Sunday, October 28, 2007

Living With a Learning Disability as an Adult

You have to deal with a number of issues if you have a learning disability, even if that disability was diagnosed in the childhood. The issues will be different and many more in adulthood than they were in your childhood years. Hence you will have to find new ways to cope with these challenges and issues posed by the learning disability.

With advancing age you will want to be a part of many social events like marriage, parenthood etc. And your learning disability will require you to handle these challenges in way that will allow you to be a productive part of the society and even be successful in the career you choose to follow.

Learning disabilities can have an impact on your thinking process, speech, listening power, reading ability, and writing ability. These learning disabilities will also have an impact on your reasoning and computing abilities. These means your ability to handle mathematical data may be impaired, and mathematical data is something that we use even in our daily lives to quite an extent. Therefore if there is a learning disability then we need to come up with ways to compensate and adjust as responsible adults.

There will be times when you will be frustrated and angry because others will not know how to handle your learning disability. The people talking or interacting with you might become impatient when they find that you are not able to comprehend and compute what they are saying. While in college you may find that you are not able to finish assignments and all your courses in time and this may cause frustration.

You need to find the balance between having a disability and changing your goals. You do need to know your limitations but at the same time there is no reason for you not to live a full and happy life. You should be able to enjoy relationships and being a parent, even with your learning disability.

Being a parent with learning disability can be tough and stressing. To reduce the stress of being a disability parent, you can do a number of things like take care of your time and manage it properly.

One helpful technique is to keep a calendar in a prominent place such as the kitchen or other room you frequent. You can note the times and dates that your children have to be certain places. This will give you a strong visual aid and help keep you from missing appointments and pick-up times.

The next tip for taking control of your life despite the learning disability is to keep your home organized so that when you need to find something it will be there in its fixed permanent location inside your home. And in this way you can avoid getting frustrated and angry because of your inability to locate things that have been misplaced.

Even though it can be difficult, strive to remain calm and patient, even when things aren't going your way. All people have bad days at times, so try not to blame every problem on your learning disability.

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