Hidden Cost of Learning Disabilities for Family Life

When we find out a child has a learning disability, we often first think of how he or she struggles with academic work. It’s easy to overlook the hidden costs and the hidden pain of learning disabilities. Sarah Entine unveils how learning disabilities affect family and social life in her engaging, honest, award-winning film, Read Me Differently. If you have a child, teen, or adult with a learning disability in your family or homeschool group, you can benefit from this interesting short film.

In this film, Sarah Entine tells her own story, the tale of three generations of undiagnosed learning disabilities, to show how widely learning disabilities can affect a family. The film’s multi-generational angle is uniquely powerful.

As a child, Sarah thought, “I know I’m not dyslexic because I don’t reverse letters.” It’s still a common misconception. Once Sarah’s dyslexia was diagnosed and she got help, she made progress. But her life didn’t change overnight, and neither did the stresses at home. It wasn’t until she was in graduate school, training to become a social worker, that Sarah suddenly realized she was not the only one in her family with a learning disability. This opened dialogue that improved understanding and healed relationships at home.

Why should you watch this film?

  • It doesn’t feel like a documentary. It feels like visiting with a family, a family with a story perhaps a bit like yours.
  • Read Me Differently will help you understand more deeply that when you have a child with any learning disability, it affects how that child perceives herself and how others perceive her.
  • Watch this film with your family because it’s an easy way to  help family members see that there are many kinds of learning disabilities impacting us different ways.
  • This film is also an engaging way to get family members thinking and talking about how learning disabilities affect their relationships. Sarah, her mother, and her grandmother struggle with different issues. Each issue affects their opinions of themselves and each other, their relationships and their success.
  • It would be a great film for a support group to watch together.

Like Sarah, I’m in a family with many generations of different learning disabilities. My mother and son have dyslexia. My son and I are distractible. I’m still learning how different family member think and behave differently because of our learning differences.

What next?

Here’s the trailer, so you can see if Read Me Differently is right for you:

YouTube video

You can also watch the trailer on Youtube here. (As best I recall, the “r” word in the trailer is the only offensive language in the entire film, and it is used by an elderly person who learned it and used it before its offensiveness was commonly known. So I still recommend this film.)

At  ReadMeDifferently.com, you can rent it for streaming to watch at home, or for additional cost, to watch with your support group.

How have you seen learning disabilities affect relationships in you family? What has helped you cope with those difficulties?

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