Red Room Where the Writers Are

Raising NLD Superstars: What Families with Nonverbal Learning Disabilities Need to Know about Nurturing Confident, Competent Kid

Oh it's so easy to talk about being different being a wonderful thing.  But when you're twelve and your family moves from a middle class area of New York City to an affluent suburb, and your records don't arrive at school for six weeks, it's hell.

"Treasure your differences, Pia," your father says.  Ha?  I think. He's crazy.  In the city I was in advanced classes.  Here I'm in regular Seventh Grade classes and can't learn Spanish, math, science, even English--and I always had the highest grades in the grade for both reading speed and comprehension. 

Without my records I'm just a dumb girl who can't learn.   

We take buses to and from school.  They wrote the bus numbers down on my first day.  Fifteen in the morning and nineteen in the afternoon.  Usually I'm so disorganized I lose all my papers.  But I hold onto this paper tighter than I have ever held onto anything.

I show the paper to the bus driver on the ride home.  He nods yes.  At the end of the ride I find myself in a place I have never seen before.  It's older.  The houses are closer together.  I have no idea where I am and am scared to ask the bus driver.

When I get off the bus I start walking. There's nobody out to ask where I am and even if there were I probably wouldn't.  I want to cry but am too well-mannered.  Somehow I walk in the right direction.  I walk on overpasses over highways. I have never had to pee so badly in my life.

Finally I see the strip mall that's near our house.  There's a phone booth.  I take a dime and call the number my parents made me memorize.  My mother answers as the pee comes sliding out of me. It's my first ever accident and I'm humiliated but so glad to hear my mother's voice.

I tell her I made a horrible mistake and took the wrong bus.  I'm so scared my parents will hate me.  I read her the bus numbers and she tells me that the school inverted the numbers.  It's not my fault.  My parents have been in deep contact with the school.  My father's out looking for me.  He calls on the other number and soon finds me.

He hugs me deeply despite the pee.  "It's not your fault," he keeps telling me but I don't believe him.  Surely school officials couldn't have made such a stupid horrible mistake.

Six weeks later my records finally arrive.  The guidance counselor asks me, not my parents, if I want to be in the honors class.  I'm doing so horribly I know there's only one acceptable answer and say no to the counselor's relief.

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I don't know what's wrong and won't know for many decades.  The day I begin college I tripped and a boy fell in love with me.  It takes me ten or more times to recognize him--that, not recognizing social cues, my learning disabilities are part of non verbal learning disorder (NLD).  But then we just think I'm adorably weird.

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I don't know I'm not supposed to make friends easily so except for the horrible Junior High School years I usually make many friends.  I don't know I'm not supposed to do well at jobs so at first it seems as if I can move mountains.  I don't know that many people with NLD can read verbiage but can't comprehend what they read without help.

In grad school for social work, I passed the licensing exam in 45 minutes out of four allotted hours.  Actually I probably passed it in half hour but changed answers to ones I liked better as I knew I passed.

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I'm turning 60 on Monday.  I want this next 20 or so years to be incredible.  It's not that I want my writing to be centered around NLD or to be an older poster-child for it, but I lived so long not knowing  what was wrong with me.  My gait was off but I could ride a bike, even ice skate badly.  I can't dance to save my life but when I was young I was often photographed or filmed with the best dancer in a room.  I could fake  dancing easily.

And so I have faked my way through life.  I, the consummate Upper West Side New York coop owner, now owns a house in the South.  Through the years I taught myself organizing tricks as I'm about as organized as a house being hit by a tornado.

I'm through torturing myself with what I can't do.  So I couldn't work Xerox machines when I was young.  Now I have an all in one printer and am not ashamed to ask for help in changing the cartridge.  That's a big step for me.

When I moved here I made a vow to celebrate life.  Sometimes I backslide but much of the time I do remember my  vow.  My mother lived to see my last city apartment.  Wow did it look organized.  This house really is.  No matter what anybody says it's easier to live in five rooms than in two rooms.  It's easier to own a washing machine and dryer.  I revel in life's little conveniences for I know they make everything easier.

 I don't drive though I live in the coastal South but find people are always willing to drive me places.  And there are cabs.  You would want Stevie Wonder to drive before me, trust me on that one.  I have even made my peace with the high school driver's ed teacher who kicked me out as I couldn't learn the ten-two position.  He told everybody that I came to school stoned.  Not true, and I was too humiliated to tell my parents. When I finally told them 20 years later, they said that was the one thing they would have sued about.

Mr. Abelson found it funny.  I wanted to die but he never thought that I might be sensitive.  I wish I had the courage to have reported him then.  But I would have had to go through a system that supported teachers and didn't support girls who weren't athletic or scholars.

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Life is so much easier now.  My father used to say I lacked a sense of humor.  Then he would tell my mother: "it's not fair.  I practice my stories and they just flow out of her."  Yes. They. Do.