Learning difficulties

[whispershadow]

I thought it might benefit others to know how it feels to have a learning difficulty.

Too many people assume i'm being stupid deliberately or trying to piss them off by failing to understand something.

This post is my personal experience, others might have a different experience to me and i understand that.

It's frustrating because i often have to ask people to repeat what they said so i can hopefully understand second time round.

Due to my problems, I can either fail to understand what someone said at all, or I can read too much into what the other person said. For example, if someone said to me "pink elephant" and my brain is adding stuff in, I can end up turning it into "flying pink elephants wearing a purple tutu" (i think you get the idea about adding stuff in with that example)

I tend not to trust my own understanding of something either, cause too many times i have been told what i think is not important or is wrong.

At school, I was okay with reading but always struggled with maths pretty bad and even though i asked for help i was always told "you got to do it yourself" even by the teachers at school, even when i told them i dont understand the maths they was trying to explain to me.

Its not a fun thing to have to deal with and i am not "putting it on" as a get-out-of-trouble-free card :(

The few times i saw my dad, he did not help either he always treated me as though i was thick and nothing i did was good enough for him. Get a new job? He would find something negative to say. The time I moved back to my mum to help with younger sibling? My dad decided I was being very selfish even though it was for Mum that I moved out from my grandma's house to move back in with Mum.

No matter what I do, it is never good enough for him.

Learning difficulties are not something anyone chooses to have. Too many people assume those of us with learning difficulties are "retards" (i do not like that word). We are trying to make ourselfs understood and understand other people but it is never easy :(

It depends, for me, on the way the other person words what they are trying to say, it is the "luck of the draw" as to whether I can understand first time what the other person is saying. All I ask is that if I don't get something first time (or anyone else with a learning difficulty does not "get it") first time, that people are patient and stop assuming i doing it to be difficult when i honestly am not :(

Thanks for reading this if anyone did read it

[venusbluejeans]

Whisper - - -

[AntsyVee]

I like your post, Whisper. I teach many students with learning difficulties. It’s important to remember that people learn differently and there truly are multiple intelligences.

[pulisa]

Both my adult children have ASD and live at home. I'm so sorry your Dad doesn't understand how to make things less challenging for you..It's his failure to comprehend and learn not yours. I suspect that he is out of his depth and floundering..hence his behaviours. No excuses for him but it happens..sadly for you.

You seem to have made a great life for yourself and your cats. I'd be very proud of yourself. Kindness is a rare quality these days and you have it in bucketloads! Don't underestimate your qualities? Just because you don't quite fit into the category of the "neuronormal" it doesn't make you any less of a human being..Quite the opposite I would say. We are all different anyway but you deserve extra credit for having to deal with hassle yet still having the strength to fight your cause xx

[Lencoboy]

Both my adult children have ASD and live at home. I'm so sorry your Dad doesn't understand how to make things less challenging for you..It's his failure to comprehend and learn not yours. I suspect that he is out of his depth and floundering..hence his behaviours. No excuses for him but it happens..sadly for you.

You seem to have made a great life for yourself and your cats. I'd be very proud of yourself. Kindness is a rare quality these days and you have it in bucketloads! Don't underestimate your qualities? Just because you don't quite fit into the category of the "neuronormal" it doesn't make you any less of a human being..Quite the opposite I would say. We are all different anyway but you deserve extra credit for having to deal with hassle yet still having the strength to fight your cause xx

Not sure whether kindness is actually rarer these days or more to do with the fact that the media mostly tend to revel in the not-so-good aspects of life today.

I think people with learning disabilities have pretty much always been fair game for prejudice, abuse and ill-treatment. Remember in the past, we were often imprisoned in institutions (especially before the 90s), cast out of mainstream society and considered worthless. A few years back there was an article on the BBC News website about historical abuse that occurred at a state-run residential school in Suffolk that operated between 1974 and 2000, whose pupils were routinely ill-treated by violent, sadistic staff members, and this was still even going on well into the 90s, by which time corporal punishment (in state schools) was officially consigned to history. Very 'Winterbourne View'-
esque, in terms of brutal, sadistic treatments, but for children between 8 and 16 years of age.

It does seem that a lot of local authorities some years back had a habit of employing unscrupulous 'chancers' to work in such establishments, which would (and most definitely should) be totally unthinkable nowadays.

[whispershadow]

tbh neither parent understands :(

[BlueIris]

It's tough, Whisper, but the trick is to find people who get you - anybody with half an ounce of sense would appreciate your kindness and compassion.

[whispershadow]

i just noticed i a advanced member - how did that happen?

[venusbluejeans]

i just noticed i a advanced member - how did that happen?

It just means you have posted over a certain amount of posts

Admins can also change what it says too

[KK77]

Admins can also change what it says too