As soon as you can, as slow as you need ... This may work for many kinds in a school environment, but the complete reverse was the case for my Aspie. Perhaps this was because I had no need to make her fit into a traditional LB output mode until she was ready to do so.

Also, regarding autism: this was in the New York Times today. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/immune-disorders-and-autism.html?src=me&ref=general And finally, regarding Scandinavian countries: I was fascinated to learn in a book called Finnish Lessons that up to 50% of all kids who go through the elementary and middle school system receive some kind or other of "different" instruction, whether that includes tutoring, being taught or shown the material from a different perspective or with a different methodology, targeted therapies, or whatever. They tend to move in and out of the separate instructional techniques rather than being stuck there. Because so many kids need more than just the standard classroom (LB??) approach, there is little to no stigma attached. And surprise surprise, by high school nearly all of these kids no longer need whatever different methodologies or approaches they did in earlier years. The SN high school population in Finland is apparently VERY small, and their overall national literacy rate very high. By high school most kids' developmental timetables have evened out with those of LB kids, and children who did need interventions got them. Now what I really want is a book specifically on those pull-out moments: what happens? Do the Finns acknowledge RB vs. LB patterns of learning and make sure RB kids get what different kind of presentation or emphasis they might need, what time and alternative approaches they might need? And by the way, ETA that Finnish high school tends to be much less time-consuming than here, kids are given much less homework, and they still perform near the top of almost every international comparative assessment across multiple subjects.

I just thought of a specific example from my daughter's experiences with VT that might (or might not) be useful. She did one bout of VT at age eight. It accomplished NOTHING. It was only when we went to our second round, at age eleven, that I realized the first place had been focused entirely on remediation as it applied in a school setting, particular with relation to reading tasks. The second set took a much more individualized and holistic approach, integrating much larger aspects of motor planning, fine motor, and vision. There were a number of different aspects of visual functioning that were still an issue for dd at age eleven. The ones that seem striking to me in retrospect, and in the light of this discussion, are these: 1) she still would look at L's printed in different alignments and say they all "looked right." She couldn't distinguish left from right. 2) she wasn't using her peripheral vision at all, and thus had terrible trouble tracking moving objects or seeing what wasn't directly in front of her. On issue number one, after 7 months of therapy (the second bout), she STILL thought L's looked right facing in any direction -- in isolation. I got furious at well-meaning people who would ALWAYS tell her, "Oh, just hold up your hands and make L's with each one, and the one that makes an L is your left hand." They didn't get that for dd, both made proper L's. Her ability to see shapes in any rotation and orientation was ahead of her still-developing 2-D or "fixed" visual sense. VT didn't change that, despite hours, days, weeks, and months of work on precisely that issue. A year later, despite my having done absolutely nothing more and letting the issue drop, she could use the hand trick and know which L was the correct facing one. She had developed that ability on her own timetable, a right-brained timetable. During all this time dd had no trouble reading. When she learned to read, by herself, quite early, she not only read right side up, but astonished me by looking over the table to what I was looking at on the other side, and reading it upside down; she also read things sideways. This was just right at the very early stage. I still can't figure out why it was necessarily an important task to be able to know which was a single letter L faced, in complete isolation from other letters, words, or meaning -- especially given that she was reading light years above grade level. She had trouble with reading smaller print, but that was only an issue because the books she wanted to read were adult books (adult Star Trek fiction at that point) and they came in a smaller font. If I'd had access to a large font library of Star Trek books, it wouldn't have been a problem! On issue number two, which was primarily a physiological and neurological deficit or glitch, VT made huge differences. After VT, dd could ride a horse in an arena with up to twenty other riders without panicking and freezing because she couldn't track their intended path or judge where they'd be after a certain time. She didn't like riding with that amount of visual traffic, but she could do it if need be. Those two separate issues, although they both were involved in her visual processing and functioning, illustrate, to me anyway, the difference between a right-brained normal that can be treated as an LD with no success whatever, and the kind of deficit that was not timetable related, but which was a real malfunction, for any kid at that age no matter how he or she learned.

