*Please note, I am not an expert on this, I am only sharing things from my perspective and things that I have learned along the way while living with nonverbal learning disability*
I’ve been procrastinating writing this post, mainly because I have no idea where to start or how to explain nonverbal learning disability in a way that people will understand, especially if you don’t live with it! Every time I have tried to sit down and write this post, I start thinking about a hundred different things I should or could be doing. So, I am just going to force myself to start writing!
To begin, nonverbal learning disability (NLD) is a learning disability that is not well known. This causes huge frustrations in my life, along with all the other NLD’ers out there. NLD causes difficulty with motor, visual-spatial, and social skills. However, not everyone experiences all these difficulties. For instance, my main struggles are with social skills, and I don’t have as many motor and visual-spatial deficits.
Examples of what someone with nonverbal learning disability may struggle with:
- Fine and gross motor skills
- Spatial awareness
- Organization and planning
- Activities that require multitasking
- Staying focused
- Recalling visual information
- Peer relationships
- Reading social cues
- Interpreting social interactions
- Handling and understanding new situations
- Interpreting nonverbal communication
- Understanding idioms, humor, and sarcasm
- Reading comprehension
- Essay writing
- Understanding charts and diagrams
- Math skills
My best understanding of NLD is that it causes individuals a huge hindrance with social skills. For my entire life, I have had very few friends. I have always struggled with peer relationships, and the ability to make and keep friends. Part of this is because I have a hard time keeping conversations going, reading social cues, and interpreting nonverbal communication. This had led to a life full of isolation, depression, and loneliness, which is no way to live. Over time, however, I have begun to work on and improve my communication skills.
Idioms, Humor, and Sarcasm
I have never really understood idioms, humor, or sarcasm of any kind. This has had a huge affect on my relationships. When people are sarcastic, I don’t always pick up on it, and may possibly take offense to it. Or, if they make jokes, I may not understand it and they may feel like I am too serious or lame, which has also affected my self-esteem and friendships. It has always made me feel like the odd man out in social situations. I have never felt like I fit in anywhere, even with family and friends whom I’ve known my entire life.
Academics
Luckily, I have not had a huge challenge academically. However, I did struggle with math in elementary and middle school. I always had a really hard time understanding geometry; the various shapes, and word problems never made any logical sense to me. However, this is not the case for some people with NLD. For instance, some people do okay in math in elementary school and it just gets worse as they move through school.
My biggest struggles, academically speaking, have been in English classes. Because of NLD, I have never understood symbols or themes, which has caused a lot of stress in high school English classes. When asked to find the theme, symbols, or was given reading comprehension questions, none of it ever made sense, and I ended up guessing most of the time. Thankfully, those days of English classes are behind me and I managed to get through them unscathed!
Visual-Spatial Awareness
My last big struggle is with visual-spatial awareness. When asked to copy a picture (i.e. If I was given an image or drawing and asked to re-draw it) I am not be able to do that to save my life. Even though I can see the image, I have an incredibly hard job recreating it, and it ends up looking nothing like the original picture. I’m not sure why this is, but I know that it has something to do with my NLD brain. This is one deficit that I would like to improve upon and get better at!
Lack of Understanding from People without Nonverbal Learning Disability
Teachers, doctors, administrators, etc. struggle to help us because of the lesser known aspects of nonverbal learning disability. Looking back on my high school days, the special education teachers didn’t really know how to handle me. They thought that I was just being stubborn and difficult when I said I couldn’t get to class or when I wouldn’t reach out to my peers to try and create friendships. They didn’t understand how hard those things were for me, and by forcing me to do things, it ended up doing more harm than good.
My high school days were rather traumatizing because of the lack of understanding and empathy from the special education department. I feel that teacher, administrators, etc. need to be more informed about NLD so that they can better help and support their students.
Nonverbal Learning Disability Misdiagnosed
Another common thing to happen to people with NLD is first being misdiagnosed. Because NLD is so similar to autism and ADHD, people are often diagnosed as one of those two learning disabilities before coming to the correct diagnosis of NLD. Thankfully I was not misdiagnosed, but there are many people who are, which just causes more frustration to their lives.
Sensory Sensitivities
People with NLD also experience a wide variety of sensory sensitivities from touch to sound to noise and so much more. This explains why I am so sensitive to certain textures of foods and am so particular about certain clothes. If clothes are not soft enough, I won’t wear that piece of clothing. Pants and shorts are my biggest challenge. If they don’t fit right or aren’t soft or stretchy enough I don’t like to wear them and they end up sitting in my drawer, gathering dust.
Executive Functioning
On another note, some people with NLD experience difficulties with executive functioning skills like time management, planning, and organization. I have not had huge struggles in this area, but there’s always room for improvement. In terms of organization, I have a hard time organizing things by similar categories. And I also have a hard time organizing and planning out homework assignments, especially when it comes to writing essays. I never know where or how to start and I end up procrastinating until a few days before the paper is due.
Raising Awareness about Nonverbal Learning Disability
My goal is to make more people aware of NLD because if more people understood us, than hopefully our lives would not be quite as difficult because parents, teachers, peers, etc. would know how to better help us in all aspects of our lives. It has been very exhausting to be with people who don’t fully get me or understand how my brain works and functions.
Even a little kindness and grace can go a long way to make someone’s day better. You never know what someone is going through and it can’t hurt to be nice. If you want to learn more about NLD or get more in depth information, I suggest visiting NVLD.org, or reading “NLD from the Inside Out ” written by Michael Brian Murphy (an NLD’er himself). In the meantime, send me an email or message with any questions about NLD or leave me a comment down below and I will do my best to answer them for you!