Nonverbal Learning Disability is a learning challenge that makes it more difficult for individuals to process nonverbal information. This includes understanding things like body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, social cues, hand signals, and other behaviors that make up the bulk of social interaction. NLD or NVLD also has physical challenges such as impaired fine motor skills and lower visual-spatial awareness. People with NLD can also process information more slowly which makes it difficult to do things like mental math, retain information, and think abstractly.
In spite of this, people with NLD can live rich lives with unique gifts like memorizing song lyrics, lines from movies, and names of friends. This podcast highlights these triumphs and gifts. Below is my first episode of the podcast to give you an idea of what NLD is.
The Main Challenges areas of NLD or NVLD:
Everyone with NLD or NVLD will experience the following areas to various degrees because NLD has its own spectrum of challenges (like autism does).
Fine motor skills: tying shoelaces, using scissors, holding a paintbrush or pencil, etc.
Gross motor skills: riding a bike, throwing, kicking, and catching a ball, probably also trying to hit a baseball (I’ve never played it so I’m imagining here), etc.
Visual-Spatial awareness: having challenges with feeling your body in space, bumping into things when carrying objects, not knowing how to approximate distances well, and difficulty with learning how to drive.
Organization skills, multi-tasking, and planning ahead of time.
Trying to stay focused and track all the thoughts or things being said to you during complex conversations.
Recalling visual memory.
Friendships with peers.
Reading social cues, body language, hand signals, facial expressions, and comprehending tone of voice.
Interpreting social interactions and nonverbal communication.
Handling and understanding novel situations or changes to routines.
Comprehending sarcasm, idioms, and jokes.
Reading comprehension, retaining vocabulary, and essay writing.
Understanding charts, maps, diagrams, and graphs.
Mathematics skills: mental math, memorizing formulas, understanding fractions, ratios, geometric shapes, and word problems.
Sensory problems: overstimulation, under-stimulated, clumsy, or might need more stimulation.
Please refer to the links of The NVLD for more about Challenges with NVLD: https://nvld.org/does-my-student-have-nvld/, https://nvld.org/does-my-child-have-nvld/, and https://nvld.org/non-verbal-learning-disability/. Personal note everyone with NLD may have their own personal challenges that I may not have named because the world and The NVLD Project which I used to help create this list may not know about them so please know that this list may be incomplete, but it does have the general and common ones that NLDers experience. Thank you for taking the time to read this list, please share it with family, friends or anyone else who you think may benefit from it.