[color=blue]Hi everyone,
I’m a 20 year old college student (female) who has gone through school all my life with all sorts of learning problems. For as long as I can remember I’ve been looked at by teachers as being lazyand unmotivated, when I actually try harder than most people in the class because I need to if I ever want to pass. I’m not so sure now that I’m in college, but in high school my classmates would view me as dumb and I had a hard time keeping friends, once they realized my struggles. I’m sure many of you can attest to all this in your own lives.
I’m not exactly sure what disability I specifically have, though I know I am LD. Some of the problems I have include, but are not limited to:
difficulty following directions
difficulty with reading comprehension. (also when I read, I tend to get “distracted” by other words on the page, or my eyes dart all over the sentence, taking it all in at once rather than word by word, before my brain finally sorts it out for me to read it. Anyone else have this problem?)
Interpreting words too literally
Very concrete thinker
Cannot communicate what I want to say clearly/effectively. It makes perfect sense in my mind but I can’t put it into words.
Need more time to process information
difficulty recalling words
I miss assignments, even when I know I paid attention
There are a few other struggles here and there, but anyone have any ideas of what could be causing all this? I was dx with ADHD in high school by a doctor who was very quick to dx, put pills in my hand and send me on my way. I do show a few signs of that, but they are the least of my problems.
Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you for listening to a newbie![/color]
Re: Newbie to forum, getting desperate for help :\
Well, the good thing is that you are not DUMB!
Another good thing is that you have learned how to work hard. You have no idea how much that will help on the job. Any job.
A third good thing is that you are in college. That is good for a number of reasons one of which is that most colleges have offices for disabled students. Get yourself over there, explain what is going on, and have some testing done! Once you know what is causeing you problems, you have a starting point for fixing what can be fixed and accomindating what can not be fixed.
Good Luck!
Barb
Re: Newbie to forum, getting desperate for help :\
Thank you all for the kind and fast responses!
Ellyodd, I have dyslexia myself.
Re: Newbie to forum, getting desperate for help :\
Hi ! I am much older than you (in 50’s) have had learning difficulties all my life but masked it by being obsessive, perfectionistic until the demands of life career along with undiagnosed LD took major toll emotionally.
I disagree somewhat with response that working hard leads to success if have LD — for me it led to 5 emotional breakdowns from stress, lack of sleep etc. from college throughout my career.
The good news is that I was able to put many of the pieces together as a result of having a son, my younger child of two, who was diagnosed adhd in 2nd grade, diagnosed because I was “the mother from hell” with all sorts of LD— written expression, expressive/receptive language, spelling difficulties, poor reading etc. but the schools and evaluators couldn’t figure out what was behind all of these “disorders”. I finally by reading everything under the sun and reading as much as I could figured out he has visual tracking and central auditory processing weaknesses (the neurological cause of the LD “symptoms”).
I also have the same neurological deficits but not all the LD symptoms. I learned to read but didn’t understand what I was reading, my eyes couldn’t track across the page—I had many problems with listening and responding quickly because I either didn’t really understand what the person was talking about sometimes or I couldn’t organize my thoughts and clearly express myself.
Both myself and my son have perfect hearing (peripheral)—we can hear sounds but the information gets all scrambled as the brain processes the verbal words, language. It’s hard to concentrate on understanding what you are reading when your eyes aren’t going fast or together across the page. I learned to “chunk” visually what I was reading on the page which helped me in non-fiction, but I still hate to read novels or for pleasure because I have to read each line it seems.
Ironically I picked a major (English literature) which required reading fast. I was a basket case, but everyone thought I was really smart because I learned to express myself in writing because “I couldn’t speak” and “I couldn’t hear”!!!!
These are complex disorders and symptoms are different in each person but there are general weaknesses common to each. Research on the web:
CAPD, visual tracking, CAPD and LD/Reading/adhd. If you think any of these disorders match your symptoms see if you can find an audiologist who specializes in capd diagnosis, and optometrist who specializes in diagnosing visual perception and tracking weaknesses. The latter is easily correctable through therapy because it’s a muscular weakness but capd treatments are very controversial. While for CAPD there is no magic cure, there has been a lot of research on managing the disorder. Still, this is a relatively new field and many ld professionals including psychologists, audiologists, neuropsychologists don’t understand it. Look for the most recent information published in the last 5 years.
I hope this helps! I had my first major breakdown in college from lack of sleep, I had high anxiety panic attacks depression fear of failure/perfectionism, etc. etc. from then to now with 4 more major breakdowns. If I can help someone else avoid what happened to me — that is level of success and achievement by which I’d like my life to measured.
Sincerely,
Shelby Stone
Hi Mocha, welcome to the forum :-)
I have dyscalculia, verbal working memory-problems and motor skill problems, and most of the things you write, is a part of my problems.
You are [b]NOT[/b] dumb, I’m sure you know that ;-)
I hope you will come back and use the forum often, whenever you need it :-)