What are Learning Disabilities?
You are listening to the Apollo Podcast network. This is Titanium Life Radio with your host Peak performance speaker and business coach Arman Sadeghi. Welcome to the Titanium life podcast. I am Arman Sadeghi, and today I want to talk to you about something really important. And what I want to tell you is this. Can we please stop labeling our children and people on this earth with this learning disabilities?
Learning Disabilities Are Harmful Labels
I mean, are you kidding me? Are we taking our children, that they are maybe just smarter than we are, or a heck of a lot smarter than the educators, and labeling with these learning disabilities? And can we stop putting these labels on them and telling them that they are not good enough?
And telling them that somehow they are going to fail in school, and they are going to fail in life, and they are going to fail in society because we just don’t understand how they learn? And in most cases, because they learn differently than we do. And in most cases, they learn better than we do.
I mean, have you heard of this thing called ADHD? Yeah, it’s called billionaire entrepreneur disease. That’s what it’s called.
So the next time somebody at school, some idiot tells you that your kid has ADHD, say thank you, I really wanted to be a billionaire. Now I am glad my daughter or son, is going to be a billionaire entrepreneur.
I mean, I sound a little upset as I am saying this, but the reality is I am upset. You know, I don’t like to see people being labeled.
If you’ve been to my seminars, and you listen to the things I talk about, I always talk about identity, as being one of the most important things. And the thing is, I see this when we take our children, and we assign these identities to them.
It’s the same thing what doctors do, when they tell someone, oh you have only three months to live. You only have a year to live; you’ll never walk again. Well you know, these are some of the things, just some of the things that drove me away from medical school.
You see, when you are in medical school, you’ve thought some of these things. And you are told, hey this disease means this, and this means that, and prescribe this pill, and that pill. I was blessed to be at the best medical school on the planet, Harvard Medical School. And you know, they’ve got away from a lot of that. And I am so honored that I got to be part of that amazing program for two years, where we really didn’t do those kinds of things. They didn’t teach you to label people.
Labeling is a Bad Part of Medicine
But still, it’s an inherent part of medicine. But with these learning disabilities, what we are now doing, is labeling kids with these ridiculous, ridiculous things that I mean, in some cases, we are taking the advantages that these children have, and we are making them disadvantages.
In other cases, what we are doing is, we are taking something that it may just be hey the kid is just not trying, or the kid is just not exerting himself, or putting herself a hundred percent into something.
Let’s Look at the Different Types of Learning Disabilities
And we are saying that oh it’s okay because you have learning disabilities. Well, that’s the kind of stuff we are going to end, and it just doesn’t make sense. You know, I have two little girls, 3 and 4 years old as I make this recording, and I am not going to be okay with anyone telling me that they have a learning disability. It’s unacceptable, and in most cases, because these learning disabilities are truly made up. I mean, let’s look at them. Let’s look at a few of them.
ADHD Is One of the Most Common Learning Disabilities
I’ve already mentioned ADHD, this is the thing if you haven’t heard of it, is where they tell you your kid’s brain is screwed up because he or she can’t pay attention long enough. Have you ever thought that maybe they are just smarter then you are?
And their mind is racing, and they are focusing on the next thing, while you are still talking about the last thing. Or maybe, you know it’snot just a positive thing. Maybe your kid just doesn’t like to pay attention. Maybe your kid isn’t focused in school.
So maybe if your kid has ADHD, I do a little quote sign as I say that, so the rest of this podcast, whenever I use these labels, please understand I don’t believe in any of this stuff. There is no ADHD. And we shouldn’t label people like that.
But maybe, if someone thinks your kid has ADHD, hey maybe you need to tell your kid, look kid pay attention. When you’re sitting in class focus on what we are talking about. Some of you are listening to this podcast, and your mind is probably wondering. Well hey, you don’t have ADHD, maybe I am just boring.
You know, so focus on what I am talking about if you don’t want to have ADHD. Or, if your brain is advanced enough, it’s listening what I am saying and its running on seven different thoughts hey maybe you are just smarter than the rest of us.
