The Stages of Acceptance of Nonverbal Learning Disability

(I should first note that all of this is based on my own experience - your own story may vary. People vary, and that includes people with NLD)

There are, I think, four stages of acceptance of nonverbal learning disability (NLD). Some of this may be true for other LDs, or for other disabilities, but I know most about NLD.

1. There's nothing wrong with me, there must be something wrong

with you!

2. There's something wrong with me. Life stinks.

3. There's something wrong with me. You deal with it.

4. There's something wrong with me, I better deal with it.

For short (and for the sake of alliteration), one might call these stages denial, depression, display, and dealing. I don't claim to spend all my time at stage 4; I'd be a lot happier if I could, but I can't, at least not yet. In this article, I'll say more about each of these, and how to deal with them.

Stage 1: Denial of nonverbal learning disability

In stage 1, we are in denial of our NLD. When things do not go well, we don't look to what we might be doing badly or how we might do it better, instead, we look to what others are doing wrong. Often, especially in children, this stage isn't even conscious. Young children often accept themselves as they are at a very primitive level, and any fault must lie elsewhere. In young kids, this is a normal stage. In older kids or adults it is both less normal and less attractive than it is in little kids. It's also less helpful than the other stages.

Babies and young kids are natural egotists. They want you to look at them, play with them, talk to them. They naturally believe that their utterances are interesting, that they are adorable. They are right! Babies are adorable. That's what cute means. Further, good parents arrange their world so that not too much can go wrong for their babies and little kids. They provide food, and they provide a safe environment. Parents don't allow babies to crawl on windowsills, play alone in the tub, and so on. Babies don't have to `do as they are told', because adults know that babies don't understand English.

Later on in childhood, we expect kids to start interacting on a more even basis. Kids learn how to take turns in a conversation, how to ask about other people's feelings, how to do what other people want, how to play with other kids. It is at this stage that the extreme form of denial stops being so acceptable. It is also at this stage that many kids move to stage 2.

Stage 2: Depression about the nonverbal learning disability

In stage 2, we realize something is wrong, perhaps we even know it is NLD, but we believe it will never get better, that there is no way to cope with the difficulty, that no one else shares this difficulty, and that things will never get better. For many NLDers, this is the primary mode during adolescence; many of us have suicidal feelings during this period, or even attempt suicide, in some cases, these attempts are successful. In this period, adults who care for a person with NLD have an advantage: They know that adolescence ends. Adolescents don't know this. The same beliefs that let most adolescents act like they are never going to die make other adolescents sure that nothing will ever improve.

I'll have more to say about this in another article; here, I'll share a couple of anti-suicidal strategies. First, however, I should stress that if you are feeling suicidal, or if you suspect a child you care about is feeling suicidal, you should seek professional help immediately. You may wish to share some of the strategies I talk about here with a therapist, but they are not a substitute for therapy. Suicide isnot a good solution to the problems of NLD or any other disability, and this article is not sufficient for dealing with these issues. I'm not a therapist, and even if I was, no article is sufficient for these issues. These strategies worked for me. They may or may not work for other people.

Many people with nonverbal learning disabilities are very logical. We can be convinced by logical arguments where emotional ones might fail, even if those emotional arguments would work better with neurotypical people. One such logical argument against suicide is the irreversibility argument. That is, if you commit suicide, you can never undo it; but if you do not commit suicide, you can do it some other time.

Many NLDers are good writers, and find ways to write things down that help them cope. Personally, I have found writing poetry to be extremely therapeutic.

Stage 3: Display of NLD

In stage 3, we are aware of our NLD, and we start to acknowledge it to ourselves and others. We realize that there are ways to cope with some of the difficulties, but we believe it is the responsibility of other people to cope with them. We often go on at great length about our disability to anyone who will listen to us. Given the problems associated with NLD (this is esp, we are often poor at determining who wants to hear about us, who does not want to hear about us, and who it would be inappropriate to talk to, and (in some cases) who would be dangerous to talk to. In addition, at this stage we often think that once we have told someone about our difficulty, they will then be eager and able to accommodate us. This is often not the case.

The display stage also illustrates another problem for many people with NLD: Determining levels of friendship. NTers move from casual acquaintance to deep friendship gradually, following a series of steps in which more trust is earned and awarded. NTers will have many more acquaintances than close friends. Movement along this path is guided by many things, but a fair proportion of these things are nonverbal cues. How does a person's face look, and how does their voice sound, and what body language are they using, when they talk to you? These are vital cues to levels of friendship, and they are also very hard for many NLDers. People do not say, in words,

`I'd like to be your acquaintance, but I really don't want to be your friend' or `I enjoy hanging out with you once in a while, but not all the time'; but they do say this sort of thing with their tone, body language, and facial expression.

Most NTers don't like to be rude, so they will not say `no' when they are confronted directly. They also do not understand that we do not understand body language and so on. In fact, they are likely unaware of how they read these cues and give them. So, when we misunderstand them, they are not even able to explain what cues they were giving. If you misunderstand a word, you can look it up later, or even ask what it means. This is not an option when you misunderstand the nonverbal parts of communication: First, there is no place to look these up; second, part of the NLD problem is that we don't even know what to look for. It's not just that people are using words we don't understand, they are using words we don't hear; and these words are spoken in a language that uses a script we can't read. If you see something written in Spanish, you can at least make a guess at pronunciation, and you can look it up in a dictionary or try a computer translation. But what if the message is in Chinese or some other non-alphabetic language? What if you

don't even recognize that it's a message? Then you are in the sort of situation NLDers are in.

Stage 4: Dealing with nonverbal learning disability

In stage 4, we accept our NLD, and we also know that it is our responsibility to cope with our difficulties, and that most other people are usually not interested in hearing all about us. Further, when we do tell some appropriate person about our difficulties, we do not expect him or her to drop everything else in order to cope with us. Stage 4 is the only really mature stage, and it is by far the most effective stage for having a successful life. As I said, though, I don't manage to stay at this stage all the time. But, then, NT people, even mature, sensible, well-adjusted NT people, don't act maturely all the time, either.