I had a terrible secret while growing up. Although I was in gifted programs in high school, I suspected-even knew-that I was not really very smart. In fact, I thought I was stupid. I wasn't sure how that fit into a few facts from my past: reading novels before other kids could read a pre-primer, curling up with a good history, teaching myself to diagram sentences at ten for the fun of it....All I saw was that some kinds of learning were incredibly hard for me. I couldn't be learning disabled, though. I was a terrific reader. Didn't everyone with learning disabilities have reading problems? I had difficulty writing for any length of time, had trouble memorizing, and could not learn to understand foreign languages, even though a test showed an aptitude for them. I had trouble concentrating on lectures, even when I was interested. I was disorganized and uncoordinated. Teachers had no trouble explaining my problem: I was lazy and unmotivated. All I had to do was try harder.

Well, they had no idea how hard I did try-at first. Later, I gave up because I didn't know how to fix what was wrong with me. I was very proud of being considered the smart one. I lived in terror that someone would find out my secret and I would lose my identity. I decided it was better to let everyone think I was lazy than to let them find out my real secret.

It was not until my own children were diagnosed that I understood what had been wrong with my childhood. Dysgraphia, ADD, and a few other non-linguistic learning disabilities explained a lot. Since then, I have given a great deal of thought to the challenges of the learning disabled teen.

The challenge is serious, whether the teen has just been diagnosed, or has grown up with the diagnosis. Every LD teen knows that some people consider him stupid, not understanding the difference between a learning disability and a low IQ. A teenager's self-esteem is almost always challenged anyway, and the LD teen has more worries than most. While others are working their way through Shakespeare, the LD teen may still be struggling with grade-school level material. Those without reading disorders may be attending regular classes with teachers who simply don't understand. Most teachers still think that students who read well can't really be disabled. The problem is that so many LD people are brilliant one day-or one minute-and seemingly stupid the next. The inconsistency is what convinces teachers the problem is really laziness. A teen can internalize this misconception and start to believe the teachers.

Continue to part 2 of Helping Teens Manage Their Learning Disabilities

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(This is my author identity. You're welcome to find my regular identity, too, but you're warned--it gets lots of religious stuff, politics...whatever I feel like posting. The author one mostly gets homeschooling and writing unless I forget who I'm signed in as. Yes, I play Farmville and Frontierville on both identities.