On this particular board we have a mix of kids with LDs, physical and neurological disabilities, developmental delays, AND styles of learning which simply don't fit well with typical instructional methodology and timetables. It is hard to untangle all the various strands, and each child is so very different and so complex that sometimes making generalizations seems impossible. In my child, there are many right-brained characteristics that have made, and continue to make, her seem LD WHEN and only when you look at her through the lens of a conventional left-brained education. She resists direct instruction, until recently would have nothing to do with non-fiction (and if coaxed and urged and pressed, let it all drip right out of her brain), and had hugely disparate abilities in different areas. She did have some visual-motor deficits, but the MAJOR factor shaping her learning is her right-brained profile. Now, as she is sixteen, the developmental things that have happened have put her where she needs to be to succeed in college; she's taking her first classes at community college right now and doing wonderfully with standard writing tasks. She just got there in a different way, and on a different timeline, than left-brained kids do; she also got there without being overly pathologized and subjected to remedial therapies that she actually didn't need. I can clearly see the two things at work at once in my particular dd: the visual-motor deficits that did need intervention, AND the "right-brained normal." If you can't see both these factors in your own child, that's perfectly valid and legitimate, but it does not make what Cindy is saying and what others of us DO see in our own children invalid either. It doesn't invalidate the fact that in my dd's case, VT accomplished a lot in the visual-motor area, but not all; and that she STILL didn't develop in her writing abilities until age fourteen despite testing out of the stratosphere on reading evaluations. It doesn't invalidate the fact that other moms have seen this same pattern in their right-brained kids, kids with ADHD, Asperger's, and dyslexia. The SN board is supposed to be a place where we honor each mother's knowledge and intuitive understanding of her own child. It's sad to see some people's understanding of their own children criticized when this board is supposed to be dedicated to building up precisely our confidence in being our kids' best teachers. It's sad to see some people feeling directly attacked for having their kids evaluated and pursuing interventions for what are clearly some serious problems, when that is not what Cindy is saying, or what I am saying. A right-brained view of education does not argue that all evaluations and interventions and therapies are therefore wrong and unneeded. It argues that LDs are over-diagnosed in the right-brained population and that many kids are being labeled and put into the SN category when the method of left-brained instruction simply is inappropriate for them, and can be damaging (look at the adults now who went through a particularly rigid left-brained era in education, or those who still drop out because their needs are so badly met). It does not argue that ALL diagnoses are therefore wrong or that kids will grow out of every issue. It doesn't deny the fact that some children DO have problems that are not resolved through a right-brained approach exclusively. For every one of our kids who has serious underlying issues or general life-impacting deficits, there are others who are labeled, medicated, and subjected to remedial eduction or therapies -- unnecessarily, or unnecessarily early. Cindy's kids happen to be in the category of kids who develop differently but without needing additional intervention other than a learning environment that understands and works with, rather than against, their needs. My dd falls in good part, but not entirely, in that category. Some people's kids fall outside of it. It's not always easy to know which is which and what is what when we're talking about brains and learning. That's why information on right-brained normal, what it is, what it looks like, what it isn't, is critically important. Cindy's hope, like mine, is that the more we know about right-brained normal, the more we understand and find ways to work with it and not try to force our kids to a developmental stage of academics that is inappropriate fort hem, the better we will also understand when intervention IS needed, what therapies work WITH right-brained strengths as well as with bolstering up their weaknesses. If I hadn't had a couple of dear people on these boards telling me that my dd's writing process/path looked like that of their child, and that a huge developmental leap had occurred in early to mid-adolescence, that their child was now succeeding perfectly well with standard college writing, that I could simply work with critical thinking and reading lots and talking about writing without forcing her to continually produce standard written output... if I hadn't had that kind of information about one kind of developmental timetable, I could have sentenced my dd to inappropriate remedial therapies and a lot of unneeded work that would have discouraged her and turned her off of writing permanently. And I repeat, she got the highest possible score on the written essay placement exam for community college, plus on the CHSPE, the California test that is equivalent to a high school diploma. She got there in her own way and in her own time, and that time ultimately coincided with standard academic expectations. For other parents whose kids display that similar right-brained writing developmental path, as well as for those parents who would like more information on sifting out the differences between normal right-brained development and other issues that DO need evaluation and intervention, I hope Cindy's book will be as beneficial as the information I got from other moms here and from Cindy's blog.

