Personal experience on dealing with a learning disability at work.

Growing up and then up until I started doing research for my blog when I was around at 26, I thought that a lot of the panicking I did from having a learning disability, and possibly from other things that has to do with my brain anatomy was from me being lazy, or lacking motivation to put effort into my schoolwork. I got one on one help with my homework in the Sixth grade, but between the work load, my learning disability, and my memory in general it would take me hours each night, and sometimes cut into my sleep if not almost always. With all the effort I put into it that year I would still mostly only get C's. That part I was fully aware that it wasn't my fault, because a big part of it had to do with my low test schools. I would cram for tests and memorize as much as I could before the test, and then purposely forget everything so I would be able to do the same thing for the next test. So I would get to the point where it would be time for midterms, or finals and be screwed. It didn't help that my circle of friends were mostly honor roll students that year, and it at least felt like since they seemed to be stressing out far less about it, so I decided that it wasn't worth putting in the effort. 

When I decided to refuse help after the Sixth grade I would routinely forget to do my homework, and only remember the next morning when I got to School. I had to take a class my Freshman and Sophomore years that had to do with keeping track of homework, practicing note taking things among other things. I can't remember how much of that class included actually doing homework, but regardless it wasn't enough time. I flunked my Freshman year by half a credit, and I was flunking half of my classes at some point during my Sophomore year. A Teacher I had the next two years eventually made forced me to complete all of my homework in her class knowing that if I didn't get it done in School, that there was no way that I would be turning in those assignments, or at least not on time. Somehow she helped me get caught up, and was only half a credit short of graduating on time. 

When I was confronted about missing assignments usually during my IEP meeting finding those assignments involved fishing them out of my backpack. I would panic to pack up before class and throw any assignments I had directly into my backpack. I would always intend to reorganize my backpack later on, and of course it would only had several weeks after School started during my IEP meeting while trying to find specific assignments that ended up crushed in the bottom of my backpack. The same teacher that forced me to do my homework in my class, put a end to this habit as well. Although my backpack was still very messy, and barely organized if at all. Another thing was difficulty in forming habits, specifically hygiene and doing something specific in a class each day. What comes to mind right away when it comes to trouble forming habits is a assignment in 8th Grade Social Studies where we learned about the stock market, and we had to pick stocks and keep track of them daily for several weeks. I loved the idea but after a few days I unintentionally broke the habit of doing it. Not thinking to ask for help catching up, or possibly being nervous about it I ended up dropping the ball completely, and not completing the assignment for the next several weeks.

None of these things stopped being a problem after School ended. If anything it got harder in ways because in School most teachers were aware of learning disabilities, and in a way knew how to deal with it. I had a IEP, and had 2 or 3 Special Ed classes. On a side note I ended up staying or eventually ended up in those 2 out of 3 of those classes because of my black hole of a backpack, and refusing tutoring when it came to complex math classes. Knowing and talking to very regularly to two different people that has the same neurological disorder and learning disability that I do whom actually does put in the effort, or did while in School, I've learned that I probably would have freaked out. If I would have managed to not have missing assignments, then increasing the workload would have caused me to panic, and not get my work done.

As an adult, and working my learning disability has affected me in ways that wasn't as noticeable when I was in School. The two main things is grasping concepts, and having it take forever for me to pick up speed with new concepts. This only became a problem for the most part when I started working at Kroger. The only time my learning disability showed in restaurants jobs was when I would panic, especially in kitchen jobs when I would have to juggle multiple tasks at the same time and be risking burning food or not getting my part of the order out on time.

 

My position for Kroger is produce clerk, and I've been in the same department for almost 10 years. I was promoted from a courtesy clerk when my division restarted their cut fruit program. They had tried it at least other time before Kroger bought my division out. It lasted for 3 and a half years before they started to source it out, and it took me around 2 years before I was fast enough to always get everything done on time. I did strictly cut fruit for almost 2 years. After that for over 7 years including occasional "manager" shifts at stores that had 2 day loads where there was no ordering required the day of my shift. For the 8 months I've been strictly in the wet rack position. Basically everything that's on the wall or aisle in produce where everything needs to be kept wet is my job, including cucumbers, squash, and peppers because it's usually in the same section.Either each specific position or in general I had, and still have problems with organizational skills (especially when I panic), and forming habits. In addition I have trouble grasping concepts, or understanding the point of things. The trouble with concepts, and finding the point in things has to do with nonverbal learning disability as well. But it's either more obvious to me now, or there just isn't any childhood examples that come to mind.

