<p>My son, who loves history, English, languages, and non-mathy science has for the second year in high school gotten stuck at the (somewhat progressive, experiential) private school he goes to. He stopped going to school after getting behind in homework, got increasingly anxious, and this time round, we finally got him tested. It turns out that he has many patterns and test results that are similar to kids with full-blown NVLD, but it's not as severe as most kids. It does, however, interfere with his ability to do homework. He has slower processing times, can't draw or copy, has poor handwriting, and now has social anxiety only about school and homework. The tester said he probably would not be able to have any accommodations because he is "borderline NVLD." He's been compensating for years--and no one thought to test him earlier. But we have pulled him out of school (he wasn't going) and he is on medical leave while he goes to a academic/wilderness program that will help him come to terms with all of this. We have been advised that he shouldn't go back to his school, which isn't a problem for him. I'd like to look into a few of the special public schools and he's been talking about going to a boarding school that is more structured than his current school. Any advice on how we might be able to get funding for a boarding school and whether anyone with LD issues has found a good fit in a boarding school?</p>
<p>Your son sounds like a very resourceful person, and you as well sound very open-minded, dedicated and very fortunately for your son, curious and committed.</p>
<p>I just wanted to get that out. I am impressed and for some reason even a little touched by the story you’ve told so far, and think that just maybe he’s gonna do just fine. </p>
<p>I am a little bothered by what seems to be an “in limbo” diagnosis for him. I personally feel that that may more reflect a design flaw of parts of his assessment, or perhaps a mistake on the part of the test administrator or the person who analyzed your son’s performance, than it does a true picture of the significance of both his strengths AND his difficulties. I am of course a lay-person, and so am in no-way qualified to make such a claim or accusation with any influential credibility. It’s just an impression, and an admittedly biased one.</p>
<p>I, myself, am 37 years old, work in “severe” special ed and, in the interest of full disclosure, suffer myself from what is very likely N(V)LD, anxiety (frequently severe), and OCD. I’ve absolutely “run the gamut” as a patient/client of the medical/mental health arenas but for perhaps the “most exteme” consequences such as being an “involuntary inpatient” and of course any criminal behavior.</p>
<p>As you may already get, I am very verbose. I am also an extra-ordiinary “hair-splitter” - I am <em>very</em> literal. I’ve learned over the years to try and stop and think twice before acting on my previously unchecked interpretation of peoples’ meanings. Contrary to what seems to be recent popular belief, Rumsfeld did NOT coin the expression “didn’t know that I didn’t know”!</p>
<p>That has been the bane of my problem for my entire life up to hitting upon that very realization a few years back. How do you “ask for help” when you do not know that you need it? How do you ask for help for a problem you cannot explain - even as you are one of the most adept explainers there is!</p>
<p>The most frustrating and life- and hope-draining phenomena is to feel like you’re broken and that you’ll never, ever really reach your full potential. Back in 1994, I was having a particularly rough time. I absolutely had downright, gloves-off, “I can’t take this anymore” HAD it with a lifetime of being unable to make decisions, to negotiate what I still insist is the COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY ambiguity (laziness!!!) in typical social discourse, and of wrestling and bristling and crumbling under the ever-present faux-contradiction - sometimes (as in the case of my immediate “meat and potatoes” family" said ever so eloquently outright and out loud “how can you be so smart and so dumb!”. I’ll speak to that discrepancy a bit further down - the so-called verbal/performance differentiation in the measured IQ of folks dx’d with N(V)LD.</p>
<p>At any rate, I was in crisis, academically and emotionally, and couldn’t face the desperation yet again of having gone an entire marking period not having known to address - let alone HOW to address, the specific difficulties I was having. The final straw and most bitter irony was that I was about to bomb a course because I was unable to produce a written assignment! Yes, I am a long-way in my expository confidence today from where I was then, and if you think “paralyzing” is a melodramatic way to describe procrastination - and the <em>terror</em> that is behind its purest manifestation in which, on that horrible Sunday night in November some 14 years ago, I was perilously entangled, think again.</p>
<p>I was in trouble. I tore my dorm room apart (at this point it was nearing 4am), cried and yelled and cried some more, and called God out with every possible and most deliberately and brazenly irreverent and profane blasphemy I could put into words. I screamed a dare at Him (in words I won’t revisit here) to go ahead and try to send me to a hell that was worse than the one I was already in. I stomped my foot and smashed a glass and looked straight up and said “I said DO IT, you (editted)!!!”.</p>
<p>Then I took a piece of that glass and slashed both my wrists.</p>
<p>Obviously it was inevittable that I would leave college without graduating. I was granted a retro-active medical withdrawal, and that unfinished degree hangs over my head to this day.</p>
