My LD son failed freshman year

sbinaz
Fri, 07 Apr 2023 14:05:37 +0000

I have a good friend whose 11th grader son has severe dysgraphia and one other LD which I can’t remember right now. His dysgraphia is such that you truly cannot understand what he’s written when he writes it out by hand.

I think that your son has some maturing to do. He needs to learn how to embrace who he is. And PART of who he is…is somebody with learning disabilities. And part of embracing and accepting who you are also means learning how to advocate for yourself.

Speaking up for yourself.
Seeking out help at the start of the term, not halfway through after you failed the midterm.
Going to office hours regularly.
Confused about how to write a research paper? Go to the tutoring/writing center on campus. Right away.
Maybe use a “life coach” to meet with you virtually each week to help keep you on track about stuff.

There’s a couple of really good “Your College Bound Kid” podcasts from a few months ago in which they talked in good detail about factors that one should consider when you have a disabled student. I’ll go find them and will post links here later today. They brought up some excellent points…the main one of which was that parents should not expect the college to coddle their kid like they might have been in HS…that colleges have services and assistance for disabled students, but the student has to advocate for themselves, speak up, sign up for it, and TELL their professors what their accommodation needs are.

If a student isn’t even willing to speak up about that, then you have to get over that hump first.

I know someone who works at Univ of San Diego and that person recently went and asked a bunch of professors in the neuroscience and biology departments AND asked in the disabled students office about how this whole thing works (because they have a LD kid).

They were resoundingly told that this is VERY common…that about a good 25% of their students there get some sort of accommodation for a disability.

AND that it’s really no big deal like a lot of kids think. A lot of it results in extra time on tests and extra time to complete assignments.

But your first hurdle is that your son has to be willing to tell others that he needs help.

I think that starting with maybe ONE or 2 community college classes would be a good start.