CW: In your book, you encourage parents to “do more than cope” with learning differences. What do you mean by that?

Maren: I really think it’s important for parents to educate themselves. Remember, if you have a child with a learning difference, chances are you are an undiagnosed parent that has a learning difference. So as a parent, you need to cope by understanding and educating yourself how this child learns best and what kind of an educational environment do I need to seek out for them. And it’s not always what it seems. Many people think, “Oh, I’m going to do the public school route, that’ll be great.” But this child may crash and burn in that environment. So what’s going to be best for them? And many people go to the private school sector, and think, oh that’s great it’s going to be better because they’ll have smaller class sizes and they’ll pay more attention. But in reality those teachers have never been trained to actually teach a learning different child. So it basically magnifies their situation as a learning different student in a smaller setting. So they usually have a harder time. And homeschool is a really good option but it just depends on the parent, if they have the patience to do it.

CW: In that case, what is the number one piece of advice you would give to a parent who has learning differences?

Maren: If you notice and you’re thinking that you really have a problem, then the number one thing you need to do is get them tested. Make sure that it’s a good, educational diagnostician that’s doing it. So many people go to the public school system because it’s free. But the problem is with that is the public school only does the bare minimum. They are only trying to see how much money they’re going to get per kid for that next school year. It’s not a good thing. So what you want to do is make sure you go to a private, educational diagnostician and get the full-prong battery.

And once you know what you’re dealing with, then you can take care of it. But if you’re just guessing… So many families don’t want to test because they think their kid’s going to be labeled, but that once again is your parents’ pride. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, they’re going to tell us we’re dyslexic!” It’s gosh, what is this, a brand of the swastika? [laughing] Big deal, get over it. It’s so silly. And so you say, yes, he’s got a label. Big deal. You’ve got to get on with it. Figure out what you’ve got to do and it makes life a lot easier to live.