Plus-size model and body positivity advocate Ashley Graham recently revealed the struggle of growing up with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and dyslexia. She claims that it still affects her to this day.
Graham, during the International Day of the Girl held by Glamour in New York City on Wednesday, Oct. 11, disclosed the hardships she had been through as a child diagnosed with ADD and dyslexia. The author of "A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty, and Power Really Look Like" also admitted that her parents did not know exactly how to handle the situation.
"I think that having one-on-one attention is so important, especially with the public school system being so overpopulated," Graham said, adding that her family's eventual understanding of her condition led to professional help and tutoring, that in the long run had helped her. She went on underlining the importance of educating the young for a fruitful future.
The 29-year-old model also encouraged the crowd to shut criticisms and uphold self-love. Graham also narrated how the fashion industry had initially pushed her away, knocking out her dreams. She said that she was told she would "never make it as a 'real' model, because of my curves." She confessed that she still "remembers the feeling," during the times she needs to read from the teleprompter.
ADD, according to The Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology, is a condition wherein there is a consistent pattern of an inability to focus as compared to others of the same age. Some of the signs a person who might have ADD are daydreaming, carelessness in work, lack of focus, and impersistence, among many others.
"Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty that can cause problems with reading, writing and spelling," according to the National Health Services UK. People who have dyslexia find difficulty in writing information that had just been said, get puzzled with the order of the letters of a word, and write letters the other way around, like b rather than d. The cause for this condition is still unknown.
