Does my girlfriend have learning disability?(very long, but I need help badly)?

Image by fensterbme
toastin…

Tech Details: Taken with a Canon 50D and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens. Lighting provided by a White Lighting X1600 monolight 4’x3′ softbox to camera right up and to the front of the toaster. The light inside the toaster provided by an Alien Bee’s ABR800 ringlight, under then toaster, and gelled red. Toaster is sitting on a piece of plexi raised 1′ off the table with the ABR800 ringlight underneath, with a blue paper under the plexi, with a hole cut-out to allow the red light to go into the toaster (I also removed the toaster’s bottom obviously).

This was taken only using the modeling lights the strobes never fired. Camera was mounted on a tripod to allow for the higher aperture and slow shutter speed.

Question by : Does my girlfriend have learning disability?(very long, but I need help badly)?
I love my girlfriend very much. She is 19 years old and ever since I met her I thought she was perfect for me. She’s a VERY nice person and very caring and does all that she can to make others happy. It’s been close to 2 years now and I started trying to help her out with her studies around 5-6 months ago. almost nothing I try to teach her stays with her only very few details. A lot of these things that i try to teach her are very basic common knowledge subjects. I don’t mean to insult her I just want to help her and I have no idea how to do so. I’m 20 and I’m a college student so I have no idea where to turn.

I’ll start with her math. Her Math skills are around a 6th grader level. If she doesn’t have a pen and paper even for very basic equations. For example in math she will get basic questions right, but she will take forever. If I say whats 50 – 11 she will get the answer, but it will take way more then whats expected at her age. once she gets the answer I’d hope the previous question would remain in her head and I’d ask her was 60 – 11and she will get it, but it will take way too long when all she would have to do is add a 1 to the previous 3. Her multiplication is decent as long as she’s using paper. If you take away paper the only thing she can do are the very basic times tables like 2, 5, and 10. Division is a nightmare both on paper and in her head. She can basically only divide by 2 and sometimes 3. Her fractions aren’t even worth talking about. Also just today I asked her how long has the USA been a country. She said she doesn’t know. so i replied fine and told her well it’s 2009 and we became a country on 1776(at least that’s when we declared it) and she tried using her head and told me 1300 years old. common sense would tell even an English major that that is indeed not possible. Once she used paper she got the final answer.

Now I will talk about English skills.Her ability to speak is fine. She says a few words incorrectly, but I have been working with her in that subject and she has improved a lot. for example she used to say “LookDid “for “Looked”. she also used to say “I wored” instead of “wore”. She has improved in things like that, but there are still many other words which she says very weird, but at least she’s improving. She calls Bees “Beeds” and the word Hundred “Hunfdreck”. When I go over the words with her she can pronounce them fine, but later o she forgets. Her spelling is another problem. She can’t match certain sounds to letters. for example she can’t Get the “THR” sound. I asked ehr to spell “Throw” and she spells “Thow” completely missing out the R, but If I give her a word like Practice she hears the R. It’s very confusing.

Now her history is the worst part. The other parts shes been improving. Slightly, but improving none the less. we were watching Band of Brothers(WW2 show) and I asked her around what year did this war happen I will give you a 20 year gap.She said 1500-1600 and she did a essay 2 months ago on world War 1.

Look I don’t want this to seem like a rant or me dissing my girl friend. I love her very much for who she is, but I’m worried she may have LD or a bad case of ADD and if she does we can receive help and try to get passed this. I would also like to add that she has times when she seems like a great listener and times when i have to repeat myself like 3 times within 10 minutes. Now i have a mild case of ADD and it’s never really affected me at all. The most it did was make me daze off during the 5th/6th grade.

Here I will describe her personality. She’s very loving and caring. She’s also very shy in certain situations which involve socializing. She had an abusive father when she was younger and her job has basically been to watch her sisters and raise them. She left her father before her teenage years, but her mother isn’t really a mother. She’s not a bad person, but definitely not mother material. She really wants to learn which is why I’m confused as to why there is a problem. Her sisters aren’t the brightest and are “hoodrats”, but they can understand certain concepts better than her. She had heart surgery when she was younger because of a very bad heart murmur cause by holes in her heart. That has been fixed for years. She had surgery when she was 5 and has never had any type of complications. She also goes to a school that passes anybody with a pulse.

I know this was a very long post and I thank you for taking th time to read. I just don’t know what to do. I feel like me trying to help her isn’t working although she’s seriously trying to learn. Also if anyone’s aware of a place I can go with her to check something like this out in NYC that would be great. Please no insults I love my girl and i just want to help.
Also she can do many physical things perfectly fine. She can play basket ball, run, cook(she loves to cook), Walks perfectly fine. i know for a fact she’s not Autistic or anything extremely serious like that. I’m thinking either an LD, ADD or something caused by her Heart Murmur.
Thanks to you all. I honestly don’t think I’m an amazing bf as I give her problems as well. I don’t think her problems are as severe as I made them out to be. sometimes she feels as if shes of average intelligence and others she does not so well. I do get angry with her at times which usually leads to arguments which is bad, but one can only take so much, but I’m trying to stop that. i know she can succeed in this world, but I feel like she needs to be a lot more prepared before she starts college. Thank you all for the advice. I appreciate it. Also again I’m not that amazing lol

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