My LD/ADHD daughter will be a senior this year and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that she passes. She was diagnosed in 2nd grade and by 5th grade, because of her determination and hard work, she was staffed out and has not received services since then. I’m sure if she would cooperate, she could be retested and be placed back in SPED, but she says no. For the most part, her teachers have been extremely helpful and will do almost anything to help her. She has a sister one year older, no disabilities of any kind, (unless being unable to see outside of the box is a disability) and graduated this year in the top 10% of her class. She and LD daughter have almost the same IQ which makes it so frustrating. So, back to my question. Is there anyone out there who really, really struggled through high school but then got themselves together later? I really need some encouragement from someone who’s been there. Thanks, Marcia
Will my LD/ADHD daughter ever be successful?
Please remember that the real world is NOT like High School, no matter what educators try to tell you.
There are a couple of books that I found very helpful in putting this into perspective.
Learning Outside The Lines by Jonathan Mooney and David Cole. These are two Ivy League graduates with ADHD who give some great tips on how to get through college.
Embracing the Monster: Overcoming the Challenges of Hidden Disabilities by Veronica Crawford. This woman has just about everything but found inventive ways and a lot of support to help her along the way. Very inspirational.
I hope these help.
Re: Will my LD/ADHD daughter ever be successful?
Hello Marcia:
If you could provide us with a little more information, our advice might be a little more on target. Let me just say when I went to college I was reading at the third grade level. But a lot of motivation and perseverance and recorded textbooks from Recording for the Blind and Dyslexis, I made it through school.
My stepdaughter has learning disabilities. With a lot of motivation she made it through community college. She now is a supervisor of a fast food restaurant and a new mom. She is very happy.
I also agree with the person who pointed out that life after school is different from school. Sometimes it takes several years of adjustment to find your niche after you leave high school.
Hi Marcia,
Take heart. Lots of kids do well once they are able to do what they want to do after high school.
On the chance that you daughter’s main issue is reading-related and [i]if[/i] you or her father also experienced difficulty learning to read, then you should consider having her evaluated by a developmental optometrist, because she could have a vision problem that’s gone undiagnosed.
Rather than go into detail on vision issues, take a look at my website at ontrackreading.com This link, will take you to a discussion about vision issues and how to go about addressing them [url=http://ontrackreading.com/the-dyslexia-puzzle/my-take-on-dyslexia] Vision Link [/url]
If your daughter does have a vision problem of the nature discussed on my site, she might also have developed some unusual abilities to help her make sense of the world. In particular, she might have very highly developed visual-spatial skills which would make architectural work or mechanical design work quite easy for her.
Then, if you fix the vision issues (assuming they are present, of course) you could have a daughter who enjoys studying finally, and who has found that her niche is in engineering or design. The reason for this is that people with this sort of vision issue spend a lot of time finding other ways to compensate for poor depth perception and in doing so they can get quite good at translating the 3-D world they’re in into the 2-D world they’re seeing, and back again. This is what architects spend a lot of time doing.
Or maybe she reads just fine? If so, disregard this.
Rod Everson
[url=http://ontrackreading.com]OnTrack Reading [/url]