Most if not all of my managers over the last 10 years, both store and produce managers has been understanding of my learning disability and usually without me having to explain. Certain managers gave me or provided me with enough hands on training where I don't really have a problem any new concepts anymore. What was done recently to avoid me panicking really badly when corporate or store policies change is to give me more than one day to switch over to whichever way things are supposed to be done. The way that I eventually got better at organizational skills is realizing how much extra effort I have to put in to fix everything after, and remembering that. I have a backpack for personal use because I don't drive or have a roommate who does. It still gets messy quickly, so I'm not sure how realizing that solution earlier would have helped. When it comes to habits what I started to do is write every habit that I forget at work, and when I'm confident that I've learned that habit, I cross it off. No comment on how long it took to make a habit to write down my list of habits that I need to make a habit of. 

One of the main reasons that I've stayed in the same department for so long is because I want to avoid a learning curve in a completely new department. There however is other departments that I've helped in that I struggled far less in. So if there's ever a problem in my department that won't resolve itself I have options that I'm not too nervous about. Just a reminder I haven't completely resolved all of these problems after almost 10 years of doing the same job. But it has gotten far easier to deal with. My point of this post was to encourage others with similar learning difficulties, trying to help those people be understood, and provide possible solutions.

Paraphrasing the Hydrocephalus Teacher's Guide: Learning Disabilites (Part 1)

 

I've been paraphrasing the Hydrocephalus Teacher's guide section by section. I was lacking motivation to do it after the first post, but I'm fairly confident that I'm ready to start posting every other week, or every week depending on my days off, or if I need a break. The next section I'm going to focus on is learning disabilities, and I'm going to be splitting it between multiple posts. I'll be focusing on mostly nonverbal learning disability. There a 4 different specific learning disabilities that's the most common. The first is Nonverbal learning Disability. The others are difficulties in understanding both complex and abstract concepts, and retrieving stored information. The last one is spatial/perceptual disorders, 

 

When children with hydrocephalus have learning disabilities it usually doesn't become apparent until the 3rd or 4th grade when the learning material becomes more complex and abstract. Children with hydrocephalus are likely to have learning disabilities involving processing information as well, and this also becomes more common around the 3rd or 4th grade as well. 

 

People with Nonverbal learning disability have problems processing nonverbal information. They struggle with learning new concepts, which definitely isn't limited to school work. It causes them to need to have the new concepts multiple times, and it takes them longer to pick up the pace if needed. Same with picking up social cues. Children with nonverbal learning disabilities tend to do well in early Elementary school with a few exceptions including fine motor skills. It becomes far more apparent later,  possibly as late as the beginning of Middle School when they are left to handle tasks on their own. The Teacher's Guide lists a lot of common things that happen at least during these years that may appear to be laziness, but isn't necessarily, These include not being prepared for class, missing assignments/homework, having trouble understanding texts, Social Studies specifically. Other common things are misunderstanding directions and their teachers and peers.  Again these behaviors may seem like bad behavior, but it's actually the result of child struggling. When it comes to verbal abilities usually have a easy time learning words and pronunciations, but have trouble understanding the meanings via text. 

 

Two other things that were mentioned was children with nonverbal learning disability often being in denial or their learning disabilities, or even their Parents. Also it mentioned that they are commonly anxious in public, and angry at home. 

 

Coming from my own experience I started falling behind in the 4th grade. I might have in the 3rd grade, but I had a great teacher who helped me a lot more than the last 2 teachers I had in Elementary School. I was failing almost all of my classes in the 6th grade mostly because of the sudden work load. I worked what I definitely felt was a lot harder that some of the kids in my friend circle, and ended up only getting C's. My biggest issue was not remember what I would read in my textbooks. Then retaining that information until I took my test, and needing to do the same thing again for the next text. So in a sense I gave up, and put very little effort into until my junior year. Somehow I managed to only be one semester behind, and half a credit from graduating on time.

Paraphrasing the Hydrocephalus Association's teacher's guide: Social and emotional issues (part 2)

I'm going to try to pick up the pace, but I've been very slowly going through the hydrocephalus association teacher's guide and paraphrasing it to save others from having to attempt to read the whole thing. I've going through the sections with what is least known instead of from front to back. I'm going to focus on social cues and skills. My last post from 5 months ago was based on depression and isolation.

 

Many Children (and Adults) with hydrocephalus may having learning problems, and that might include Nonverbal learning disability. One of the symptoms of NVD is the near inability to recognize verbal and nonverbal cues. This results in missing social cues like facial expressions, gestures, and tones of voice. That results in taking things like sarcasm literally that has to do with the tone of voice. If it's not explained it can be very hurtful if not explained. Problems with social cues is not limited to facial expressions and tones of voice though.

