My Nonverbal Learning Disability And The Role Of Reading And Writing

Reading and writing were and still are integral part my life. Reading and writing helped me feel comfortable about my condition and eventually helped me develop my social skills. Because of my condition nonverbal learning disability (NLD), I had a hard time formulating sentences and speaking.

When I was four years old, I learned the alphabet. My mother mostly taught me the alphabet herself. However, I learned my alphabet in a very unusual way. The way I learned the letters “N-Z”, then I learned the traditional way “A-N”. Then at that point, I put them all together. From the earliest years of my youthful days, reading was very integral and important part of my life. My family, especially my mother and older sister, they both loved to read a lot. My mom not only taught me the alphabet when I was young, she also made sure that I was supplied with lots of books. When I was really young, she purchased picture books for me and she checked them out of the library as well. She read to me a lot when I was young. She would read night after night, I would ask her to read maybe two or three books a night. That to me is how developed my reading skills and read at age six. It was really weird for me that I learned to read so early, because unlike the speech skills of most kids with NLD, mine were delayed.

It took me a while to speak and eventually I said my first words at the age of three; my first sentence was when I was five years old but I still used baby talk when I was six. In the second grade, I still couldn't pronounce the blend “th” years of age; my I would say instead of “th” I would say the word with an “f”. Many people thought i was mentally retarded, I even went to a school for the mentally retarded just because of how I spoke and non-developing social skills. But when I finally learned how to formulate words and speak, I became pretty chatty, very talkative by nature. Then people in my class or family would complain that “You talked too much!”. Which kind of suppressed my social skills little bit. Then at some point in my early childhood years, I discovered the wonders of creative writing. When my sister and I were young, we would write stories together and try to make each other laugh or scare each other. I can still remember my very first story that I wrote, though I can no longer recite it by heart. But I remember that it was short, and it talked about the tale of the Wendigo. I wrote story after story (scary or funny). Whenever I was struggling with spelling a word, I would ask my dad or mom to supply it. And as a result, as is very typical for a child with NLD, my spelling and grammar skills were better than average for kids my age. Needless to say, from the very start, my family encouraged me to write and they enjoyed my stories. (Weirdly though, in spite of my years of writing, my writing is still the same and has never really matured. Even in college, my handwriting and typing is like that of my five year old self).

Throughout my life, I wrote stories not just for a grade but just because I enjoyed doing so. It really gave and still gives me a source of badly-need self-esteem. Because of NLD, when I was young sports were not for me at that time and my social skills were even worse. I sucked at math, though I was still decent at basic arithmetic calculations without too much difficulty. Even to this day, my mental math skills sink and are practically nonexistent, and math requires mathematical reasoning- such as algebra and geometry, which is hard for me. My chances for winning in playground games were, alas, virtually nil. But my reading and writing skills, were great and I could compete against the best of them.

Reading, writing, punctuation, vocabulary, spelling, etc., were areas I knew I could excel at. Also my creative writing. My love for reading and writing have enriched my life in so many ways. Through books, I’ve learned so much about myself like(my likes and dislikes) and I got to escape the harsh realities of the world and just got be a kid. It would be such a long list if named every book I’ve read in my whole life. Everyone in my family and friends helped me along the way. Writing has given me a creative outlet and developing my language-arts abilities. Reading and writing have played a vital role in helping me overcome my weaknesses caused by my disabilities and plays a greater role to me nowadays.