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 21st century?
Still no consensus
The sources I have accessed to learn what has not yet changed in the 21st 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
[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] 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
[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