My dd also had some severe physiological problems with vision and visual processing, and we did seven months of VT when she was 11. This is different than pursuing vision therapy for the sole reason that a right-brained child under the age of eight is not reading fluently yet. Like your child, post-VT mine could finally do PHYSICAL age-appropriate things -- not to the standards of her peers, but far better than before. She could at last walk across a room without tripping or falling over or running into chairs or doors; not panic when a flying object like a ball came towards her and she was unable to predict its path; carry dishes without dropping them and pour drinks without spilling; join in running games at the co-op she attended; not be distracted by what she called "golden lights" that speckled her visual space. It was not just that dd was klutzy or not good at sports. Her visual functioning was at a level that interfered with the logistics and enjoyment of everyday life, across all areas and aspects of that life. At age eleven this included reading stamina, not reading itself, and reading smaller print; it also included some specific aspects of writing. But these were not the sole issues that sent us to VT nor the only ones that were addressed. She did not have normal or functional vision or motor-vision neural links and this had nothing to do with being left- or right-brained. She was a child with visual and visual-motor impairments. She is still a child with some residual fine motor-visual impairments, despite all the VT and OT. These residual issues are not, however, academic LDs. The spelling and writing problems she had were resolved through other means, mainly through realizing how she learned in right-brained ways, and supporting those ways. Physiological vision and motor planning issues may affect academics; but these will not be the only apparent issues. A whole range of activities and skills will be affected, across multiple areas of everyday functioning, not just reading and writing to a particular level by a particular age. It won't be just a child's academic progress or level that is an issue, but a whole quality of life, in the family and outside of it.

My dd learned to distinguish soft vowel sounds in some words only at around age eleven. This was not a problem once I figured out that she was a visual, not a phonetic speller. And I didn't even know she had previously been unable to distinguish between "-ent" and "ant," etc. by sound, until she told me that she now COULD. I certainly didn't pursue therapy for that, because I didn't know about it. I was also told many times that there is a window for kids learning how to spell correctly, and their ability to learn spelling closes off after third grade. Well, in third grade dd could barely spell the simplest three-letter words, so I assumed it was all over and I'd have to pursue technological things like spell check and such and she'd rely on them all her life. Lo and behold, once I figured out how to teach her visually, she went from being almost totally disabled in spelling terms to being a pretty well adult-level speller in a couple of years. The improvements began within weeks and were consistent and steady. Yes, this is an anecdote and not a scientific study or a professional research project. But it happened nonetheless. Does this mean it will happen like this for all right-brained kids? Of course not. Neither do all left-brained kids turn out to be perfect spellers. But many kids who are labeled LD are being taught to spell phonetically when their primarily processing and learning method is visual. These particular aspects of this particular dd's constellation of abilities and weaknesses are, I think, typical right-brained characteristics rather than LDs. As such, what she needed was help learning in a way that matched her wiring rather than me working against it.

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Here is a quote from Cindy: "That’s why I steer conversations of therapies, interventions, medications, etc., back to understanding and honoring the natural learning path for right-brained children first and foremost. An enormous difference can occur starting there. Upon the foundation of the right-brained information, if more support is needed in learning their way, then we may find it’s far less intrusive to help them out versus doing so without starting with this information." This about is establishing AN ORDER, a place, for intervention and therapies within a right-brained educational context, not about rejecting them altogether, and equally not about "doing nothing" or not needing to teach your children at all.

