

[xvii] Grinker, Roy Richard Nobody’s Normal: how culture created the stigma of mental illness WW Norton, 2021, 317, 321

[xviii] Grinker, Roy Richard Nobody’s Normal: how culture created the stigma of mental illness WW Norton, 2021, 317, 321

[xix] Kale, Sirin “The Battle over Dyslexia’ https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/sep/17/battle-over-dyslexia-warwickshire-staffordshire, 2020

Shaywitz, Sally, M.D. and Jonathan Shaywitz, M.D. Overcoming Dyslexia, 2^nd ed. Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 94-95,106-107, 140

[xx]Perry, Bruce, M.D., Ph.D. and Oprah Winfrey What happened to you: conversations on trauma, resilience, and healing Flatiron Books: An Oprah Book, 2021, 221-222

Wilcox, Rebecca Bea’s wrong: we shouldn’t wish dyslexia on anyone: As Princess Beatrice claims dyslexia is a ‘gift’, TV presenter REBECCA WILCOX says… Daily Mail; London (UK) [London (UK)]. 19 Aug 2021: 42.

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, adopters 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. We need to fight the urge to stop our child from stimming, to make them talk acceptably, to try harder. To do other than accept is to tell your child he or she is imperfect.[vi] If Dave and I could not accept our child’s learning struggles, could we be impeding the flow of love between us and our son?

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

[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

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