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Comment by moritonal | Hacker News Reader

Just to add an anecdote, as of 15 years ago I had similar scores and was diagnosed with dyslexia.

My son struggled quite a bit learning to read. He was very slow to do so, and it frustrated him quite a lot. But interestingly, once he did get it, he became a voracious reader, and he's never since scored below 95th percentile on reading tests. So his developmental dyslexia did not carry over into general dyslexia.

One of the interesting things about nvld, at least in his case, is that you would never know he had a learning disability by talking to him. He comes across as a smart, mature, knowledgeable young man. Mostly because this is what he actually is. But when he does struggle with something, it is often interpreted as him not trying or being lazy.

To add a bit more, I didn't really read until later, around 8, but then read at a fairly quick and passionate amount for my age. People thought I'd dodged my family curse but later around 10 it was shown I was quite behind at school. My dyslexia was described as "a defect in one aspect of intelligence", which for most kids is reading comprehension, but for me it showed in a lack of decent short term memory. As you say, learning disabilities are interesting issues to deal with, but I'm sure your son will do great with support like you around him.

Thank you for the kind word. He is doing great, and in fact we're dropping him off to begin his college career this Thursday. It's always interesting to hear from people with different cognitive and neurological profiles. It;s fascinating how the brain works similarly and differently with individual people. I can sympathize with your memory issues. I've always had a terrible working memory. It makes arithmetic and spelling difficult, as I cannot keep the letters and numbers in my head long enough.

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