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If you are judging that eleven is too old not to be reading, you ARE putting a left-brained paradigm onto a right-brained child and trying to fit that child into a the structure that the school system has determined is the only appropriate timeline for a child's reading development. Some kids do learn to read at eleven or twelve, without being hampered by lifelong reading disabilities or problems. They're on the extreme end of a developmental timetable, but that doesn't in and of itself mean that they have LDs. Some kids read at two; that's on the extreme early end of the developmental timetable. Some of those kids are fine, but others do have LDs -- hyperlexics read early but some only "bark at print" and can have tremendous difficulties with meaning. The more we learn about right-brained kids as a group, the more we can begin to assemble a picture of the bounds of what is "normal" FOR THEM, what the markers are that they are on a different timetable vs. that they may have an LD. This is very, very different from saying that there's never any need for intervention or therapies, or that true LDs don't exist and are imaginary constructs. ETA: I should add that I am not against evaluations and have had my own dd evaluated more than once, plus urged several people on the boards to pursue them for their own children. I am all for the gathering of as much information as possible, and for addressing weaknesses in ANY child. I am a firm believer in visual therapy for kids whose visual processing shows deficits beyond the fact that they are not reading at age six or seven. What I am against is the immediate labeling and pathologizing of ALL differences, including differences in developmental timetables, because they don't fit standard left-brained developmental timetables. And I want to note yet again that "wait and see" does not mean do nothing. That's such a misrepresentation of Cindy's position. She's saying don't leap to intervene and pathologize BEFORE having followed a true and full right-brained developmental educational path, or whatever different path is called for by your child's wiring. Very few of us have done this from childhood on with our kids, simply because the knowledge of what this is, what constitutes a true and fitting right-brained education, is not widely known, and because school curricula and philosophies are so overwhelming left-brained, to the point that many of us, including myself years ago, assume they are universal. There IS a lot of information now, including that on Cindy's blog and in her forthcoming book, Linda Silverman's website and books, Jeffrey Freed's book, tons of books on visualizing information and visual memory and processing, games, and increasingly, some curricula developed specifically for right-brained kids. There's a lot of information on these boards from parents whose kids have graduated and gone on successfully to college, technical school, or work, who have done things differently regarding school, had kids who developed full writing fluency (accuracy in spelling and punctuation) only in adolescence, as did my dd. But it's still not what most of us are familiar with, and thus are comfortable and happy trusting as a path to follow, especially in a culture that is so overwhelmingly educationally geared toward left-brained kids and their timetables. But it is there, and there's a lot to do besides let your kid play video games or legos all day. I worked really hard at doing math and writing with my dd in alternative ways -- WITH her, because she was one of those kids who resisted direct instruction. When I went wrong, it was generally when I tried to impose left-brained methods, materials, or timetables on her learning. There are lots of questionnaires and checklists in books that will give you a fairly quick idea of whether your child is left or right-brained. Most alternate work right now -- Silverman, Freed, Cindy's book -- is geared toward the truly right-brained child, because that child is most disserved by the school system and curricula the way they are now constructed.