Dyslexia is Another Common Learning Disability
And maybe that’s a good thing. And there is this thing dyslexia. Dyslexia! People get the order of things wrong. I mean, really? Am I the only one here, who personally thinks that I have dyslexia pretty much my whole life? Okay, we get the order of something wrong, I mean there is nothing wrong with that. That’s just reality, that’s just life.
And a lot of these kids are labeled with dyslexia, what it really is that their minds once again are running faster than us. So the kid is trying to say something or is reading something, and what’s happening, is their brain is able to process more than their eyes can take in at once.
Or the brain is processing more information than the lips, and the tongue and the mouth are able to put out at once. So the order gets screwed up. So we are taking a kid, whose brainpower is higher than other peoples, and we are telling him you have a learning disability, and that’s your excuse for failing in life. You know, it’s just ridiculous that we do these things with our kids.
What to do if Your Kid is Diagnosed With a Learning Disability
So what should you do with your kids? What should you do if your kid has some of these? The first thing you do, you congratulate them. You say, hey you know what? You realize that fact that you can’t get the order of these words or letter in order, is because your brain is faster than everyone else’s. And you what you tell them to do?
You say you know what? Hey, let’s slow down your thought pattern. Let’s slow down your brain. You know what’s amazing, when I was a basketball player at college, my coach, coach Bromell, who was an amazing basketball coach, told me something one day that was revolutionary for me. He pulled me aside and he said Arman, you are the worst player on the team.
He really said this to me. Of 12 players, you are the worst one on the team. And he said, and you know why? I said why? He said because you have 4.0 point grade average. And I was like, what is that supposed to mean? Am I studying too much, and should I take time off studying and spent time in sports? And he said No, Arman. You are way too smart. You are out there overthinking stuff. And your brain is racing so you are going crazy out there.
He said, but the rest of these guys, they are not thinking their way through basketball, they are feeling their way through basketball. And he says, they are out there and they are just letting it flow. And they are slowing down their mind. And they say that’s what I want you to do, slow down your thoughts.
Think fewer thoughts, and just move more slowly. And as they are saying this, I am like oh course, my brain is going Ahhhh, but I got to go to the next thing, I got to do this, I got to do that. But he tells me this. And it was revolutionary.
And that season, I went from being the worst player on the team, number 12, to being the second-worst player, which let me tell you, that is an accomplishment. That was a big step for me. But you know, these learning disabilities, we tell kids they have these learning disabilities, and you got to hear some of these other ones. I mean, I couldn’t believe some of this stuff, I look it up and I am like are you kidding me? We are calling this a learning disability? Have you heard of this one, dysgraphia?
Dysgraphia is Another Learning Disability Worth Noting
Dysgraphia means, oh you have a problem with the way you’re seeing things, writing, and reading and stuff like that. You have bad handwriting. Hey, it is maybe because you have crappy handwriting. I have really horrible handwriting.
But it didn’t stop me from being successful in business, being successful in sports, it didn’t stop me in any of this stuff. To this day, my handwriting is horrible. Well thank god, when I was a kid, no one told me about dysgraphia. Because if they have, I would have thought that I am too stupid to accomplish anything in life. I mean, dysgraphia. We are going to put a label on that? Once again I am going to say, if I have dysgraphia, so far I think I have all three of these things.
I am definitely ADHD because I can’t pay attention to save my life, unless I sit down and I say you know, this is really important. I am having a talk with my wife.
She is telling me about something important in her life, I need to pay attention. I am speaking with an employee, I need to pay attention to. I am sitting in an important seminar, I need to focus. I am listening to a podcast that could change my life, and I need to focus on. And then guess what happens? I focus on. But I’ve got ADHD. You don’t think I have ADHD?
How else I would have been able to do so many entrepreneurial things throughout my life? Of course, I have ADHD. Dyslexia, my goodness I could barely say the word dyslexia without getting the letters wrong. Dysgraphia? I can’t wait till you see my handwriting because I want you to see how bad my case of dysgraphia. I mean it’s insane. And then I saw this one. This is one that I literally learn just about. Dyscalculia. Dyscalculia, okay. What that means is you can’t do math. So basically you are human. I mean, really?