<p>And so do the problems that led me to fail in every possible way at that time. </p>
<p>And, believe it or not, I have never been hospitalized and haven’t even a formal NLD diagnosis. I do have Hydrocephalus, and have had my VP shunt since infancy. I do have an obvious gap in my verbal and performance IQs, and ever more acute the more importance is placed on time-limited tasks. Pressure of any kind is my absolute enemy, and thankfully, I’m at a point in my life where I have disclosed to my colleagues, and to some very smart professionals, the nature of my problems, and they are being very supportive. I am receiving support from the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission for issues around my inability (or difficulties) with learning or performing <em>ANY</em> task that isn’t precisely explained. Exxageration? I was “not rehired” a couple of years back from a summer job as a camp “activity head”, and I am convinced that that is a result of the boss finding me “obstinate” or “clueless” because I assumed, after this camp director had instructed all staff not to use the refrigerator just outside the nurse’s office, that I could still use the freezer portion on top.</p>
<p>No - I was NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT being “cute” or insubordinate or whatever. That is NOT in my character. It IS what I thought. Once, in second grade, the teacher asked the class “is there anybody’s paper I didn’t check?”. I raised my hand and (pathetically!!!) squeaked, almost desperately, “Mrs. Condon, I got a staaarrrrr!”</p>
<p>Oh, how do I remember this. The reaction really hurt.</p>
<p>“Do you want me to smash you?”</p>
<p>Similar difficulties are with me every day of my life. I still bristle when I remember my father’s reaction when, on a “practice drive” when I was on my permit, we had exited the grocery store and he paused and asked “okay, where’d ya park?”</p>
<p>Ugh. To this DAY I stand just outside the door of all stores (thank God for the dignity provided me by faking use of my cell phone!), and scan the parking lot from top left to bottom right until I spot my car.</p>
<p>Anyway, after several minutes, he “helped” by giving me a “hint” that it was next to a red van. Scan…scan…scan…scan…walk and scan…nothing. He looked at me in disgust as he led us to his car.</p>
<p>It was parked next to a <em>MAROON</em> van!!!</p>
<p>Et cetera.</p>
<p>The irony of this is that while the style and approach and tasks that are most suited to my confidence and success and completion, are those that are clearly delineated, absolutely crystal clear and verbally articulated, and unmistakably and doggedly UNAMBIGUOUS, this “black and white” approach causes some people to “miss the mark” at the diagnostic stage and thus continue to suffer.</p>
<p>I am glad to see that you seem to be finding something of a life that does and will work for your son, and I am touched and very definitely rooting for you and hope that things work out in a life that is absolutely STUFFED with love and fulfillment.</p>
<p>-stan shura</p>
<p>I also have a huge verbal-performance discrepancy on WAIS III with Verbal IQ 135 and Performance IQ 73. In my case, the reason is cerebral palsy which I have as a result of complications of premature birth. I’ve always had difficulties in school especially with English and History as opposed to Science and Math but managed to compensate and get good grades. I managed to get into a very prestigious college and my SAT score was 1350 (680 V, 670 M).</p>
<p>However, I could hardly do college and barely graduated. It’s been two years that I am out of college but I still don’t have a job. I do atrocious on interviews, but the real reason is probably that the job is not right for me. Given my deficits, it is so hard to find a job which I can do well. I am really at a crossroads in my life and can’t find my place.</p>
<p>In some (rare) cases, a local public school district can be required to pay for a private boarding school if it can be demonstrated that the public school district cannot provide an appropriate educational environment. It is my understanding that the paperwork involved usually takes years. Rather than spend years pursuing this issue with our local school district, some of my friends opted to send their son to private schools on their own. Mom went back to work full-time in a better paying job and to took all of the overtime hours that she could. Her paycheck went to pay for the private school from grades 4 through 8, and then an LD boarding school for grades 9 through 12 plus a “post-grad” year. Dad’s job supported the family.</p>
<p>I fear that in your case, there are no easy answers.</p>
<p>Wishing you all the very best.</p>
<p>My D was diagnosed with NVLD at the age of 14 along with probable ADD. She is VERY verbally oriented and isn’t good visually or with symbol. She is also extremely smart, but has poor working memory. Her SATs were around 450 math and 630 verbal.</p>
<p>High school was very difficult for her and she eventually left, took the HS proficiency exam, and then went to community college full time. She eventually transferred to a 4 year college (with a block plan) and with only one accommodation (the replacement of a stats class), she graduated and went on to grad school at an Ivy League university.</p>
<p>She really, really struggled at times (and still does), but things have gotten easier as she has gotten older and been allowed to specialize her educational choices. I don’t think a boarding school would have been a good thing for her, but it might be in your situation. </p>
<p>I do wish you the best and would suggest that you pursue getting a really good diagnosis, as “borderline NVLD” doesn’t seem terribly helpful and any type of funding seems unlikely without a more definitive diagnosis.</p>
