As the new school year begins families with seniors with an NVLD are often faced with many difficult decisions as they consider which college(s) to apply to as college is expensive. Go to a community college that is cheaper but you will be mostly on your own when it comes to receiving support services or be willing to go to a college that has a comprehensive support programs that assists those on campus who have a disability? While there is no right or wrong answer there are things to consider.
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I recently joined The NVLD Project and it has allowed me to reflect on my past. The NVLD Project is an organization centered around bringing awareness and understanding to this hard to define disorder. I was diagnosed around 6 years old with a Non-Verbal Learning Disorder. The diagnosis was something intertwined in my sense of self. My earliest memories are at occupational and physical therapy. There, I would have to hold a fork and knife correctly to eat an Eggo waffle or I have to pick up pennies split on the floor one by one. To most this just seemed like a tedious task but to me it was Hell. I wanted to eat the waffle my way, with my hands.
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I’m writing this blog hours after jumping on a backyard trampoline while singing “Defying Gravity.” The adrenaline was rushing through me and I was out of breath. Afterwards, I couldn’t stop smiling and I felt so refreshed. I realized that I love doing activities that make me feel, as they say, “like a kid again.” I love anything that involves climbing, especially trees (read my first Ambassador blog). I love being on the swings in the playground, too. Deep down, I’ve always been this way. There are activities I can do now that I couldn’t when I was younger, simply because I often had no time.
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Ever since I was old enough to play sports, I always participated despite having relatively weak gross motor skills and low level of endurance. Those around me couldn’t quite understand why I kept participating, however, with wonderful coaches and strong family support, I was able to have a very positive experience. By reading this, my goal for you is to see that it doesn’t matter if you are last in a race or sit on the bench for team sports. What matters most is that you are part of a team forming strong bonds with teammates and coaches and learning how to persevere through the tough times.
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Long ago, in 2003, my mentor sent a beautiful teen-aged boy to my practice who needed help managing his homework and his writing, she told me. I met the family in their home, and the first thing I saw was how exasperated the father of the boy was with him.
“Look,” he said after sizing me up like the litigator he was. “I think you’ll be too soft on him. I want him to get A’s an B’s, I want him to turn in his work, and work harder. It’s Harvard or nothing, you understand?” He was furious with his son, and frustrated that the boy just couldn’t keep track of his assignments, didn’t seem to understand what was wanted of him in the deduction-based inquiry based curriculum in Chemistry. Writing for English when musing on theme? Forget it.
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After many years of misdiagnoses and going through many different schools, such as, Catholic, Montessori, Quaker and public school, I finally found the right school for me. A small private school tailored to my learning diagnosis. A private school that consisted of 25 students and 8 staff members; without this small private school I would not be where I am today.
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Having NVLD can often lead one to experience several challenges, one of the more common ones is expressing your feelings and needs. Sometimes this is due to not wanting others to know you have a disability and other times it’s due to the high level of anxiety you experience wondering what others will think of you. For me personally this was something that occurred often, and as a result it lead to some hard situations.
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One of the hardest things for many individuals with NVLD is their difficulty understanding social and communication clues. They are seen as either too friendly, too socially insensitive or both which makes things even harder. For me personally, even though I have come a long way, this is still an issue today and I certainly wish things were different.
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‘Mama Tried’ is a song by Merle Haggard, as well as a good summary of my mom’s determination to find an athletic activity that suited me, her neurodivergent, six foot tall, thin-then-chubby-then-normal, daughter.
NVLD throws a lot at you, and a huge part of this is physical coordination. My mom, an avid dancer and former cheerleader, tried to impart her love of movement onto me. But oh man, did I struggle! Tap dance was boring and focused on precision, ballet involved too much twirling and made me dizzy, and jazz required too much coordination.
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Reaching success requires not only hard work on your part but also having support from others in the process. For students with an NVLD this is especially true because of their diverse deficits and strengths. I can’t stress enough how important it is to remember the lessons taught to you by those who helped you through the ups and downs in life to reach success.
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