AIBU about another parent saying my kid has learning difficulties

[Buyer97462]

Hi

My daughter who is 7 has a best friend. Said best friend came to our house after school today and said his Dad had said she has learning difficulties (I don't know the context of the conversation). Daughter is autistic and slightly ADHD but doesn't have any learning difficulties.

Am I unreasonable to be upset by this? I am hopefully not upsetting parents of children with learning difficulties but my child is perfectly capable they just struggle socially. It's particularly upsetting as she has a very small circle of friends and I do worry this kind of impression will make relationships harder.

Apologies I am not saying there is anything wrong with having learning difficulties and probably not putting this across very well.

Am I being unreasonable at being a it upset?
Edited for typo

So many of these replies are hugely frustrating.

I have ADHD. I do not have learning difficulties. In fact, I'm so damn intelligent that my condition wasn't picked up until very late in life. I'm so smart I was able to hide it without even realising I was hiding it.

My brain runs at a million miles an hour, and it's always processing all kinds of things and coming up with genius solutions.

The downside is that's exhausting for my brain to always be working that hard. I can have so many brilliant ideas that it's sometimes hard to pick one and make it happen.

I don't struggle to focus because my brain is flawed. I struggle to focus because my brain is brilliant.

And no, I wouldn't normally say any of this stuff out loud because I have enough emotional intelligence to know that you just don't say that kind of thing... but the thread needed a bit of balance.

I know plenty of people with ADHD. We're all over achievers (partially because we'd get bored not aiming to do well) and we don't have learning difficulties and we're not brain damaged.

We're just shit at timekeeping, perpetually tired and always forgetting to look after ourselves. We look out for other people and we get upset on their behalf when anyone tries to screw them over, but we forget we're supposed to be hungry, and there's always something more exciting to do than to fix dinner for ourselves.

The disability part is in how the ADHD genuinely has a long and sustained negative impact on our personal lives. It's not about not being intelligent.

Anyone who treats ADHD as something that limits a person's potential for academic and career success is not really someone I'd want around, thank you.

I cannot find evidence in this document that they are always considered disabilities but they certainly can be considered as disabilities if symptoms are debilitating enough that the core definition of a disability is met, which will not be true for many neurodivergent people.

This sounds great. For you.

But there are other ADHD experiences outside yours. People who are not able to "hide it" enough to achieve within the system as it is - let alone over-achieve. People who are not able to engage fully with education because of it.

An enormous range of experiences exist within each umbrella diagnosis such as autism or ADHD - I think stereotyping neurodivergent brains as "superhuman and limitless" is as damaging as stereotyping them as "unintelligent and limited".

This thread is quite frustrating posters are still using learning difficulties and learning disabilities interchangeably, they are NOT the same thing whilst ADHD and Autism can affect a person's ability to learn neither inherently affects the the IQ it can sometimes be considered a learning difficulty becsuse it impacts a person's ability to learn
Some peoole with ADHD and Aitism will also having learning disabilities which affect everything including a person's ability to learn and can range from mild to profound and does significantly affect the IQ.

Wow. You sound nice.😊

Maybe it came up - my son has commented re a boy in his class on the spectrum, who does have learning difficulty. I’ve tried to explain his brain works a bit differently so it’s probably really hard for him to sit still, and my son should recognise that this boy is trying very hard. I can easily see how that could have sounded extremely awkward to his parents, but what are we supposed to say? I meant it very kindly, trying to make sure my son makes allowances and includes him.

But that is the point. You are not inherently impaired if you have ADHD. So to label it as a learning difficulty in itself is incorrect.

My son’s best friend is 7 and clearly has ADHD quite severely. My son doesn’t understand the way his friend behaves as he is quite boisterous at after school club etc. I find it hard to explain to my son about ADHD so can see why maybe this dad told the child they had learning difficulties as a way to explain your child’s Autism and ADHD.