<p>Hi Lyre!</p>
<p>I am just curious in what field did your daughter pursue graduate school? Did she finish graduate school and does she work in this field? At this point, I feel very discouraged about my future, so I am very interested in others’ success stories.</p>
<p>Hi itsmehere,
my daughter is in the first year of a Master’s degree program. She wants to go on to get a PhD and be a professor in the humanities. Since she is so verbal, being a professor who lectures, discusses, and writes, seems like a good fit. </p>
<p>I have two children with different LDs and I would suggest that you sit down, maybe with someone who knows you well, and honestly assess your strengths and weaknesses. You obviously have strengths as your SATs are good, did you go to a college that supported your disabilities? What sort of careers interest you?</p>
<p>We were very discouraged about my daughter’s prospects when she left high school at age 16, but things are going well for her now … hang in there, finding a job is tough, even without a global economic recession. :-D</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I went to college that was way over my head–Wellesley. I struggled immensely there and barely graduated. In high school, I was so captivated by prestige, that I did not think about what’s best for me. In high school, I liked science because it’s based on linear logic and struggled with English and History because they require synthesizing information and reading comprehension–my big weaknesses. However, in college I realized that I can’t do science because I hate lab and my grades in it weren’t great. I ended up graduating with a major in Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences but I did not really learn anything in it. It was a wrong major for me and I absolutely hated it but did not change because I wanted to graduate on time. Come to think of it, I did not learn much in college; I just struggled.</p>
<p>Now, my weaknesses impede me in getting a job. It seems like there is really a limited number of jobs that I can perform. My future does not really look good and I really don’t know what to do.</p>
<p>I think it’s really common for people with LDs to feel this need to prove that they are smart, particularly when they are both “gifted” and LD. My daughter made this mistake in HS, choosing to attend a prestigious private school over a smaller, more supportive one. She was miserable until she dropped out sophomore year. She went on eventually to a very small obscure college (the only ones that would admit her) and now she’s at a prestigious grad school. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, if you scraped by to get your degree, you probably aren’t looking at grad school, even if that was something you wanted to do. You should try to figure out what you would be truly happy doing. This might involve a counselor of some sort who could help you sort it out. It’s amazing how many people get degrees and end up doing something unrelated to their degree. It’s okay.</p>
<p>Tomkat,</p>
<p>My daughter spent the last two years of high school at a boarding school that is dedicated to educating LD students (Eagle Hill School, Hardwick, MA). It changed her life. We did not try to get our local public school system to provide funding because we thought it would be a big battle that we did not want to fight, although other students at Eagle Hill are getting funding. What we are able to do is to get a tax deduction- the school provides us with a letter that we include with our tax forms. She is graduating this spring and is planning to attend an art school for a BFA in photography.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your thoughtful replies. I am beginning to see how many different paths people can take and still end up – after some struggles-- finding a niche for themselves. </p>
<p>It’smethere, I’m sorry you still feel that you’re floundering but as some of the others have said, you seem to have a number of strengths which you can play to. The hard thing about school is that you have to take all the courses, including ones you’re not good at. But you have helped me, because my son wanted to go someplace more prestigious, too. We are now looking into places that he never would have originally considered. It’s been hard for him, but a number of people have told him it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond. It’s not the size of the pond really as much as the competitiveness, I think. Good luck to you in following your dreams.</p>
<p>I have a friend whos daughter goes to Franklin Academy in CT. This school is specifically for non verbal learning disabilities and because it is on the state approved list you can get funding from your district. You probably will have to find a lawyer, but they take you pretty seriously once you do that.</p>
<p>Private schools that are specifically set up for Learning Disabled (Eagle hill, Lindon hill, Winchester etc etc etc) will help, but the average private or prep school is not set up to provide the accommodations needed for “success.” </p>
<p>Prep schools are a disaster for students with compromised homework, self organization or executive functions. In most states the local public is a much better choice, with its required programs, then a private school.</p>
<p>I hate to say it, but realistic adjustment of expectation will lead to a less conflicted life.</p>
<p>Toadstool,
Can you recommend any colleges for a student like this?</p>
<p>Sorry, I have no data on colleges.</p>
<p>Could I suggest that you check the websites of LD board schools; most schools list a college matriculation list. Where past students went is a track to follow.</p>
<p>Look into Mitchell College in CT, it has some great programs</p>