Moms Book Club

It is estimated that today over 4 million school age children have some type of learning disability.  Today I would like to talk about one that has affected me: Reading Disabilities.

If anyone had told my parents or teachers that I would become a prolific reader they would have said “not a chance”. You see in the 1950′s (I am dating myself) there was no such thing as learning disabilities unless you were severely retarded, then you were generally sent away to a special school. But people like me were just thought of as lazy, slow, stupid and a lot of other terms that I don’t like to remember.

I grew up thinking it was all true, that not being able to read or understand what it was I was reading was my fault. It never occurred to me that I had a learning disability after all the term was not used. Even my parents treated me as if I was somehow inferior with learning.

The awakening came in high school actually, when I was required to take what was then a remedial reading class, or speed reading. It taught me how to pick key words and phrases from a paragraph and then I had to write what the paragraph was about. By the end of my senior year I was reading pretty well, but the stigma was still with me.

I compensated throughout college and graduated. But the feeling of not being able to understand is with me today.

I have learned however, through the learning disabilities of my three boys that everyone learns at a different pace. Two of my boys are dyslectic and do not always comprehend what they are reading, the third was diagnosed with ADD early on. Through a wonderful set of teachers and administrative staff they got the help they needed early on and now read up to a book a week.

What is the purpose of telling you this? Simple: Don’t put labels on people of any age. I now read a book a day, sometimes two, have 7 blogs online and am guest writer on 1 other blog. It took believing in myself then finding books that I like to read.