My best subject in school was math. Okay, but math is a hard subject. Dyscalculia, you can’t do the math. Maybe you should do a few more of those multiplication tables. Maybe if your kid has dyscalculia, maybe it is because he is a freaking great artist. I mean, not every brain has to go two plus two equals four. You know, ten times three equals thirty. What is that? Now, my brain happens to do math pretty well. But what is that?
You Don’t Have to Be Good at Everything
Have you ever try to see me sing? Have you ever try to see me play an instrument? Have you ever try to see me draw something for crying out loud? My goodness, my four-year kid now officially draw stick figures as good as daddy.
And I am scared that by the age of 5 she is going to pass me up. But we don’t go label me with some, I bet some are. I bet they are saying I have some learning disability, where you can’t do really pretty drawings. And for that reason, I don’t know, I should be pulled out of class for 2 hours a day, and go put on this other class, where they tell me I am stupid.
And that should be an excuse for me not to succeed in school. I mean, it makes no sense my friends. So let’s not label people, don’t label people.
Don’t label yourself with these things, don’t label your children with these things. I mean dyscalculia. I mean are you kidding me? Who on this podcast, listening to this thing, doesn’t have dyscalculia? Hey, if you are not getting your math homework done right, maybe you should just spend more time on it. If there are any parents out there, you have kids, have them listen to this.
Because here is my message to the kids, look I love the youth in this country and in this world. You guys are the future. Don’t let some label, that someone is putting on you get in the way. Prove them wrong. In fact, if they’ve told you, you have dyscalculia, what I want you to do is, I want you to get an A on your next math class.
And you know the way you are going to do that? You will harder than everyone else. And prove them wrong. Because I guarantee you, no matter what learning disability they’ve labeled you with, you are going to have no problem getting an A on the class, as long as you put your effort into it. I mean there are other ones, like dyspraxia, where there are issues with your motor skills.
Oh, you can’t grab a pen correctly, you can’t this and you can’t that. I mean my goodness. You know, maybe some of us develop certain things faster than other things. Not every single kid has to able to, at the age of 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 be able to everything that every other kid at their age can do. We all develop differently. It’s just the broad range as a human being. And that’s what makes us beautiful. I mean, what you want to make, a bunch of robots where we are all exactly the same? What if we started looking at these learning disabilities, and start looking at them as advantages?
Start Looking at Learning Disabilities as Learning Advantages
You know all these different labels, and I am not naming all these learning disabilities, and all the different things that they are labeling kids with. I know they do it for good reason, and I get it some of you listening out there, but Arman there is funding, and this and that. I get all that.
But none of that funding is going to make for the fact that we are setting our children behind, we are taking away their future, by convincing them that they are not as good as everybody else. And I will never do that to my kids. And I will never allow someone to do that thing to me.
Thank god, these things didn’t exist when I was in school. Because for those of you who know, you realize, I dropped out of high school, my junior year with straight Fs. I used to get C, D, and Fs, all throughout school. And finally my junior year I dropped out with straight Fs. You know what, I went back to school years later, and got straight As, A 4.0. Gotmyselfat UC Berkley, and then I went on to Harvard medical school.
Now I am not telling you that to impress you, what I want to do is,I want to share with you that it wasn’t a learning disability that was holding me back. It was the fact I didn’t want to study.
It was the fact, that when I was in class I didn’t want to pay attention. So for all of you parents out there, do yourself and everyone around you a favor, but not ever telling your kids that they have a learning disability. Don’t give them a label.
You know, if you are going to give them a label, change it to a positive label. Instead of telling your kid he/she has a learning disability, called ADHD, tell your kid that their brain runs faster than the other kids. And that he has to learn to slow it down.
If your kid has dysgraphia, tell him hey, its maybe because his brain and his eyes process more information than a normal person does. And so once again, they are going to have to slow down. And you see something in common in every one of these cases, you just have to slow down. It’snot like these people are slow.
These people are actually fast. All these learning disabilities. Whether you are talking about ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, all of these things, all it is, is just they work faster than we do. So we’ve taken some of the people who are the elite in the world, and we’ve said there4 is a problem with them. And why? Because we don’t know how to educate them. See, our educational system is created for the masses.
Our Education System is Created For the Middle
Our educational system is created for maybe 40% of society that falls right in the middle. We don’t know how to educate the people at the top. And we don’t know how to educate the people at the bottom. And of the top and the bottom, interesting enough we are the worst at educating the top.