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I think this is completely wrong on the part of the Scouts. The Scouts are supposedly dedicated to inclusion, and I'd have a big talk with the leader about ways to include a non-reader without emphasizing his "differentness." Why couldn't your son have the script a week ahead of time, to learn his part, for instance? And when the Scouts to activities that draw on right-brained skills, why can't your son be made an honorary assistant leader, or the other kids made aware that in these types of activities he is a model and a helper? It's doesn't HAVE to be a big deal, if people are educated about different developmental timetables and shown how easy it is to include everyone, just as the include a klutzy kid in climbing or archery. People with autistic children have had to become public educators, in a way, helping the clueless to understand what autism is, why their kids behave as they do, what are helpful and unhelpful ways to respond. It's a pain to be in the position of having to do this, and sometimes it's easier to withdraw or fall into anger, but there it is. The efforts of parents who came before me have made it somewhat easier for others to understand my dd, in certain situations. But the understanding is incomplete, and people don't always see ways to modify ruts they're mentally set in. So I still have to do this. Parents of right-brained kids also have to become educators. Some of us try to do this on the boards: to explain how and why our kids learn differently; why TWTM methods don't necessarily work although we may share many of the same end goals for our children or be able to do parts of the program at certain ages but not all, and not all the time; why learning differently isn't something that has to be "catered to" or "accommodated," because it's no different than setting up a left-brained kid with a conventional program that is shaped around their abilities. We get criticized and even attacked as giving our kids second-rate educations or being undisciplined as parents. But we keep saying what we do because it's so important, for our kids, for other kids now and in the future.

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Do you know Cindy's blog? It's at http://www.therightsideofnormal.com and she's got many, many descriptions, examples, and a great chart comparing the timetables and characteristics of left- and right-brained development. That chart was the first thing I ever read that unequivocally fit the long-term patterns of learning that dd displayed.

