And so I’d say, “Nick, isn’t it about that time? I’m so tired. I want to go to sleep.” “Mom, I just need to make the rounds.” And what he would do is go to everybody in the house, and talk with them, just “How you doing, what’re you doing.” And then he’d leave the room and go to the next person and the next person. And that’s how he calmed down. He would have to make three rounds to everyone’s room to kind of settle down. We’d all say, “Is this round one or two? I’m exhausted.” He’d say, “I just have to do it one more time. Just kind of go with it.” And so we’d all go with it.” It turned out to be a positive because he knew what was going on with everybody. And everybody just knew that that’s what he had to do. So we just embraced it.

CW: From the marriage perspective, how does parenting a family with such diverse learning styles affect the relationship between parents?

Maren: Well, you have to remember that either one or both of the spouses are possibly undiagnosed learning differences themselves. So they will have a lot of issues that they’re going to be bringing to the table. One being, do they really truly process what’s being said? A lot of times it looks like, “Hey, you’re not listening to me. Pay attention to me.” And a non-learning-different spouse, you don’t understand that they might have auditory processing [problems], you think, “Oh, he doesn’t love me” or “She’s not paying attention to me.” So if you [don’t] understand that that might be a problem, then that could be a really big issue.

Typically, the divorce rate among this population is huge because either spouse will go one of two ways. They’ll either say, “I’m out of here, I don’t want to deal with this,” or they’ll say, “Okay, they’ve got a learning difference and I’ll be patient and I’ll go the distance.” And that’s what you hope will be the case but it’s not always the case. So again, you have to communicate and you have to make sure that if you’re the non-learning different spouse, then you have to remember that less talk is more. So you can’t yack, yack yack, because the person can’t process what you’re saying. You have to just say what you mean and be very specific.

CW: Do you have any other practical suggestions for how parents can work together?

Maren: You’ve got to have half an hour a day with no TV and no kids. So that usually means at night after everybody’s gone to sleep. And by that time you’re probably so tired yourself. But you have to buck up and get together and just talk with each other and get that game plan for the next day. “How are we going to deal with such-and-such today and what are we going to do for the others?” And it could be something simple. Don’t make your goals so over the top that they’re not going to be achieved.