The chn I work with that have ADHD certainly do have difficulty learning to sit quietly and not call out all the time.

Autism and adhd are learning difficulties NOT learning disabilities though - unless they also have these

So yes the other parent is actually correct. What context was the conversation he was having with his child about yours? Maybe he was just explaining to her why your child is different which isn’t a problem and he’s been factually correct so 🤷‍♀️ maybe educate yourself about additional needs

There's a kid in my daughter's class the last few years and the kids were calling his meltdowns 'anger issues'. I don't know if they were calling it as they see it or if one had repeated an adult and they all latched on to it but it was actually the first time she had encountered behavioural issues on that scale in school so of course we spoke about it. The neurodivergence in our family hasn't manifested that way so it was just another aspect to make her aware of. I don't really get why on the one hand we're trying to normalise the whole concept of difference but then saying parents shouldn't talk to their children when they're friends with someone with a difference, any kind of difference. My daughter also has a friend with a physical disability, and it took until the friend had surgery for my daughter to say 'oh, hang on' - it was just how her friend was and she hadn't had any issues that my daughter noticed, so she didn't even see it as a difference. Of course I was going to talk with her about that as well once she brought it up.

There will be children you work with that you don't even know have ADHD as well though. They may not even know.

Also the urge to move around isn't inherent to ADHD.

It’s not that deep

There are a lot of semantics on this thread, so sorry to add to that - but I think the word "learning" is being applied in too narrow a way. The poster above describing their over-achievement also describes ways in which their ADHD has made it difficult for them to learn in other areas - the examples they give are timekeeping and self care.

To get an actual medical diagnosis of ADHD or Autism, your life does need to be impacted to the level where it could be described as an impairment. That doesn't mean some people with the diagnosis won't fly high in other areas of life.

I agree that it's being applied in a narrow way - it's being applied within the narrow confines of our social and education system. Having differences in how you process information can cause challenges that significantly affect you - it doesn't mean your learning per se is impaired. It means your ability to function within that system is impaired. There's a critical difference. Not having the 'right' level of performance doesn't = learning impaired.

Up to a point - but if we are talking about fundamental self care like remembering to eat (as the poster above discusses), that's not "societal".

does being disabled mean you can’t have a good job or do well in life?

what are you are trying to argue?

Yeh definition a a learning difficulty is anything that makes learning more difficult for your child having ADHD and autism does make learning more difficult as does dyslexia dyspraxia etc so by the legal definition she does have a leaning difficulty it doesn't mean she had a learning disability or that she isn't as intelligent or as able as other children just that she need support with her particular issue.
I think the child:s parent was probably just trying to explain to his child about your child's autism/ADHD. I don't think you should be upset or offended

Not at all. I think you have misunderstood the tone of my post so I will explain my response.

My response was to someone claiming that the OP's daughter was disabled due to neurodivergence. Many neurodivergent people would not consider themselves disabled, and in fact the equalities act bases their definition of disability on functional status i.e. someone may be disabled if they have a substantial and enduring impact on activities of daily living.

My issue is with the idea of ADHD or autism being universally considered a disability by a poster when it is not universally so. Although a somewhat large proportion of those with autism and many with ADHD have co-morbid conditions or such severe symptoms that their routine activities of daily living are affected, many neurodivergent people function without impact on activities of daily living and would not consider themselves disabled using the definition from the equalities act based on functional status.

Hear Hear!

I know that but but Iam referring to the pp who said the dad had no right to answer his daughter's questions unless he was a "medical doctor".

That was me, and what I said was the dad has no right to state that the child has learning difficulties if she doesn’t, because he’s not qualified to make that judgment. I never said he can’t answer questions about learning difficulties

My son has ADHD and I would class it as a learning difficulty. Even if he does well at school it’s still been more difficult for him.

I can see how others saying it to their kids is upsetting though. That’s bad parenting by that person.

I think he just meant that she found some things harder to do.