Elizabeth, I am thinking, for instance, of the kids Freed talks about in his book who are perfectly able to do high level math, reading, and writing once they are taught in ways that fit with the way they learn, not with left-brained strategies. You've read his book, no? The whole first part of it talks about these particular kids who come in feeling stupid, even suicidal, and the problem is not that they have an LD, but that they need to be taught differently. The whole first part of his book is about ADD, but he doesn't consider it academically so disabling that the kids need massive therapies or intervention -- the kids he's dealing with anyway -- just as kids who are stuck in a system that wants them to do things in a way that doesn't work for their way of learning. I'm thinking of kids I've read about, not just on the SN board but on the other ones, who do a lot of math in their heads and resist having to show all their work in algebra. When I wrote that I didn't make dd do this unless I saw a lot of mistakes cropping up, and then I only had her do a few so I could track where the mistakes were happening, I got blasted out the window! I wonder how many people let their kids simply write down the answer -- kids who don't think sequentially, but arrive at answers in a kind of Gestalt way, or mental "tesseract"? No, almost every single one of us insists that the kid needs to show the work from the get-go, because that's the convention in math, or because "when you're in college or grad school other people need to see how you got your answer and be able to replicate your process, say in science." Well, does a right-brained 7th or 8th grader who doesn't arrive at answers in a linear, step-by-step fashion have to do what someone does in college and grad school? For every problem? From the get go? Or can they arrive at that stage later? (For what it's worth, by the end of algebra dd WAS writing out steps to problems because they got so complicated and unwieldy that it was easier and more useful to write them out. But in doing so she lost some of that ability to look at the whole and reach the answer in the way she used to. Dh, a scientist who has taught advanced math and physics as well as chemistry at the university and graduate level, is having to help her regain some of that ability now.) I am also thinking of the huge part of dd's dysgraphia diagnosis which had to do with her spelling, which at age eleven was almost non-existent. This was because I had not realized that she was a visual speller, or even known that there was such a thing, and hadn't known ways to work with her to utilize and develop her visual memory. Once I had that, with Freed's techniques, she was able to become a solid speller with only the most occasional errors, VERY quickly. She couldn't distinguish soft vowel sounds until she was older, around eleven; but was that an LD? Only when I tried to teach he to spell phonetically. With visual spelling, it wasn't an issue. And she eventually did distinguish those sounds... but she still doesn't spell phonetically, nor does she need to. If a kid who spells phonetically was never taught that, but taught to memorize whole words or use visual techniques exclusively would THAT kid have an LD? Only within the system that was using an approach that didn't fit. Neither one nor the other way of spelling is the "right" or best way. They're both valid. Another part of dd's dysgraphia diagnosis was her illegible handwriting. Yes, part of this was due to visual and fine motor problems, but by age eleven we'd sorted those out. Her handwriting improved a bit, but all of a sudden at age fourteen, she developed this incredibly beautiful, tidy printing, and she was able within a period of months to process AND RETAIN punctuation conventions that had not clicked all those years. The conclusion I make is that a great part of her dysgraphia was simply being right-brained, and being on a different developmental timetable as far as certain aspects of certain academic skills were concerned. THOSE PARTICULAR ASPECTS did not need intervention or therapy, but the understanding of her way of learning, and the time until she had that developmental leap. I've posted over and over on these boards about dd's spectacular, jaw-dropping growth in writing; I've repeated stories by others of their right-brained kids -- ADHD, dyslexic, visual learners, what have you -- who had similar leaps in mid-adolescence. Yet what do people do (not only people on this board, and not everybody, but most of us, myself included)? They worry and fret when their kids haven't had this click, this leap, at earlier ages, even as early as seven! They can't imagine "simply waiting" this long for something to happen to make it all better, although I've also written over and over that you're not just waiting, you're continually working on things like critical thinking, logical organization of thoughts and speaking, more complex thought about reading, writing fluency in other ways. I have been just as subject to this panic -- to this feeling dd should do what a left-brained developmental timetable says she should be doing -- as you have. Yet I have also seen that dd didn't need years of incremental practice from sentences to paragraphs to five-paragraph essays -- she didn't need left-brained techniques -- to become an accomplished writer. But again, all this didn't happen until mid-adolescence. That's what I'm thinking of -- that we don't realize the extent to which we are influenced and pressured by an idea of what our kids should be doing as output, particularly written output, that is predicated on what "left-brained" kids generally do. It's what David Albert has called "your inner school," and it's a whole constellation of unarticulated or articulated expectations of what your child "should" do or achieve at a certain age, based on curricula developed around the learning profiles and timetables of left-brained learners. I value your friendship and your views too, Elizabeth, and the last thing I want to do is upset you or make you think I don't honor and admire what you're doing with your dd. Because I do admire it tremendously. But I have seen you return obsessively with what she "should" be doing regarding written work, at levels that are clearly way above what she is doing, and doing really wonderfully. You sometimes want her operating at higher levels of output than the WTM guidelines. I'm not saying our kids don't need challenges, or that it isn't a process of hit-and-miss and constant readjustment, for all of us, to figure out what level of challenge is a good one; just that you do harbor those internal measurements or guidelines, as we all do, that are not always appropriate for a right-brained child of her age, to a degree you might not realize. So do I think there is a "right-brained normal" such as Cindy Gaddis describes? Yes, very much so. Do I think dd is that normal? No, not entirely. She is on the spectrum and with that has come complications and what are clearly mind-body connection glitches. Does every spectrum kid have these? No, I don't think so. Dh is also an Aspie, and he went through the British boarding school all the way through university and to a PhD without interventions or accommodations. The boarding school required lots of reading and writing, but it also had enormous amounts of outdoor activity and hands-on projects right the way through to O-levels. The specifically text-based and writing-based demands kicked into high gear only after that, when he went to study for A-levels, at what would here be around 10th or 11th grade. He has lovely handwriting (it's one of the things I fell for when I met him). He has social communication issues and he definitely processes the world, particularly the social and emotional world, differently. But he's doing what he wanted to do since age eight. He's got some organizational challenges, LOL, but nothing that I haven't seen in any number of other people, Aspie or not, left or right brained. He's nowhere near as bad as many of them. My writing is getting rambly; it's late for me and I need to get to bed. But I do not think that right-brained and learning disabilities always, inevitably, and necessarily occur together, no. I do think that even those of us who tailor our children's educations for their strengths and needs, who love the people they are and don't want to make them into anyone different, nevertheless can all too easily get caught up in an academic framework of timetables and expectations, especially concerning writing, that we assume are universally applicable but that are actually designed by and for left-brained people. And we often don't even realize that's what we're doing. It's such an embedded internal part of our thinking about "school." And again, saying all this does NOT mean I don't recognize neurological and physiological deficits or problems, or that all therapy is unnecessary and you should just gaily wait for everything to magically resolve. Dd ws in therapy of various sorts for a couple of years. She still has physical (fine motor and visual) deficits. Of course I do anything in my power to help her overcome these, to the degree they can be overcome, and through whatever method. But they are not LDs in that they do NOT affect her ability to learn, to process, to retain, and to apply academic skills and/or knowledge at VERY high levels. But she does these things -- learning, processing, retaining, and applying -- through very different ways and on a different timetable than the standard left-brained model.

