Tell me about Learning Disabilities

[LucidFlanders]

If someone has one, how does that someone beat it and get smarter?

[Alric]

I think I have a learning disability, and when I was young I took a special class instead of a normal English class. I don't know what disability I have, because I was never told. Though I suspect it has to do with my spelling. I always read very well, and I have a huge vocabulary but my spelling has always been atrocious. I don't think the special class I took ever really helped, because it was overly simple and proved no challenges what so ever. I was in it for maybe six years or so, though I eventually got out of it and went back to a normal class and I did fine. What helped my spelling a great deal however, was that I started using computers a lot. I log on my computer pretty much every day, so I have had tons of extra practice typing and writing stuff online. I still have trouble with spelling though, and pretty much every day I look up words to find their correct spelling. Luckily with the internet, looking up words is a breeze. I also had a slight speech problem when I was younger. Nothing major, but there was a few sounds I couldn't say well for some reason, and I remember I took some classes for that as well. Even today there is occasionally words I know, and if I say them in my head I know them correctly but if I try to say it out loud it doesn't come out quiet right. Though that is very rare, it does happen though. I feel like I have problems with math some times as well. If I focus I can do math just fine, and I am taking calculus in collage so my math isn't bad. However, some times I make silly mistakes and I look back at my work and I find I did something that didn't make any sense, and the answer is obvious. At moments like that, it feels like I read something totally different from what was there, because I don't know how else I could of made such a weird mistake. Though I never had any math problems in school, so it might just be careless mistakes on my part. I think the key to beating any learning disability is just to practice. If you are weak in some area, you need to practice a lot and eventually you will get it. Also there are many different ways to learn. If a disability is making it very difficult to learn something in one way, you may need to learn another way. Try different things and see what works best for you. Disability or not, everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and you need to work with your strengths. It depends a lot on what your problem is as well. There may even be special techniques that can help with specific disabilities, if you know what the problem is. In some cases, if its something severe there might be medicine or something you could take as well.

[Grod]

If someone has one, how does that someone beat it and get smarter? One day the wonders of modern medicine will grant plebeians such as yourself the ability to "become" another person's brain. Possibly ten, twelve years from now. Until then you're out of luck pal.

[snoop]

I've never been bad at school, but I've got ADHD predominately inattentive and I feel that my learning style was and is highly different than my classmates' (though I'm no longer in high school). I never got medicated until after graduating, and now that I am, my learning style is quite different than it used to be--which is really my main argument for believing my other learning style was different than everyone else's. On medication, I have to consciously think about what it is that I'm learning, intently. I can't be lazy, if I want to learn it I have to dive in head first and explore it fully. Unmedicated, I picked up nearly everything unconsciously. As a classmate so eloquently put it, "it's bullcrap I can study all night and get a C- on all of my tests and some people like *snoop* can literally sit in class half-asleep all day and get A's". I didn't always get A's, but I learned to somehow zone-out to a state where all I would really perceive is my teacher's voice, and as long as I didn't day dream, I didn't even really have to pay attention all that much, I would let my unconscious do the rest. When taking tests, I went almost totally on gut-instinct. I didn't know the answers except sometimes, I usually had feelings about each of the answers. My brain was much less methodical and unorganized too. I didn't have to think back to a specific text in a book and rely on memory--I could somehow just pull the information out of the brain, not knowing at all from where. Medicated, I'm usually forced to rely on memory, but thankfully my memory while medicated is good enough that it isn't a hindrance. It's just like the difference of having something meticulously cataloged, while medicated, as opposed to digital files strewn about every which way with tags on them, and my brain being a giant search engine. I didn't have to have a specific process, it just came to me. The real difference in learning, though, was when I came across something totally new I didn't understand. The way I learned it was not to compare it to old information I already had first to achieve a primary understanding. I accepted whatever it was the teacher told me as fact from the start, as a tactic. I didn't try and understand, I just accepted that it was what it was. Once I see enough to learn the mechanics of it, then I can start to draw my own connections as to how its functions are similar to that of some old information I had. Then I had to test if the connections were valid or not. This happened most in math class. I had to simply work out 3 to 4 sample problems in my head, that I created (not overly complicated ones, as simple as they could be to test validity) on the spot. I had a lot of trouble with making stupid mistakes in math class because I thought about too many things while test taking (usually things never about the test). This was okay for most tests, but on math tests it really fucked me, which is why I got a C for the semester in Pre-Calculus and a D in Trig. It didn't affect me so much in Algebra classes--usually not enough to make simple mistakes on. I also had a problem where I never stopped shaking one or both of my legs up and down while sitting in class--no exaggeration, I literally never stopped (I probably looked like a tweaker lol). I learned, after starting medication, that it's actually a coping mechanism I invented that would get me to focus on something. The constant movement grabs my attention, but doesn't determine where I put that attention. It kept me "focused", though I use that term loosely. If I stop, my mind wanders all over the place, usually in daydream-like scenarios. I don't do that while medicated, but if I start to get off tangent on something I find myself moving my leg(s) again, which is how I discovered it was a coping mechanism more than a symptom of hyperactivity. Basically, to overcome your issue, do not just accept defeat. ADHD isn't necessarily a learning disability, though some would debate it is (I wouldn't), so I don't know if it's that easy with a true learning disability. However, if you simply accept defeat, you will never see any progress. I guess I naturally learned coping methods, but not everyone is so lucky. These people have to learn to cope for themselves consciously. All it will take is some dedication and a willingness to change, and a lot of determination.