Gus Walz stole the show on Wednesday when he officially accepted his father, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s vice presidential nomination on the third night. Democratic National Convention.
The 17-year-old stood up his father’s speech and “This is my father,” and then added, “I love you, father.”
The governor and his wife, Gwen Walz, a Interview people their son was diagnosed with a non-verbal learning disability as a teenager.
A 2020 education An estimated 2.9 million children and adolescents in North America have a nonverbal learning disability, or NVLD, which affects a person’s spatial-visual skills.
Santhosh Girirajan, T. Ming Chu Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Genomics Professor at Penn State, said the number of people who receive the diagnosis is lower than those who have a disability.
“These people are very intelligent and articulate well verbally, but they are usually clumsy with motor and spatial coordination,” he told NBC News. “It’s called a learning disorder because there are many cues other than verbal cues needed to store information in our memory.”
People with NVLD often struggle with visual-spatial skills, such as reading maps, following directions, identifying mathematical patterns, remembering how to navigate spaces or fit blocks together. Social situations can also be difficult.
“Some of the things we think of with body language and everyday social norms, they’re not going to catch,” Girirajan said.
Unlike other learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, symptoms of the disability are not usually apparent until adolescence.
Learning in early elementary school is largely focused on memorization—learning words or doing simple math equations that people with NVLD typically excel at. Social skills are also more specific, such as playing a game of tag during recess.
“But as you get older, there’s a lot of subtlety in social interactions that you have to understand, like sarcasm, that these kids don’t,” said Laura Phillips, CEO and senior neuropsychologist at the Center for Learning and Development. Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit organization in New York.
In her practice, she sees adolescents with NVLD, who typically have average or average IQs, when school requires more integrated knowledge and executive functioning, such as reading comprehension or integrating learning across subjects. They also usually seek help for something else, anxiety or depression, which is common among people with NVLD.
It is often misdiagnosed as autism
Amy Margolis, director of Columbia University’s Laboratory for Environment, Brain and Behavior, is part of a team of researchers who are beginning to call the disability a “developmental visuospatial disorder.” he
People with NVLD are “very verbal,” Margolis said, in contrast to their name.
Learning disabilities are sometimes misdiagnosed as autism spectrum disorders. Margolis led 2019 education Although children with autism spectrum disorder and NVLD often have overlapping characteristics, the underlying neurobiology—what happens in their brains that causes these characteristics—is unique between the two conditions.
Margolis is pushing for NVLD to be recognized by the DSM-5, the handbook that health care providers use to diagnose mental health conditions. Without such formal recognition, people with NVLD may struggle to get the resources they need, such as special classroom placements or extra support at school.
“Without an officially recognized diagnosis, it’s difficult for parents to understand how to seek information and then communicate to other people what kinds of things might be difficult for their child,” Phillips said, adding that increased awareness is key to helping these families. NVLD.