Minor Note
I've long been annoyed that one of my brothers was diagnosed with dysgraphia and that I was never evaluated for it. Dysgraphia is related to dyslexia, but unlike dyslexia, which is a disorder of input, where people trying to read material have difficulty because their brain takes it in wrong, it is a disorder of output. It primarily affects handwriting or other fine motor control and makes penmanship much harder. I was always told my brother had it, and since I was never told that I did, I didn't question this until high school. Then I looked at my brother's penmanship and it was indistinguishable from mine. I asked details about his symptoms; I had all of them. It explained why sometimes when I write, I know what the letter looks like, but my hand just does the wrong thing. Usually it's vertical lines, they sometimes just go the wrong way turning p into b for example even though I didn't mean for it to do that. It's not a serious problem, but it's annoying. My brother had a few provisions required of his school to help with it, such that all his tests had to be graded by someone familiar with his handwriting to ensure he didn't lose points for things he knew simply because he couldn't write it clearly. Anyhow, I got through school okay without any accommodations, but I found it annoying that I was never tested.
I asked my mother about this. She told me why.
When my brother was diagnosed they told her that it was a disorder that only occurred in boys.
You have no idea how much I want to smack someone over this.
Seriously, how many times is the medical community going to do this to people? If the disorder doesn't actually relate to a physical part of the body that the person does not have, can we stop assuming it doesn't happen to some members of the sex that you think it's less common in? Because when you assume it only happens in one sex you discourage diagnoses in the other sex. Then you support the conclusion it only happens in one sex. And then some day in the future someone is shocked to learn that either it does happen in the other sex and nobody bothered to notice or it happens and tends to display slightly differently.
My parents were only motivated to test my brother because he went to a different school than I did and he was getting in trouble in school over the issue. I learned enough Basic in first grade and had an apple IIc in the house and got permission to print out my homework to get around many of the effects of the issue, plus had a different teacher who only made me redo assignments if they were illegible, rather than physically punishing me. So, I wasn't complaining to my parents. So, they didn't realize that my penmanship was a problem, even though I was doing poorly in it compared to my peers.
I don't recall if I ever got an N (the worst grade my Elementary School report card gave out) for Not Satisfactory. If I did though, it'd have been in either penmanship or plays well with others. Other than that I was deemed fully satisfactory despite my issues with arithmetic.
But anyhow, I don't blame my mom. She was basing things on what she was told. She was just given really bad info. Fortunately, it was just a mild issue and one I could work around.
I asked my mother about this. She told me why.
When my brother was diagnosed they told her that it was a disorder that only occurred in boys.
You have no idea how much I want to smack someone over this.
Seriously, how many times is the medical community going to do this to people? If the disorder doesn't actually relate to a physical part of the body that the person does not have, can we stop assuming it doesn't happen to some members of the sex that you think it's less common in? Because when you assume it only happens in one sex you discourage diagnoses in the other sex. Then you support the conclusion it only happens in one sex. And then some day in the future someone is shocked to learn that either it does happen in the other sex and nobody bothered to notice or it happens and tends to display slightly differently.
My parents were only motivated to test my brother because he went to a different school than I did and he was getting in trouble in school over the issue. I learned enough Basic in first grade and had an apple IIc in the house and got permission to print out my homework to get around many of the effects of the issue, plus had a different teacher who only made me redo assignments if they were illegible, rather than physically punishing me. So, I wasn't complaining to my parents. So, they didn't realize that my penmanship was a problem, even though I was doing poorly in it compared to my peers.
I don't recall if I ever got an N (the worst grade my Elementary School report card gave out) for Not Satisfactory. If I did though, it'd have been in either penmanship or plays well with others. Other than that I was deemed fully satisfactory despite my issues with arithmetic.
But anyhow, I don't blame my mom. She was basing things on what she was told. She was just given really bad info. Fortunately, it was just a mild issue and one I could work around.