I don't know if we ever fully get over the pain of watching a child trying to find their way through a world that too often doesn't understand. |
I know, like if they're high achieving, maybe they weren't learning disabled. |
I put up a huge wall of denial. It was years before I was able to break through it... accepting that your child has a disability, especially one like LD that cannot be seen or easily diagnosed, is one of the hardest things to come to terms with. |
I went from raising Allegra into being Chairman of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, and from there into writing this book. |
It's depressing. Tomorrow we meet as a family. We do this twice a year. Billy comes and talks to us and tells us what's going on, and I don't think there's a single person in the family that isn't 100 percent behind him. |
Learning disabilities cannot be cured, but they can be treated successfully and children with LD can go on to live happy, successful lives. |
My son Alessandro was always so terrific with his sister, and the three of us-Alessandro, Allegra and myself-made the highs as high as we could, and mostly tried to laugh at the lows. I have written about some of the difficulties a learning disability can cause a family, but there is always an up side to everything. |