That’s the thing. Why do you think you see, these people who dropped out of some of the best schools in the world, and gone off to have some of the biggest companies in the world, that have changed the universe, change the world in a way you can’t even imagine. But they didn’t even make it out of school. Why? Because the school system doesn’t work for them.
Now, I am not against our system. Listen, we got the best educational system in the world, I don’t care what anyone says, people love to attach to the US educational system. P.S. we didn’t put man on the moon because we don’t have a good educational system. You know, we are not at the cutting edge at just about everything in the world, because we are not educating our people.
It’s not just the US. It’s so many developed nations, and developing nations these days. You know, our educational system is pretty darn good. But they can get a lot better. And that’s what the message today is.
Empower Your Children to Make the Most of Their Differences
But our parenting can get a lot better as well, by telling our kids the advantages they have, and what we expect of them. Because we want our kids to thrive. We want them to thrive through life, not survive through life. If you want your kids to survive, you are not fit to be a parent. You should want your kids to thrive.
So let’s get out there, let’s stop telling people they have learning disabilities, let’s see it as it truly is, which is as a learning advantage. See it as it truly is, as they are smarter than us, their brain works faster than ours, and let’s just see if we can get them to slow their brains a little bit. Maybe if they slow down, the can have even more learning. They can have even more passion. And they can get even better results in school, in life and in everything else.
Learning Disabilities Success Stories
So for all you kids listening to me out there, if you have ADHD, I welcome you to the future entrepreneur billionaire club. I hope you and I can spend time there together. If you have dyslexia, congratulations having a brain that works faster than your moms and your dads and your siblings and anyone else in your classes. If you have dysgraphia, hey good job. Your brain works faster and your eyes work really fast.
If you have dyscalculia, hey maybe you should focus a little bit on getting your math right, and slow down your brain. Because math is really hard when your brain goes 6000 miles an hour. And dyspraxia? And again, hey why don’t we just slow it down? Maybe the reason you have dyspraxia your motor skills are this and that, maybe it’s just because you are trying to move a little too fast.
Slow down, please come back to earth and join the rest of us, normal human beings, who are not as gifted as you, and maybe you can save your gifts and use them at different time. That’s my message to you kids, who have been labeled with these ridiculous things, and other ones. I’ve only mentioned a few of them today. So, hey thank you so much for joining me on this podcast.
My Challenge to You Today
I’ve got some really amazing episodes coming up, but here is my challenge for you today. If you like this podcast, I challenge you to please tell other people about it. I do this because I want to change the world. I want to make people’s lives even better.
I don’t do this for some economic gain. That’s why I am doing this podcast, and this is not some paid program. I am putting this out there for free. So my challenge for you is this if you are listening to me, and you enjoyed today’s podcast, I challenge you to get at least 5 people today, not tomorrow. Don’t leave it up for next week.
Get 5 other people to listen to this podcast, and help me change the world. One way you can do that is, you are on social media, make a post that talks about this topic, In your own words, make a post about it. And then say please download Arman Sadeghi podcast Titanium life, and just help people to that.
By doing that, you are going to spread the word. And when people hear about a specific topic, they are much more likely to go and find it. So tell them about this episode, tell them about these learning disabilities, and help me spread the word.
Let’s make the world a better place. And anyone out there, who doesn’t believe that what I am saying is true, I am happy to have a conversation with you about it in one of my future episodes at some point. I want to interview people who disagree with me. I love that.
I going to bring in some experts who disagree with me on this topic. I want to have a very good conversation with them, and I am not going to attack them, I am just going to have a conversation and let the listeners make their own decisions. So if you disagree with me, great.
Listen to my next podcast. Because I love people who disagree with me. Because those are the people I can learn from. Again, I challenge you to get this information out to everybody you can.
These podcasts are about making your life better and helping you be the best you can be. So let’s have you help others be the best they can be. I love you all, and I am going to leave you with one important message as I do every day, lead with your heart.
Thanks for listening to Titanium life radio with Arman Sadeghi. Here on the Apollo Podcast network. For more information, or to subscribe to this podcast, visit titaniumsuccess.com/podcast.
