Longhairgal, I had a lot of issues resolved for me when I went to a psychologist and he discovered that a lot of the things that make some people unhappy with me are simply normal organic differences.
I'm simply different than everyone else in my family, which they took as resistance and flakiness, laziness, all sorts of negative things. I'm just not designed to think conventionally, apparently. I still get things accomplished and manage well, I just have to do some things a bit differently than most people would.
I have a method to my madness too...I usually got schoolwork done in half the time other kids did in school, to the point where teachers accused me of cheating. LOL I'm just a very very quick reader, that was my advantage and also a nearly "photographic" memory. (That''s a poor term, the real term is "eidetic")
I found a way to do math with the help of an outside tutor that worked for me, but didnt conform to the way it was taught in school and so got in trouble for that, as the teacher also thought I was cheating when I suddenly started getting Bs in algebra after being a dismal D student.
People with learning differences or different learning styles cannot always learn things conventionally, and sometimes, they discover alternatives on their own.
A good book to read about learning style differences and how to use them to your advantage is "The One Mind" by Dawna Markova. She works with LD kids and most conventional public schooling is so left brained in concept that being right brained is almost a learning difference! But discovering your own normal brain differences, strengths and weaknesses can help anyone maximize their learning potential.
I always learned more on my own than from public school, most of the time. Occasionally, I'd find a teacher who could accomodate me, but certain subjects in school were either boring or nightmarish for me.
I have a brother who is dyslexic...he's got a genius IQ but went through most of school thinking he was stupid because reading was so hard for him..until he devised a system on his own for reading and finally caught up.
I got the math LD, he got the reading one...interesting that we have almost opposite learing differences, not to mention nearly opposite personalities, too.
