learning difficulties

I tutor — nothing professional, but I work with some students who need a little extra help after school to keep up. I love it, but as with any job, there’s some frustrating moments. Both my students and I get exasperated at times; my patience is low because I’m tired, they’ve had a rough day at school and don’t want to do homework, nobody is perfect and we all say things out of annoyance that we don’t always mean. One afternoon at work, I was coming up with some extra math practice problems to help reinforce a concept the student had learned previously that week, and both of us were just having a rough day. I finished and handed it to her, and I said: “Here, you’ve done these before, you’ve been doing them all week. I even made them simpler than your homework so you shouldn’t’ have any trouble with these. They’re easy.” I meant it to be encouraging, like “I made these to be easy” since I knew it was a tough concept and didn’t want her to get discouraged. She looked up at me as she took itfrom me. I knew she was going to say something, and I started to ask her to just try before she could get the chance to tell me she couldn’t do it. After all, I’ve known her for years; I was used to the whole “I don’t know how” argument. I didn’t say anything though, and her words completely changed how I thought about everything. “Yeah, maybe easy for you,” she said. “Not easy for me.” I was honestly speechless. She just stared at me while I recomposed myself for a few seconds and said, “You’re right, I’m sorry, I made these in the hopes that they wouldn’t be as difficult as the ones you had for homework tonight, but I’ll help if you need me to.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said something along the lines of, “Come on this is easy” or “You can do this, it’s simple” to students. Heck, I’m sure we’ve even said something like that to our friends, family, peers, coworkers, classmates, strangers, whoever, when we are frustrated that they can’t understand something. I say it in thatannoyed voice: “Why can’t you understand? It’s so easy!” Or other times, in response to my students or classmates, I mean it in a way to be reassuring: “This is simple, you can get it.” I realized that day that saying things like this is actually doing more harm than good. It made me think back to some situation I vaguely remember, yet have no context for — maybe from a book or inspirational video or something — where somebody was saying how you shouldn’t tell people that “it’s easy” when you’re trying to encourage them. I hadn’t really taken that to heart until this day when I realized exactly why it’s not helpful to say these things. Think about how you’d feel if you were struggling. What’s one thing you just have a hard time with? It could be a concept at work or school, a life skill, a personality trait you’re trying to work on, a video game, a sport, anything. For me, one thing would becontrolling my emotions. I’m a sensitive person, I cry if you cry, I cry if I’m mad, I cry if I’m happy, I cry at basically anything. Now imagine you’re in a situation where you’re already struggling with this thing that’s hard for you, and somebody says, “It’s easy, just do it.” How would you feel? Pretty annoyed, right? I know I would be; if I was in a situation where I was trying to keep my emotions in check, but somebody noticed I wasn’t being successful, and they were innocently trying to encourage me by saying, “It’s OK it’s easy,” I would be irritated. I’m already self-conscious about this because I know I’m bad at it, and telling me it’s “so easy” makes me feel like a failure, makes me feel “stupid” and incompetent. My student is right — that thing may be easy for one person, but it’s not easy for another, and it makes him/her feel like you’re invalidating the struggle when you try to explain how easy it is. That conversation has changed the way I see people when they’re struggling. I no longer say, “It’s OK, it’s easy” when trying to help with something. Instead I’ll say, “What is it that you don’t understand?” or “How can I help?” or “It’s OK, I know it can be hard.” The Mighty is asking the following: Share with us an unexpected act of kindness, big or small, that you’ve experienced or witnessed in an everyday place. If you’d like to participate, please send a blog post to community@themighty.com. Please include a photo for the piece, a photo of yourself and 1-2 sentence bio. Check out our Submit a Story page for more about our submission guidelines.

The first diagnosis my son ever had was global developmental delay, and like so many, I understood this to mean he was a little bit behind his peers but would probably, in time and with support, catch up. He was only a year old when we were told he was struggling and not meeting key milestones like sitting up unaided, making attempts at speech and playing with toys. I was in denial. I was sad. I stopped taking him places (probably one of the worst things I could have done in hindsight), and I plowed through each day willing him to learn skills others mastered with ease. I blamed myself. I cried myself to sleep at night. I sang to him, read to him and played with him for hours, but very little changed. As years went on, we collected diagnoses like a stamp collector collects stamps. The term “developmental delay” is now slowly being replaced by his doctors to “learning difficulties,” and I have come to accept he may not catch up to his peers. Over the last seven years, I’ve found so few people have any understanding of what “developmental delay” actually means. It’s such a huge, all encompassing, spectrum ranging from children with mild delays in some areas to children of school-age unable to weight bear or support their own heads. It covers children who are behind in reading and writing, as well as children who use wheelchairs or are nonverbal. It can be a stand-alone diagnosis or the effect of other more complex issues. Though every child and situation is different, here are a few things about “developmental delay,” as it applies to my son: 1. Some children do catch up, other’s don’t. My beautiful son will forever be developing at his own unique pace and may always need support in areas. 2. As a child gets older, the term “developmental delay” may disappear and instead be replaced by some form of” learning difficulty.” This does not mean the child no longer has delays, just that the way of describing those delays has changed. 3. Although my son’s development is behind, there is so much about him that will always be “age appropriate.” For example, he started eating solid food at the exact same time as other babies at around 6 month old. He lost his first tooth at age 5, and he wears clothes for his chronological age, not his developmental age. His body continues to grow and develop. He will still go through puberty as he grows, and he eats just as much as any other child his age. 4. Developmental delay is often unseen and therefore can often be classed as an invisible disability. This does not make it any less difficult for the child or adult. If you see a much older child still being supervised in a toilet or not talking when you speak to them, please remember you don’t know their whole story. 5. Milestones are worth celebrating at whatever age they happen. Child development has stages almost every child goes through, regardless of when it happens. A child with developmental delay may go through the same stages, just at a different time. For example, they learn to sit, then crawl, then stand, then walk. Or they learn to make noise, then babble, then the first word. If your 5-year-old is babbling for the first time, this is wonderful because at some point they may change that babble to a word. If your 4-year-old can stand unaided, that’s worth celebrating. 6. Developmental delay does not define anyone. Society may put pressure on people to compete, but that does not mean we have to. Life is not about the destination. It’s about the journey. Some are just enjoying the journey at a different pace, and that is every bit as wonderful as those who choose to run or sprint. As Martin Luther King Jr says: “If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” I can assure you, that is what my son is doing. If he can move forward, then I can too. However long this journey takes, we are enjoying it together. Follow this journey on Faithmummy.