 

Other social problems that some children with hydrocephalus is being very talkative, but there conversations aren't very thorough and they may process information slower than normal, which might cause problems with their peers. This results in it being common for them to befriend children younger than them. 

 

The last thing is that they might have problems with distance and spatial issues, resulting in them either being too close or too far away. If they're too close it tends to result in the person wanting to get away from them right away, and if they're too far away eye contact is difficulty, which results in them getting ignored. All of this isn't limited children. But since I'm paraphrasing I don't want to get off topic doing more research at the moment, and I definitely don't want to assume things.

 

Hydrocephalus Association Teacher's Guide:  https://www.hydroassoc.org/docs/A_Teachers_Guide_to_Hydrocephalus.pdf

The first post in my series of posts:  http://timothy-landry.blogspot.com/2020/05/paraphrasing-hydrocephalus-associations.html

Paraphrasing the Hydrocephalus Association's Teacher's Guide: Social and emotional issues (Part 1)

For anyone that I've met in the last 5 years that's reading this, or otherwise is coming across my blog for the first time I started writing this blog several years ago about growing up with a neurological disorder, hydrocephalus. I eventually started writing about a wider range of topics. After a few years of writing consistently I needed to take a short break from it. I attempted to start back up soon after but I was burned out on it still, and ended up taking a much longer break than I expected. The reason behind had to do with personal problems that caused me to at least think that I had to drop a lot of things to deal with it. What gave me the inspiration to start back up, ended up being more changes in my personal life. The main thing is befriended and having the opportunity to help a younger person with that has the same neurological disorder that I do.


I'm going to be paraphrasing the Hydrocephalus Association's teachers guide section by section, while writing about similar topics and posts that I didn't finish before taking a break. I'm going to go through it backwards because the topics that seem to be least known is at the end of the guide. I'm going to start with the Social and emotional issues section, and the main topics are isolation, social cues. Skills, and depression. I’m going to focus on isolation and depression, and I'll be writing another post soon that will focus on social cues and skills. My goal is to keep these posts short, and easier to read.


It's common with children with disabilities in general to feel socially isolated. It's even more common with children with learning disabilities, because problems with social cues can be involved, which can cause them to feel left out or feel different. The problems with social cues and skills can cause them to have fewer friends, and cause them to having a harder time interacting with their peers. It might not be obvious either because most of their friendships may be superficial. They may also try to make up for it by only socializing with adults.

The certain result of isolation is anger. This is mentioned two different times in the guide. The first time saying that feeling left out or different can lead to emotional problems. The second time it's a lot clearer. For some children with hydrocephalus the anger can result in violent outbursts that may seem irrational or frightening. Partially because of this it's common for children with hydrocephalus to be misdiagnosed with ADD or emotional disturbance. It's also common with children with hydrocephalus, and likely other disabilities to develop depression or anxiety disorders. Part of the reason for developing depression may be having little hope that their situation would improve.


Personally my reaction to a combination of isolation and consistent bullying in Elementary School was not making much of an effort of coming out of my shell which probably made the isolation part worse. Having a speech impediment, and the slow process to learn how to speak well enough to be understood by most people didn't help other. I had a sudden and obvious situation in the 5th grade that caused me to realize how people saw me, even if it was obvious to me as soon as I started school because I had barely started learning how to talk, and a few other things that I had trouble with at the time that was obvious to other kids, and obvious to me that it wasn't something that was normal for school aged children. My reaction to both the situation in the 5th grade, and the years of isolation of bullying before that was rebellion. I was definitely very angry too, but I didn't really express that anger in obvious ways until I was a teenager. For me the rebellion was pretty low key, but seemed more intense at least because of growing up in the church, and not seeing a huge difference between excessive swearing, and what other kids without, or sometimes with the same background would have done if they went out of their way to rebel.

I had some realizations in early high school that made things even worse for me, and looking back I assume that hormones didn't help much either. I became angrier while still not making it obvious. My reaction was becoming really self-conscious, I already was some, but it got worse. I had become a lot more social in Junior High. But reacting to my realizations made me far less social, hormones probably didn't help with this either. It resulted in more anger that was far more obvious, and more spontaneous and frequent. I ended up reaching out to someone that managed to calm me down a lot in general before I finished high school.



Source:  https://www.hydroassoc.org/docs/A_Teachers_Guide_to_Hydrocephalus.pdf