Month: April 2026

Post #15 Learning Disabilities  What? Types

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I appreciate how Phil Hanley illustrates this pain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Myths that have built up around children and learning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Footnotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post#15 Learning Disabilities  What? An overview

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

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

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

These are the questions this set of posts considers.

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

What? looks at what may have overwhelmed Yasik.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Footnotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Post#15 Learning Disabilities   Who? Child and Parents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Footnotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Post #15 Learning Disabilities Introduction

“Mom, you know how I am not perfect.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note: I am using Grok, Google and Chatgpt for information and proof reading/critique, though, actually at their advice, I don’t always note that the information has come from them.

Footnotes

[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

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

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

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

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