Personal Narrative: My Experience With Learning Disabilities

Ever since I was young, I knew something was different about me. I’ve always had an active imagination and would write all kinds of stories, sometimes through pictures and sometimes through words. Not until I was in first grade did I notice my writing was different than my friends. It didn’t bother me though because I was too young to realize something was wrong; I was just different. One weekend, after playing restaurant with my mom and brother, my mom contacted my teacher to talk about some concerns she had with my reading and writing. She was told that I seemed to be progressing on an age-appropriate level with my peers and that nothing appeared to be wrong. But my mom persisted, and insisted that I be tested for a reading disability. My dad is dyslexic and my mom, knowing it can be passed down, was watching for the signs in my older brother first and now me. After testing, one of SV’s school psychologists announced that my results showed I had a learning disability. I then went to my pedestrian to talk about it and then to a special learning center in Sewickley for further

I was diagnosed with Autism when I was 2 years old and it has affected my entire life more than anything else I have experienced. It has impacted the way I socialize and communicate with people, the way I think and understand the world,and it also affected my speech and development when I was younger. Autism also affects the way other people see me and I’m often misunderstood. I don’t remember everything about my life at that time, but I do know that I struggled a lot to get to where I am today. I’m also aware that it will impact my future and force me to work harder than my peers. Even though I have Autism, I will always know that it doesn’t define who I am and that I will improve no matter what.

Amy was finally going home, and Jim was all thumbs when it came to helping her into the wheelchair to ride down to the car from her hospital room. She had balloons of every size and shape, flowers stuffed animals and cards which didn’t help Jim at all.

All of us are quick to judge no matter if the judgement is good or bad. It was the first time we spent Christmas with our family in Dallas. All the faces around us were somewhat familiar. Like every family gathering us kids were to play outside with the other kids, but this time it was different.

There were times when my mother was not satisfied with my progress in school , when the conversations would come up with her friends talking about how well their children was progressing in school, my mother would say my child is not doing as well as I expected

I always loved working with kids, but I always felt a certain way when I got the chance to work with kids who had some sort of special needs. I don’t know what it was I just felt happier when I got the chance to help someone who could not help them self. So when I saw the job posting for a house parent at the New Haven home for kids with special needs I jumped on it.

What if one day your child went from meeting his/her milestones to not being able to do anything, how would this change your life? An experience that happened to me in my life, I found myself facing a diagnosis of Autism for our oldest son. I felt helpless as a mother, because I knew that something was wrong with our son, but I was powerless to help him. He just stopped talking, eating, and playing overnight, I was scared, confused and dumbfounded. I called my husband at work crying, I tried to explain this to him, but I could not get the words out. My husband asked me to try and calm down so that I could try to explain it to him, I held back the tears, and said, “our son is not eating, he is not talking he cannot play with his toys.” He told

The biggest obstacle that I have encountered in my ability to read and write are my learning disabilities. I’ve went through 18 years of my life before they were identified, and they have caused me so much frustration. I couldn’t understand why other kids could read out loud so well and I couldn’t. I couldn’t understand why it took me so long to read only a few pages of a book when other kids were at the end of the chapter. I had no idea why I couldn’t even sit down to write a single paper when other kids were doing their essays in a span of a couple hours.

The summer of 1996, my father and I made the long trip from Amarillo Texas to Dallas Texas. Once there I went through a series of testing that lasted a few days and at the end of the testing I was diagnosed with dyslexia. While only being 6 years old I was oblivious to the fact that my entire educational career was going to be anything but easy.

My interests with regard to disability studies are hearing impairment in children, communication disorders, and mental illness. During my childhood, I was diagnosed with epilepsy. The epilepsy drastically impacted my life. My speech was incredibly delayed and I have short term memory loss. I would return each week to my piano lessons not remembering my previous lesson. It was extremely frustrating specifically because my teacher was unaware of my disability. These personal experiences first spiked my interest in the field of disability and their impacts on daily life. In addition, my grandfather is deaf in one ear due to a malignant that was removed during his thirties. Living with him, I saw first hand the difficulties associated with deafness.

Middle school has proven to be an unpredictable time in the lives of many teens. I found this to be the case for myself as well as many of my classmates. Although, it is also a time of self-discovery and trying to figure out where one fits in. Throughout my first year, I noticed some kids were being excluded. These were kids who had disabilities. People that went to my middle school were neither accepting nor pleasant towards people who differed from them. I decided to make it my mission to befriend the kids with disabilities and try to change the bullies' perspectives. I got involved in a program called peer insights which gave kids in the program a chance to get to know kids that might not be in their everyday classes. The 'mentors' (this

I have been taught right from wrong at a young age and I was given the option to decide what I want to do with my life. This means that my mom didn’t give me many rules, curfews, or restrictions on anything because she trusts that I will make the right decision. She wants me to experience going out with friends and having fun because if she wouldn’t let me, she knew that I would find a way to go out anyway and she doesn’t want me to end up the way that she did. My mom is my person of influence and the person that I want to be like. I never give up on something that I want, I overcome any challenging obstacles that are sent my way, and I always try to push harder and do the extra work that other people wouldn’t do. I try to get the best grades that I am capable of, be as involved with the school as I can, and make money for myself as well. My mom didn’t choose to have me and she didn’t have to but she did and my ultimate goal in life is for her to be proud of me and see me succeed and go off to college because she

I had to be honest, I was deadly curious about what they would look and feel like. It wasn't every day you got to see and touch the latest in prosthetics. Still, I felt ashamed even approaching the building, going so far as to check to see if anyone I knew was around before tapping on the automatic door opener. I just didn't need to deal with giving anyone false hope. I was never going to get any of these things. Ever. But if friends or family knew I was even coming to see them, well, I'd never hear the end of it.

Never having worked with children before or having any firsthand exposure to children with disabilities I could only use second-hand references to create an expectation of what I was about to experience. My own children are school age and I know how to manage them, but when I have previously been presented with other children to manage in a social environment it was awkward and I felt restricted in what I could and could not do. Likewise, special needs children were an alien concept to me, having only met a few people in my life who were intellectually or developmentally disabled. As such, I could only draw on the portrayals from media such as films and television and the limited coverage of disabled sports events to form a picture of what

On May 19th of 2016 one of my biggest goals had been accomplished. This showed a sign of success and hard work. On this day I had tested out of my IEP. That moment was so amazing and surreal it made me feel as if transformed for a child to a man. Many teenagers struggle with learning disabilities, I didn't want to just be another statistic so I worked as hard as I could to get where I am. One of the best way to keep myself focused was athletics.