Adults can have problems learning too - Robyn's story
If you are a child with a learning disorder, and you grow up, you are an adult with a learning disorder. Nothing will change this learning disorder just because you are older and have a job. Yes, even people with an untreated learning disorder can get a job, have a career, marry and have children. But they still have that learning disorder. They have just figured out a way to organise their lives so that there is little or no impact on their lives from it.
But that isn’t to say that an adult with a learning disorder is really happy and successful in their own lives just because they have a job, a career, marry and have children. This learning disorder is still there and it will stop them from doing the things they really want. It may even stop them from knowing what they really want to do with their lives.
Hello, my name is Robyn, I am 44, I have a job, a career, I am married and have a child. I have a learning disorder, which I didn’t know about until June 2007 – fully 27 years after my last high school exam. Which I failed. In fact, I failed almost everything in school, and was told by teachers and parents that it was just because I was lazy and wasn’t working hard enough.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. I worked so hard, and I studied and revised and did practise and everything they said to do to become that ideal student – one who passed exams.
I attended every class and put in more study time than anyone else I knew. I even had remedial classes and private tutoring and still the only thing I was good at was failing.
I didn’t understand what was going wrong. I was doing everything they said, plus 100s of hours of extra study every term. And still I failed, and struggled against the labels of ‘lazy’, doesn’t apply herself,’ and the one that really got to me – ‘could do better.’ But no one ever told me how, they just said: Work harder, do better and learn more.
Despite having slaved for 6 long hard years at high school, I still failed my final exams, and so was not accepted to university. I desparately wanted to go to uni to learn foreign languages, but having been laughed out of language class in my middle high school years, I had no hope of that.
So I had a succession of occupations, and ran my own businesses for a while, but still I was restless, not doing what I really wanted. Early last year I decided I would give this language thing one last go, so I enrolled in TAFE to learn Spanish and Japanese.
I really was so happy to be there, to be in class trying to learn what I always wanted, but it was so hard. I would sit at the front of the class and listen and concentrate and still missed most of the information given my the teachers. I had the course work books and would go home and learn and understand the information at home, having not picked up a single thing in the class room.
I found that within 3 weeks, for every 1 hour I spent in class I was having to spend 2 hours or more on home study just to be able to understand what the teacher had been talking about.
I began to think I was deaf. That must have been it, as I knew the teacher was saying something, but I couldn’t understand her, couldn’t make clear sense of it, and was always getting left behind, floundering while the rest of the class was moving on to the next and the next thing.
I was always asking for her to repeat what she had just explained, to go slower and repeat it. After a while I could see she didn’t have the time nor inclination to be repeating the information a dozen times, so I stopped asking and resigned myself to either doing more extra study at home or failing the class.
The frustration was enormous, and very upsetting, as I was reliving the exact same experiences of all my high school years. I could see that I was doomed to fail again, and I so desperately wanted to pass this time.
I went to get my hearing tested and told the lovely chap there what was going on and how I was sure I wasn’t hearing things clearly. He tested my hearing and it came up with no problem at all. I have great hearing.
He assured me that all was no lost and sent me off to the team at Sonic Hearing for an Assessment. What a great day that was. Having the assessment was very distressing, as they were testing me on the exact listening and comprehension problems I was experiencing, and the frustration and upset were very close to the surface.
The results of the assessment showed that I was in the bottom of the heap when it came to hearing, understanding and processing what someone had to say. I wasn’t an imbecile after all. I just had some wiring that needed re-routing and they assured me that doing the FastForward program would go a long way towards fixing that up.
So I started with the program straightaway. It was hard, and it was frustrating and it had me doing and listening to some amazing stuff. I was so impressed with the totally different approach to re-wiring the way I heard, understood and processed information. I was nothing as I expected, and while it was hard, it was mostly fun and interesting.
The hard, repetitive bits were there of course, and it was clearly explained to me that this was important as these were the areas that I needed the most work on.
I pushed through and finished the program as quickly as possible. Towards the end of the 2 months it took me to complete the FastForward program I noticed improvements in my ability to clearly understand and retain what was being taught.
My home study hours were easier as I was coming to the homework with a fair understanding of the material to be learned.
Being able to recall what to say and how to say it became increasingly easier.
The best part of all was that, even though I had passed all my exams before starting the FastForward program, I was now passing with a better mark, and I was not in a state of panic before a test as I was more confident and knew better what was required. My confidence has increased markedly.
The reassessment in December showed significant improvements in all areas of concern I was experiencing with CAPD.
The FastForward program has worked so well for me that this year I will be confident enough to expand my study load to undertake concurrent TAFE qualifications in Spanish, Japanese and Mandarin, plus Arabic by home-study.