My child is struggling 
Now that my child has 
NCLD: Dr. Betty Osman, an expert on LD and a member of NCLD's advisory board, has said that LD is a family affair and the impact can often be almost as difficult for the sibling without learning disabilities as for the sibling with LD. What are your thoughts?
DB: My gosh, the impact on a family is HUGE! And I wish somebody had told me that. I thought, “Hey, my daughter Charlotte has LD -- I can take care of that.” I thought with enough hard work, I could fix it. The dynamic within the family, however, is vastly more complicated than that.
It's crucial for a parent to understand that they have to pay attention to the other child and give them their due. They also need your admiration, your time and devotion. For example, when Charlotte brought home an A on her report card, Tom and I would make a big deal out of it, say how great it was, trying to build up her self-esteem. Then Annie would bring home an A on her report card, and we would be like, “Oh, that's nice, you got one too.” We were afraid to play up Annie's gifts because Charlotte didn't have similar gifts and we didn't want her to feel bad. And that, of course, was a huge disservice to Annie. They're two different people, they have different sets of gifts and you can't praise one and ignore the other, regardless of the reasons you may have for doing it.
Luckily, we learned this early on. [When the girls] were maybe four and six years old, I’d play with them on Saturday mornings and we would all draw and color together. I always had to help Charlotte, because she had trouble drawing and coloring and using scissors. I wasn't ignoring Annie, but I always paid more attention to Charlotte because she was the one who needed help. This went on for several weeks, until I finally realized that something was wrong between Annie and me. She wouldn't mind [me], and she was screaming hysterically a lot of the time. We finally took her to a therapist. (I'd become a big fan of therapists by then.) The therapist had Annie draw a picture, and she drew a picture of a little girl standing next to a tree where all the leaves had turned brown and fallen off.
Within three or four visits, we figured out that Annie felt like a fifth wheel, like she didn't belong and wasn't getting the attention she needed. And I didn't know. I thought I was helping the child who needed me the most, but this was a huge revelation for me. You have to be aware of all the siblings and give each child their due, but of course that can be very hard. For example, school was always very hard for Charlotte, and it wasn't for Annie.
There was one incident I talk about in the book, where Annie and I were sitting at the table and she was telling me about her calculus class. Then, when Charlotte got to the table, I changed the subject because I didn't want her to feel bad that she was not taking, and would never take, calculus.
NCLD: What were some of the biggest hurdles for Charlotte in terms of her education?
DB: Learning to read was a nightmare. When Charlotte was eight years old, Tom took a leave of absence from his job and the two of them went out to California over two summers to study at the Lindamood-Bell Center. Charlotte studied four hours a day, and the therapy worked for her and she came back finally knowing how to read.
NCLD: There are many milestones in an adolescent's life that can only be described as "scary as hell for Mom and Dad." Regarding Charlotte, what were some of the biggest milestones for you and Tom?
DB: We were very close [to Charlotte during her] adolescence. Charlotte isn't conservative, but she is cautious, so it's not like she was out there engaging in risky behavior. One of the big hurdles, though, was learning to ride the subway. In New York, this is a big rite of passage for a teenage kid. And as the parent of an LD child, you never really know for sure what your child is ready for. You have to use your best judgment.
But I was urging Charlotte to learn to ride the subway, and she didn't want to do it, she was telling me how overwhelming it all was -- she was overwhelmed by the directions, which stairs go up, which ones go down, what happens if you get off at the wrong stop. And I understand, it's scary; it's even scary for non-LD people who have never been in the New York City transit system before.
Then one day, there was a boy. And she wanted to go somewhere to meet him, somewhere I couldn't take her. So she walked out and got on the subway and never looked back.
The most difficult problem through all this was balancing what we thought Charlotte was capable of doing, even though she might be frightened of doing it, and which situations were the ones where she really needed our support. It was a question of where to push her and where to prop her up. And not knowing the difference between those two was the hardest thing about those years.
