The "winner" of the last request thread was u/winter_storm:

When was the first time you realized that you were different from other people, and how did you find out?

Question assumes I am different, but I think we all are, it's just a matter of in what ways?

Grade 4 they put me in a "split class", 4/5.

The 4s were supposed to be the handful of 'advanced' kids in the grade, and each day they'd pull us out of class for something I remember them calling "mode 2" - we'd go with a special teacher to a special classroom and do "enriched" curriculum.

The first day they hand us this little book on Geckos. It couldn't have been more than 10 pages with pictures, with a set of questions at the end. The idea was that we were going to work through one of these each week - reading out loud, discussing the questions, I guess other things - it was to be the focus for the "English" component of our studies.

My turn to read out loud and I just couldn't, I stumbled over everything, but that teacher woman was kind and didn't force me to continue she just said it was "nerves" - but it stuck with me. I had severe problems with language to say the least. I knew next time I'd have to read out loud, I'd be discovered. So I had to act somehow. I knew we were doing the book for the rest of the week.

I got home from school and at that time, my Nana was still alive and waiting for me. I sorta told her, I am sure I spun it somehow from the truth, but I told her I couldn't read the book and was sad and it was hard, could she read it to me? So she read the book with me, over and over, to help me.

Thing is: yes, as we went through it, I got better. But it was because I was memorizing what she said. Every word. By the time my parents got home I knew the thing by heart, and remember talking about Geckos at dinner. My Nana smiled, and so did I.

So thing is, the rest of the week went great until Friday. I remember, the "reading out loud" I could do cause I knew what the symbols I was looking at were and I wasn't embarrassing, maybe I was even good? Discussing Geckos was no problem, I could now talk about them forever if needed. And then the other academic things, the math games and such I was actually built for, and they went great. I felt like a million bucks, until the Friday when we had to write down the answers to the questions at the back of the Gecko book.

If I couldn't read, well you can guess, my writing was going to be leagues worse.

I don't know what I wrote down on the page, but I handed it in sheepishly in the morning, then we rejoined the rest of the class for the rest of the day.

So back to the question(s): "When was the first time you realized that you were different from other people"? I'm sure I knew well before that, but this was kinda the pivot for me when it became real. "...and how did you find out?" - well it was this next moment:

Sometime that afternoon, the "Mode 2" teacher knocked on the classroom door and as soon as I saw her I knew it was about me. She called me out of class.

We sat in her special classroom, alone, and she basically asked me a kid-appropriate version of "What the fuck?"

I told her the truth as I'd said above - the story of how my Nana read the book, I memorized it, but I really couldn't read at all.

So that moment is a life pivot. What does that woman do? I think the best question is - what should that woman have done? Of course those are questions that don't have real or good answers, and I don't blame her really, if anything her reaction was a lot better/kinder than other 'genius teachers' I had later.

It basically boiled down to: you're good at math, you're terrible at spelling, the best course forward for you is to double down on the math, and I'm sure the reading/writing/language will catch up later so we won't put you through the agony of these readers.

She found this woman, the mother of one of the other kids in the class, who was a high school math teacher off on extended maternity leave, to teach me math. When the other kids went to mode 2, I'd instead go to the library with her. But somehow, it increased, I don't remember how or why, but the arrangement became that I spent almost every morning with this woman. But, not only that year, through grade 5 too (since, I just 'flipped' to the other side of the 4/5 split). Yeah I could do algebra and calculus before middle school - so much good that did me.

But thing is, those couple of years were really happy for me. All I did were things I was good at, and people ignored the things I was crap at. My parents took the opinion that - "well school knows education, must be doing him good."

Basically my life was exception after exception - for the good and bad. I was equal part good different and bad different, and it was just accepted if not encouraged, but it was certain allowed and was obvious to me.

So, it's the reason I treat my kids how I do. My son basically is following in that path laid out above, but when he hit the "cannot read" / "great at other shit" phase we pushed and got him extra help, and assessments and figured out how and why he's different and what to really do about it. The schools know, he has extra support. He now has a computer to help work around a warped variant of dyslexia, he's in programs to learn english basically differently to 'empower' his reading, we work hard to try to minimize his anxieties around it and talk about them out loud. We "double down" on language. When he wanted to make a video-game with me sure I taught him, but we've spent more time working on stories and reading and trying to develop those things. We recognize differences, but try to normalize his childhood as much as possible.

I don't want him to be different, I just want him to be happy.