Reading came easy

It's really frustrating to just "know" something but have no remembrance of the process it took to get there. 

Think about something that just "clicked' for you. Something that made sense immediately. Something that took absolutely no effort for you to learn. Call it talent or aptitude. Think about something that fit you. Immediately required no work. 

I think about how I learned to read. How I learned to speak. Which came first in some ways. They just happened. There isn't a lot of baby talk. There wasn't time spent on phonics. They just happened. But true reading came first. Easiest.

I always was voracious in reading. I just digested the words. Easier than I could express them. That's a pattern of my patterns. I saw connections others didn't explain. I still see random patterns others don't, and I can't explain them.

When I've talked to other people they talk about sounding out words, having to work from letter sounds to larger pieces of the puzzle. How they still hear the words in the head where they're reading. Using auditory cues to figure out more difficult words. 

It wasn't like that for me. Books just made sense. 

I understood words I couldn't pronounce. I was reading books by reading not letters, words. I was reading sentences and paragraphs. It's the only way I could and can explain it. The symbols on the page were merely parts of a whole. Meant to be consumed at a lightning speed. I don't read out loud in my head. The words just appear there. I just "get" the meaning. I always have.

Books just made sense  made sense to me. I pushed through my first encyclopedia entries by the time I was five. I was reading Bible and Book of Mormon passages aloud by six. I started the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings by age eight and it was off from there.

I averaged 10,000 pages of new material a summer. I blasted through book, magazine, and newspaper pages. I still do. But as a kid it was my calling, my escape. It just clicked. So quickly and so completely.

I remember vividly my first reading speed and comprehension test. We had to read a section of a page, then answer questions based on how far we got through the page. I read the page twice. I got 100% on the questions. Fast forward a few years to my sophomore year of high school. The same thing happened but I read it three times. 

That's just continued. Words being a part of me. 

I mean this sincerely. I just got words on pages. I figured out sentences. Vocabulary developed by recognizing the new word in context. Then the next word and the next. It's why reading new languages came a lot easier than speaking them. 

The way words made sense as bigger than themselves helped with tests. Especially multiple choice. I excelled. I still do well.  But essays were harder. Explaining how I read. Teaching someone to read. It often feels impossible. Now as a parent I'm struggling. How do I explain something that just makes sense to me?

But that's the thing. Test taking. Reading. That came easy. Being branded gifted. Not always.

There's a reason we call it neurodivergent. There's a separation from how society is set up. How education works. The ease at one thing comes at a price somewhere else. For me slowing down enough to be understood in the basics is hard. Simplifying my thought patterns, making sure I don't miss connections, that I can articulate the patterns that led to my conclusions is hard. It's part of why I write so much. Twofold really.

I see the words, I blast through the sentence. I can't explain how. I can recognize the pattern. I can spider-web seven connections. But I can't always articulate it or break it down. That kills me. And I recognize it and feel it more and more now. 

Working with my kids and on their homework I'm so thankful to their mother and their teachers to fill this gap I can't. Those things that just click. Just make sense. They've helped me fill in the gaps that I couldn't do for myself. Thank goodness.

For those things that just came easy. It's good to know help exists. Cause teaching, explaining it, that's the hardest thing.

This wasn't meant to be either a humble brag or a wallow in my despair. This was just me being a little transparent about what is hard. 

Some people think that ADHD is a superpower. Something without cost. But it has them. They're just harder to see. And sometimes they're linked to the obvious strengths in ways we can't even express. 

It's my hope we can be a little more compassionate and open about our strengths and struggles. That's how we help, that's how we move forward and do better.