It’s a new school year, and with it comes new changes. I am now working on campus as a math and chemistry tutor while attending my own courses. After working for about 2 weeks as a drop-in tutor, I was promoted to a tutoring position wherein I work one-on-one with students with disabilities. I discovered early on that the only clear difference between my assigned students and those in the drop-in tutoring center was an extra dose of self-doubt.

Last week, my employer sent me to a seminar about learning disabilities. There was a panel of 7 experts, each of them from a completely different background. There was a neuroscientist, a psychologist, one of my own campus’s guidance counselors, and so on. They even managed to get the person in charge of our local system of services for K-12 disabled students on the panel. After an intense session, here are a few of the main points I gleaned:

• Learning Disabilities are Not an Indication of Intelligence Level

While it is entirely possible for a student to struggle due to a lower intelligence level, a learning disability operates independently of intelligence. In fact, many students with learning disabilities are at the top of their class, graduating from high school with 4.0 GPAs, and the evidence suggests that there is a high correlation between learning disabilities and very bright students. It was clear that the panelists viewed learning disabilities as any sort of difference which causes more struggle with learning than a given student’s peers encounter. Our school system is designed to support the common student. Very bright students fall outside this bell curve. It makes sense, then, that some of them learn so differently that they technically meet the definition of having a learning disability.

• Chronic Depression is Common in Students with Un-Diagnosed Learning Disabilities

Students who struggle more than their peers and don’t know why face a unique set of challenges. Their self-worth is called in to question. The constant nagging of, “why can’t I do this like everyone else can?” can prompt chronic depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and a host of other related thoughts, feelings, and symptoms. This is part of why diagnosis is so very important.

• Late Detection is Quite Common

The term “disability” is laden with stigma, and behavioral differences which are symptomatic of learning disabilities are not easily recognized for what they are by people who are not trained in these matters. As such, it is not uncommon for families seek to control their children and/or cover up the disability rather than seek help. An example one of the panelists gave of such behavior maintenance involved imagining a child with ADD/ADHD, or perhaps mild autism. The parent of this child might view related behaviors (such as becoming absorbed by video games or not sitting still at the dinner table) as problematic and provide a system of punishments and rewards to correct it. This is behavior management, but does not provide the support and treatment a student with ADD/ADHD needs to thrive in schools that are designed for a particular type of student. Diagnosis is important in order to provide that support.

Students with learning disabilities who make it out of high school without discovering the disability are sometimes diagnosed in college, if they can overcome the social stigmas attached to the phrase “disability” in order to seek out their campus’s resources. In California, typical college and university campuses are equipped with evaluation and accommodation services. If you are a student reading this and you are struggling in any way with your courses, I suggest you seek out such services on your own campus. The worst thing that can happen is that they cannot help you, in which case you are just back where you started. No harm done.