Learning Disabilities (Differences)

It is not unusual for autistic people to also have learning disabilities, other co-occurring conditions that further complicate their lives, especially in school. I am not an exception. My entire educational career was plagued with difficulties that stemmed from undiagnosed learning disabilities. The system failed me because apparently I did too well academically to be flagged, and even when I didn’t do well, I was somehow smart enough to avoid detection. Perhaps if I had gone to a public school instead of a Catholic one the teachers there would have been more equipped to identify my problems, but public schools in New York City have a terrible reputation—I know, I used to work in one—so who knows what might have been if the dice had been thrown differently. My parents did what they thought was best for me, they always did, but it was the early 1980s and things were much different. Special education had not yet evolved into what it is today.

When I was in second grade, I could write as well as my peers. I hated doing it, and getting me to sit long enough to do homework was a challenge for my mother, but what angered my father was the fact that I frequently wrote in mirror images. I didn’t do it to be defiant. In fact, I have no memory of it being a conscious act at all. It’s simply the way my brain works. I set the words down on paper as instructed, but when my dad checked my homework at night it often made him apoplectic. I remember once—oh so clearly—he grabbed my wrist, dragged me into the dining room, and as he held my paper up to the mirror, he shouted, “I shouldn’t be able to read this.” Now, I can look back and laugh about it. But at the time I was hysterical, tears streamed down my face because I couldn’t understand why he was mad. I couldn’t understand what I did wrong. But the problem persisted. And when my parents brought me to the doctor for a routine visit, they inquired about my writing. Dad asked the doctor if something might be wrong with me since I got mixed up and wrote backwards. The pediatrician was the first medical professional to fail me. He told my dad not to worry. That many kids wrote letters or whole words in mirror images but they always outgrew it. He assured my dad that I would too. I didn’t. But like everything else I did that wasn’t quite right, or normal, or defined me as different, I learned to mask it, to hide it, and to behave in a way that would please my parents and teachers. Over time, I learned to write properly from left to right and I continue to do so to this day whenever anyone might need to read what I write. But if you look at my journals, diaries kept while I was abroad, you won’t be able to read them unless you have a mirror or a brain that works similarly to mine. When the world isn’t watching, when it’s not monitoring me or forcing me to conform, I fall back on what is most comfortable.

Despite that early blip, I did well in school. My father would not have tolerated anything less. I hated school, despised it for so many reasons, and the anxiety I felt to perform well didn’t help. Reading was difficult. I could read words easily enough, but comprehending page after page was impossible. That’s part of the reason I never performed well on standardized tests. They bored me. I could either force myself to sit still for hours upon hours or I could get my brain to focus on a story, I could not do both. I still can’t. My mind wanders, diving in and out of thoughts that sometimes connect to the task at hand but oftentimes do not. When the clock wasn’t ticking, when I had the flexibility to take work home, I did better, mostly because my mother sat with me every night and walked me through my homework. Then, my father checked it to make sure there were no mistakes. If there were, he made me redo it until it was perfect. My parents quizzed me before every test to make sure the material was drilled into my brain. As long as I knew exactly what was going to be on a test, as long as I could review that specific material, I always got As. Without knowing it, my parents were teaching me study skills and tricks to overcome some of my difficulties. They gave me maps to help me navigate a world that otherwise would have devoured me whole. Without training in education, they were providing support at home that is extremely similar to the support schools now provide for special needs kids. 

However, whatever skills I acquired to beat the system when it came to reading in middle school failed me when I reached high school. On my first report card, I got a C in English. There was no D in my school. There wasn’t even a C-. The standards in my high school were so high that failing was a 74. My 75 was an act of kindness on the part of my teacher. Even though I passed—barely—my dad was furious. He wanted to visit my teacher for parent-teacher conferences but I begged him not to. In exchange, I had to agree to see the school psychologist for some testing. What exactly they were testing me for no one told me. I can only assume they were testing me for either learning disabilities or cognitive deficiencies. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to go, but since I didn’t want my dad to speak with my teacher, I had no choice.

I wish I could remember details about the tests, but I can’t. At the time, I was bitter and angry about having to go. I was embarrassed to be there because my presence in the psychologist’s office seemed to indicate—rather strongly—that I was somehow defective. As a result, I blocked out the specifics, scrubbing my memory in an attempt to forget that once again I stood out, and not for something good.  I only remember getting called down to the psychologist’s office several times over the course of a few weeks. 

