Smart Kids With LD

An article in the Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/29/dan-malloy-connecticut-governor-dyslexia_n_842139.html?ir=Divorce describes Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy’s speech this week to students at Eagle Hill School for children with learning disabilities in Greenwich, CT. The governor told students that people didn’t expect him to grow up to become successful: He couldn’t read, write, or spell, and was embarrassed every day in school. While teachers as well as classmates labeled him as dumb, his parents believed otherwise.

Governor Malloy confided to students what he has also told others, including Smart Kids with LD: Although he eventually became a good reader, he still can’t write. His mother was his champion, at a time that teachers described him as mentally deficient. His parents made a critical decision, early on, not to dwell on the things he wasn’t good at — but instead, to focus on his strengths.

Those strengths include a highly developed capacity for listening, absorbing information easily, and speaking persuasively. Learning eventually to read, he graduated with honors from Boston College and BC law school. He was the first person in Connecticut without sight impairment to take the bar exam orally. Malloy went on to win 22 of his 23 cases as an assistant prosecutor in Brooklyn, before joining a law firm in his hometown of Stamford, CT where he was subsequently the city’s longest-serving Mayor before his election last fall as Governor.