Elizabeth, I don't want to fan the flames when you're clearly so upset, so please read this as written in a very gentle font and spoken to you with the utmost kind intent. I truly think you're missing the point. Your dd, and mine, are kids who are not only right-brained learners, but who have, as you say, quantifiable physiological and neurological glitches. All right-brained learners DO NOT have these -- Freed's book uses examples of kids who are struggling and feeling like failures because the method of teaching does not fit their right-brained mode, not because they have the wiring glitches my dd has, for instance. Cindy is talking about a "right-brained normal," and neither you nor I have kids that fit that description entirely. There's more going on, just as there is in Cindy's spectrum kids who did receive interventions. I don't know your dh and know nothing about whether or not he has similar glitches. But it is pretty well certain that he was taught, as people of our generation were, in an EXTREMELY left-brained classroom setting that was a horrible mismatch for his strengths and out of synch with his developmental academic timetable. His regrets about his education may in large part stem from the struggles and feelings this unsuitable educational environment imposed on him rather than from a lack of intervention/therapy.

There's a huge difference being posited by Cindy Gaddis between simply being a right-brained learner in a school environment that REQUIRES the early development of text-based skills, and having a true LD that interferes with the acquiring, remembering, and processing of knowledge or of an academic skill, however that knowledge or skills is presented. She's saying that the first is often mistakenly seen as needing interventions and therapies when it is actually a case of a mismatch between the academic environment/curriculum and the child's learning needs. If you insist that a visual learner function and succeed in a learning environment that goes against the natural timetable along which RBL's development occurs, if you insist on text-based learning and performance before those skills neurologically develop, you're creating what looks like an LD where none exists. You would equally well create what look like LDs in a left-brained population of kids (and adults) if you threw them into a school that demanded they perform artistically and mechanically at a high level, that they rotate objects mentally in space in complex ways, that they all learn to outline using spider-webbing or pictorial outlines, etc. This is a separate issue from kids with neurologically based processing glitches, working memory shortages, fine motor and hand-eye coordination deficits, speech disorders, etc. No one, absolutely no one, is saying to let these things go and let time naturally do magic work. The problem is that sometimes it's difficult to distinguish between "right-brained normal" when kids are being asked to perform certain tasks out of developmental sequence, and true LDs. I think everybody is acknowledging this. These are the tricky gray areas. But perhaps, Cindy is saying, we might be able to distinguish them a BIT more clearly if the kids were in programs or using curricula or being taught in ways that suited their right-brained abilities. Then the LDs might truly stand out more clearly and obviously. But we don't know yet how much this would be true, because there's no widespread system that teaches RBL differently from LBL. ETA: Cindy, I hope I'm not misrepresenting what you are saying. This is my take on it. I don't mean to put words in your mouth!

I totally agree with you that it is no good for anyone to go through years of struggling. And I can't the author of the piece is recommending letting kids flounder and struggle until they get it in their own time! Rather, she argues that these kids need a curriculum and a manner of teaching that fits their learning style and needs, which are legitimate and different (but not necessarily LDs UNLESS you put them into a system/curriculum that doesn't work for their particular wiring). This "other" curriculum and learning environment would include an academic timetable that is different from one based on early reading and writing. It would emphasize and utilize different topics, activities, approaches, and skills at different times than those usually specified by a text-intensive early elementary program.

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