Are Learning Differences Superpowers?
When a child is struggling in school, it’s easy to focus on what isn’t working. The missed assignments, the frustrating evaluations, the years of feeling misunderstood. But what if that’s only part of the picture?
In this episode of Learning Differently, hosts Lynna and Joie sit down with Mary Miele — education consultant, learning specialist, author, and founder of Evolved Education Company — to explore what it really means to see a child through a lens of ability rather than limitation.
The conversation covers everything from how we talk about learning differences, to the science of executive function, to what parents in the thick of the hard stuff most need to hear.
Is It Ok To Say “Disability?”
For many families, the word “disability” lands heavily, weighted with what a child can’t do, rather than how they’re wired to think and learn.
Mary Miele pushes back on that framing. Not to dismiss the real challenges that come with learning differences, but because the label of disability on its own tells an incomplete story.
The field of special education is younger than most people realize. Federally mandated instruction for students with learning differences only began in the 1970s. In the years since, our understanding has expanded enormously. We now know how to teach students with dyslexia. We know what supports help students with ADHD. We know how to meet students with autism where they are.
The knowledge exists. What’s lagging, too often, is the framing.
When families and educators lead with disability, they risk narrowing the conversation to deficits before it ever gets to strengths. And the students absorb that. Many spend years genuinely believing they aren’t capable, simply because no one had put language to what they were experiencing in a way that opened a door forward.
The reframe isn’t about pretending the hard parts aren’t hard. It’s about refusing to let the hard parts be the whole story.
Can a Learning Difference Be Both a Strength and a Challenge?
There’s a version of the “learning differences are superpowers” message that, while well-intentioned, can feel like it skips a step. It’s important to remember that having a learning difference is genuinely difficult. The exhaustion of navigating a system not built for your brain is real. The years of misunderstanding leave marks.
Mary is clear about holding both truths at once: yes, there are real strengths that can emerge from a different kind of brain. And yes, it takes real work to get there: explicit instruction, consistent support, and time.
The analogy she uses is a tennis player with a strong forehand and a weaker backhand. The weaker side doesn’t disappear. You work on it directly. But you also learn to play the game in a way that draws on what you do well. And sometimes, that distinctive style becomes an advantage of its own.
What that looks like in practice is a conversation that never quite ends. It’s necessary to have ongoing, curious dialogue between parent and child about how their brain works, what feels hard, and what feels right.
How Do I Talk to My Child About Their Learning Difference?
There’s no single right way to have this conversation, and Mary offers parents grace on that. A few principles she comes back to:
- Meet children at their level, whether that’s through play, drawings, or simple words rather than clinical language.
- Don’t expect one conversation to do all the work. A child’s understanding of how they learn will deepen over time as they grow.
- If a conversation doesn’t go the way you hoped, you can always come back to it.
For parents who find themselves at either extreme — either leaning hard into “it’s a superpower” to protect their child from pain, or consumed by fear and worst-case thinking — the invitation is the same: try to move toward the middle.
Not to minimize the difficulty, and not to paper over it with positivity, but to hold a more complete picture of who your child is and what’s possible for them.
How Should I Talk to My Child’s Teacher About Their Learning Difference?
One of the most common frustrations for families of students with learning differences is the gap between what happens at home and what happens at school. And the feeling that those two worlds aren’t communicating.
Mary’s framework for bridging that gap starts before any problem arises. Building relationships with teachers and school staff through low-stakes, human moments (i.e. “How was your weekend?” “Thank you for what you did last week!”) creates a foundation of trust that makes the harder conversations possible. When something does go wrong, you’re not starting from scratch.
She also makes a case for curiosity over confrontation in those harder conversations. When a parent comes to a school meeting with demands, it tends to trigger defensiveness and shut down collaborative thinking. When a parent comes with questions (i.e. “Can you help me understand what happened?” “What would you do if you were in my shoes?”) it activates problem-solving in both people.
The relationship, she points out, runs both ways. Schools that communicate only when something is wrong miss the opportunity to build the kind of trust that makes families feel like partners in their child’s education.
What Is Executive Function and Why Does It Matter for Students With Learning Differences?
One of the most practical threads in this conversation is Mary Miele’s breakdown of executive function and why it matters so much for students with learning differences.
Executive function isn’t a single skill. It’s four interconnected pillars that operate from the frontal lobe of the brain: focus and the ability to sustain attention through tasks that aren’t preferred; inhibition, or impulse control; working memory, which is the ability to hold information in mind and manipulate it; and flexible thinking, the capacity to adapt when something unexpected happens or a problem needs solving.
Most students with learning differences, regardless of their specific diagnosis, will show some vulnerability in one or more of these areas. And the key word is vulnerability, not inability. These are skills that can be built.
Mary’s integrated executive function coaching model works in three steps:
- First, identify a specific vulnerable context: the moment or situation where the skill breaks down.
- Second, explicitly teach a strategy that addresses that gap.
- Third, create a remembering system (a cue, a routine, a trigger) that helps the student actually use the strategy when they need it.
That third step is where most coaching falls short, she says. We teach the strategy and assume it’s been absorbed. But building a new neural pathway takes repetition. The strategy has to be practiced in context, over time, until it becomes automatic.
What To Do When the School Won’t Listen to Concerns About My Child?
Mary Miele acknowledges what many families are living through: years of misplaced placements, unheeded concerns, and evidence piling up that their child is falling further behind. The parents who have spent years waving flags, only to feel unheard.
For those families, the path forward is recognizing that the pain and the struggle are real, and also that they don’t have to define what comes next.
She offers a reframe: the years of difficulty may have built things — resilience, a closer relationship with parents who showed up, hard-won self-knowledge — that a smoother path wouldn’t have. Not as a consolation, but as a reason to keep going.
And sometimes, she says, it only takes one person. One trusted adult who looks at a family and says: I think there’s something else you can choose. That moment can shift everything.
What Thriving Looks Like
For the parent who feels worried right now, Mary Miele’s message is direct: the fact that you’re listening, asking questions, and trying to understand your child’s learning is already a step toward possibility.
The belief that your child is whole (capable, not broken, worthy of a learning environment that truly sees them) isn’t a naïve hope. It’s the foundation everything else is built on.
Continue talking to people who have insight into what would make your child’s learning experience better.
Is My Child in the Right School?
If your child is struggling or you just have a nagging feeling something isn’t right, you’re not alone, and there are answers.
Take our quick quiz to find out which type of school could be the right fit for your student. It’s not about labels. It’s about finding the environment where your child can finally be understood and begin to thrive.