After the testing was complete, the psychologist called my mother to say she found nothing abnormal. Nothing to be concerned about. The only take-away was my brilliance when it came to solving mazes. Apparently, I was the only student she ever saw who needed to solve the maze before putting pen to paper, and I did it backwards. Each maze I started at the end and finished at the start. In retrospect, that should have been a red flag. I wasn’t brilliant. I needed to solve the puzzle first because I didn’t want to make a mistake, not one that couldn’t be erased, not one that someone else would witness. As a result, I didn’t get a diagnosis. I didn’t get help. I was tossed back into the classroom without any tools that might have helped. But, because my dad expected me to get on the honor roll every marking period, he and my mother continued to support me at home—making me read aloud, reviewing my essays before turning them in, and quizzing me before every test. 

My parents were great for filling in some of the gaps in my executive dysfunction, but they never actually sat me down and taught me how to become a better reader. Mom just read Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors with me every morning while we ate breakfast to ensure that the reading was getting done. Try as I might, I can’t figure out—or remember—how I eventually learned to comprehend what I read. Nor can I recollect how I started to read more analytically. I just did. I had to, if I was going to keep getting good grades. However, even now some books are too much of a challenge and I won’t read them—unless I’m forced to do so—it's too much work, but I won’t admit it. Not aloud. Not in conversation. I won’t actually say the words, “This is too dense, I don’t get it.” After all, I’m an English teacher. I can’t let on that I might still be deficient when it comes to reading. 

It was in my second semester of my senior year at New York University that I finally learned that I do in fact have learning disabilities. As always, I was doing exceptionally well in school. Over the years, I had mastered the art of being a good student—of absorbing information and spitting it back appropriately. Out of necessity—and perhaps a bit of natural intelligence—I found ways to succeed even with my challenges. To prove it, my GPA was hovering around a 3.5, which meant there really was no overt reason to even consider getting tested—again. Except for the fact that my roommate and friend, who was recently diagnosed with ADHD, dared me to get tested. After knowing me for three years, she identified enough similarities in our behavior and thought processes to confidently declare that she believed I, too, had some degree of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. (Are you sensing a theme yet? Friends doing what trained professionals did not or could not do.) I vehemently rebuffed her diagnosis, wrongly assuming that if something was “wrong” with me, it would have been identified long before I got to my final semester in college. One did not excel at a prestigious university if they had any underlying—undiagnosed, and therefore, untreated—disabilities or neurological differences. It seemed illogical to me. If there was anything faulty with my brain, it would have been discovered long before I turned 21.

My friend, always persistent, dared me to prove her wrong, and so, with the little bit of money I had saved up from working in the university gym, I scheduled an appointment. I showed up confident, trusting that by the time I walked out, I’d be able to tell my friend she was wrong. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint—that was not the case. When I walked out carrying a thick envelope with my test results, she was a fairly good sport. She only gloated a little. Again, I don’t remember much about the actual testing, except for what felt like endless reading comprehension questions, but I do remember clearly that along with Attention Deficit Disorder, I was also diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder. My short term memory proved to be poor which factored in why certain skills—like learning a foreign language and memorizing poetry—were impossible. When I inquired about the fact that I write in mirror images, the woman who tested me said that it was quite possible that I was also dyslexic but that would have required more testing—money I didn’t have—so I opted not to pursue it. I had gotten that far in life and school, and at the time I had absolutely no desire to go to grad school, so what was the point? Of course, I did wonder how much easier school would have been from the start if I had known my weakness earlier in my academic life, but I graduated from college with honors, so ultimately, I hadn’t done too badly. 

Now, in retrospect, I wonder, if I had pursued more testing, would that have led to an autism diagnosis sooner? Based on what I’ve read, and the fact that women still were not being identified in the mid-1990s, I doubt it. Would it have helped if I knew definitively that my propensity to transpose numbers and write from right to left were symptoms of dyslexia, maybe, but probably not. I read slowly, but voraciously. My life in many ways centers around books, which is odd coming from someone who once detested reading. I suppose I just had to come to it on my own terms, terms that did not include boring standardized tests, endless notes, and comprehension questions that felt more like busy work than anything else. But I can’t forget the pain and misery that plagued me all through school. I despised learning. I hated the work that felt eternal, the tests which induced so much anxiety I lost numerous hours of sleep, and the fact that I always felt as if I was the dumbest person in the room, even when I was winning awards. I struggled greatly, but my degrees—yes, despite swearing I’d never go back when I graduated from college, I eventually earned three masters degrees—my published memoir, and my career as an English teacher are proof, if nothing else, that I’ve become a master of masking my disabilities. And maybe that—masking—is my greatest skill of all.