| Two super smart kids with LD's, both diagnosed late. Get your accommodations early and USE them or you will get turned down for help on the SAT/ACT. Although my son turned out not to need accommodations, his initial application was rejected by Collegeboard before his first (and only) SAT even though he had been on a 504 and medication for two years. (who knows why?) Those "labels" you fear may well be the thing that helps your bright son get accepted into a top college! I sincerely think it helped my younger son to explain discrepancies in his transcript with the LD diagnosis. The fact that he had been on a 504 for 2 1/2 years authenticated his explanation. I agree that most teachers fail to grasp that a bright child can have LD's. Most simply think the kid is lazy. Funny, if a person in a wheelchair was a world champion arm wrestler, no one would say that person could get out of his chair and run a marathon if he really wanted to/applied himself, but people often think a smart kid can overcome learning disabilities just by "trying harder." I also happen to think that the sooner all of us parents stop accepting that these labels are negative, the sooner other's attitudes may change. A diagnosis of a learning disability is simply taking a picture of how an individual's brain learns. We are all different in both appearance and abilities. The label is like an ingredient list on a food item from a store. Not necessarily good or bad, just a description of what is inside. |