On October 19 the LDA of New Jersey will have a conference. The conference goes all day, from 8 to 4. It will be held at the Livingston Campus Student Center of Rutgers University in Piscataway, NJ. For full directions and registration see www.ldanj.org. I will be speaking from 2:30 to 4. My title is […]
10 things having a learning disability doesn’t change
May 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment
People with learning disabilities have significant challenges in life; I am not one to minimize those. And there are ways we are different from neurotypical people and I don’t want to minimize those, either. But it’s easy to lose sight of the many things that having an LD doesn’t change. Here are some:
Figuring out how we learn best: Don’t change the peg, change the hole!
May 21, 2014 by 1 Comment
There is an old saying that “a square peg won’t fit in a round hole”. Yet much of education, especially for those of us with learning disabilities, seems to consist of trying to force a square peg into a round hole. But can we change the hole?
Disability is not disaster
May 19, 2014 by Leave a Comment
I have written elsewhere that I refer to my condition as a learning disability rather than a difference. I’ve been thinking some more about why there is antipathy towards this; I think some of it is because we tend to hear “disaster” when we hear “disability”.
Diagnosing the dead and famous
May 9, 2014 by 1 Comment
Lots of people try to diagnose the dead and the famous. “Did XXX have YYY?” questions are all over the place, as are more assertive statements that, in fact XXX did have YYY. Given how hard it is to diagnose people, even if the person is not only alive but being seen by a qualified […]
Accommodations at home
March 5, 2014 by 4 Comments
In previous posts I’ve looked at accommodations at work and at school and I’ve asked “who are they accommodating?” Now, accommodations at home for people with nonverbal learning disorder.
Accommodations: Who are they acccommodating?
February 27, 2014 by 1 Comment
In this post I discussed accommodations at school; in this one – accommodations at work; in a future post I will discuss accommodations at home. But today, I want to discuss a more general question: Who are they accommodating?
Academic, social or behavioral? Can they be separated?
February 8, 2014 by 2 Comments
School age children with learning disabilities often have difficulties. Sometimes, people (teachers, parents, administrators, psychologists, the kids themselves) try to divide the problems into academic, social and behavioral. Maybe this is sometimes useful, but often, it’s a false division. All three play into each other in a sort of vicious circle; and the start of […]
Hey kid! Don’t freak out!
February 3, 2014 by Leave a Comment
So, you’re sitting in class and your teacher is bugging you and your classmates are bugging you and when you get home your parents will be bugging you and pretty much the whole darn world is bugging you. What to do? Well, I’ve been there and done that, about 40 years ago. I’ve cursed at […]
Not the “right” label but the “best fitting” label
January 30, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Labels. The special education world is just chock full of labels. Sometimes these labels are used strictly for funding purposes – such labels are often drawn directly out of the latest DSM and correspond to some diagnosis listed there. But other labels are used to help people (parents, teachers, administrators and – oh my! – […]
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