The Forums › Forums › What is it? › Co-morbidities/Secondary Disorders › Shadow Syndromes › Re: Shadow Syndromes
I was diagnosed with a Learning Disability at the same time as my ADHD. (I don’t have a name for it like dyslexia, because those terms are a) considered outdated and b) never really were used in Canada in the first place. In any case, I’m pretty sure I don’t meet the criteria for dyslexic).
As a child I was good early reader, I just could not use phonics. (Hooked on Phonics would NOT work for me!) Instead I had a large bank of sight words, and would use context and syntactic cues to figure out unfamiliar words. If it was a word I already used in my daily language, I’d know how to say it, but often I would be in a situation where I could understand what a new word meant, but have no clue how to pronounce it. When I came to a word I didn’t know how to pronounce, I’d try to get someone to tell me how to say it. Then I would stare at the word and repeat the pronounciation until I could remember it.
My handwriting is a mess. They used to pull me out of class during spelling time to practice my handwriting with the Special Ed teacher. Then I’d get behind on spelling (which I was also terrible at, surprise, surprise ) and they’d pull me out of art to get caught up on spelling exercises. Looking back on it, letting me participate in art probably would have helped my fine motor skills more than making me sit writing out line after line of letters.
It was also the era when teachers taught by writing out notes on the blackboard, which the students dutifully copied out. They’d fill two blackboards, and then go back and erase the first one so they could continue. Invariably, I wouldn’t be done the first board by the time the teacher was ready to erase it, and then I would given a hard time for being too slow. I spent many a recess catching up on my note copying.
Did ok in Math, with the exception of Transformational Geometry until Grade 10. After that I didn’t have a clue what was going on a fair amount of the time. OAC Algebra Geometry with it’s X,Y and X axes made my brain hurt.
My biggest program has been though that I have always been an organizational disaster. How much of this is the LD and how much is the ADHD, I have no clue. In the end, does it matter?
Anyways, no one ever considered that I might have a problem (except for the handwriting, but then that was attributed to my left-handedness, rather that anything else.) because my verbal skills also happen to be in the 97th percentile, and I have an excellent memory for things I read. (My friends call me the human encyclopedia.). All my problems with organization were me being lazy, wilful, etc as far as my family was concerned. Heck, even my sister, who had a BA in Psychology, and teaching certification in Special Education in Virginia didn’t think I had anything wrong with me.
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