Learning Disabilities

I believe the politically correct term for Learning Disability is now Learning Difference - at least this week. Those terms for special needs keep changing because the conditions themselves are considered shameful, but I'll keep using the old one since I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of in having a disability.

Anyway, back when I was raising two kids with learning disabilities and working with kids in schools who had them I always wondered what they felt like. Then I found out.

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I used an anti-viral medication that caused neurological damage. While math was always one of my worst subjects in school (second only to handwriting) my aptitude test scores were above average in that subject and my reading and language scores were at the 99th percentile.

I haven't been retested since using that medication, but scores in both areas will certainly have gone down. I can still read well, but now I must make an effort to concentrate on things like academic texts if there is background noise, and it has become extremely difficult for me to remember numbers or do simple arithmetic. (Thank Heaven for calculators!)

So now I know what it feels like to have a learning disability and, you know what? It doesn't feel like anything. Being unable to think of a number or figure out a math question is no different from forgetting or not understanding something else. Everyone experiences things like that at times.