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Living with Learning Disabilites - or....(part 1) - Page 2

© Lise Hogan

of me. I still think that if it wasn't I wouldn't have a weight problem, but then again I wouldn't have a friend problem either. Most people don't like to be around someone who is out of control hyperactive!

Another factor contributing to this, though no one really knows how much is that I was sick all the time. It was not unusual for me to run a fever of 104, and a couple of times it hit 106.7 - that's as high as the thermometer goes. I was in and out of Drs offices and hospitals all the time. I put my poor parents in hock! Because I was sick - and got sick so easily - I didn't not spend a lot of time with other children. When I started school, I didn't know what to do, or how to act.

It's hard for a kid to have to sit still when they just want to move. I spent most of my kinder year in the hall. I started kindergarten in 1963. My mom would come to pick me up from school, and there I would be - in the hall AGAIN! I spent most of my elementary school existence in the hall, getting paddled or sitting (or standing) in the corner with my face against the walls. The pictures of that in my memory are different walls - different rooms, different lighting - all looking at tears stains on the wall. One day in fourth grade I literally spent the whole day in the corner. I had bothered the teacher to show something to the class and she didn't want to be bothered so she put me in the corner. Being the thick-headed kid that LD kids often are, I went right up to her when we got back from lunch and asked if I could show my workbook now, and right back in the corner I went. Cried and cried - stayed there until the bell rang.

I told my mother when I got home. She kept me home from school that next day - she said we'd have school at home. Just for that one day. After school was out we went up to talk to the teacher. I don't remember what was said, or if the trips to the corner let up, but I think that was the day my mom decided she could be a teacher, so she went back to school. She now

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