Derpy waddles in. "I'm weady for Vawentine's day!" He announces cheerful, tugging at his new skirt.
https://i.postimg.cc/HnCyyvx1/20200213-145733.jpg

I hate lotion dispenser boogers.

... I'm tired. I was trying to figure out how you could possibly transfer potatoes.

Accursed dyslexia!

coda has dyslexia??

grumbles about people saying that other people are narcissistic -- this further stigmatizes NPD for fuck's sake!

It's not super severe, and I read fast enough regardless that I can correct most reading errors before they cause problems. For the most part, it just leads to me noticing amusing misreadings and joking about it.

It's only an issue if the misreading still makes sense so I don't NOTICE that it was a misreading.

ah.

my brother has bad dyslexia to the point he can only make out short sentences / short words. he's getting a bit better with it.

Yeah, I have no idea what's up with the way my nervous system is wired. According to speed reading research, my reading speed is supposed to be unachievable. (If I really push myself I can read 1600wpm with 80% comprehension/retention. I don't usually TRY to read that fast, in no small part because I prefer better retention rates but also because especially with fiction I intentionally slow down to visualize/audiate the content.) But I have that kind of reading speed and dyslexia, and I have ADHD and sensory processing issues... I'm sure it's all related somehow.

h. huh.

realistically i have no idea how you'd manage that. i read pretty quickly but oftentimes have trouble retaining information, hence why i go over it again just to make sure, y'know? not too sure about my actual reading speed.

suspect that might be linked to either adhd or autism (i show symptoms of both).

Autism and ADHD have a pretty significant overlap in symptoms. My wife and I thought our son might be autistic, but as he's gotten older it's gotten easier to tell the difference -- it's severe early-onset ADHD that resulted in developmental delays. He's not showing the flattened emotional response that characterizes autism and as he's gotten older he's picked up the emotional perception abilities you would expect to see in typical development; they're just delayed. Having grown up with ADHD myself I get how to work with him on that, but it's really hard seeing a 12-year-old with obvious signs of depression, too...

As far as reading speed is concerned, the average reading speed for adults is 200-250 words per minute. College students usually score better than that, interestingly; 300wpm isn't unusual at all. It's believed to be because they get so much practice at it. So unless you feel like everyone else is always really dragging when reading stuff that you find easy, your reading speed is probably in the 200-300wpm range.

For me, I think the big thing is that -- through whatever mechanism that I don't really understand -- my reading is decoupled from speech, which is very much not normal. Most people can't read much faster than they could theoretically talk if they didn't have to worry about tripping over their tongue, and from what I've heard an EEG will actually pick up the neurons in your mouth and throat firing when you read in the same patterns that they fire in when you speak. I've never had this evaluated in me, but I DON'T subvocalize when I read (I don't imagine hearing the words in my head). I imagine this allows the concepts to skip a step and go straight into processing. I have no idea how that works.

ngl i wonder whether it's because i was a gifted kid-- whether that caused me to go undiagnosed for a long time, because schools don't think there's anything wrong with someone that overperforms to try and meet expectations of them, or because it wasn't spotted early enough to be of concern.

it just sucks because i know there's something wrong here but can't tell people what it is.

that's interesting.

The same thing happened to me. Everyone knew I was a gifted kid; I was sitting in a 3rd grade class when I was 6 years old. I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until I was 10, but by then I'd been held back just because even though I could keep up with the work I wasn't getting the social development I needed because I wasn't in classes with kids my own age.

In my experience, a lot of it is just that a kid that doesn't cause trouble doesn't get the extra attention needed to identify a problem.

Aww, I don't deserve it, but thank you anyways Trystan! <:} <3

of course you do, Merskelly. you're welcome! :D

Aww, Derpy, your skirt is super cute!
:D

Derpy honestly deserves all the sweets and valentines he gets! ^w^ <3

me, who is afab and has never been diagnosed with a mental illness, ever:
doctors, already not giving out enough adhd diagnoses to afab people:

anyways, i'm gonna be real surprised if i do manage to get a diagnosis ever, considering several factors.
in better news: a friend of mine found out they do have autism, so at the very least, that's been diagnosed.