I’m like this. I barely graduated school and failed out of college in the first year with a GPA whose square root was higher than the actual GPA. I had always been placed in accelerated classes only to be kicked out once I fell behind. I needed time to understand things, but in all modesty once I understand something I seem to understand it better than everyone around me. Until then though my mind is blank and I literally can’t force myself to do anything on the subject. I just stumble and can’t remember anything when asked. Some subjects are faster than others but some took a year or longer to understand. When mathematically inclined friends took algebra they flew through it and graduated high school completing calculus B AP with a 5, but it took me a year of failing it and being tracked before I finally clicked. But once I understood it other math courses were a breeze largely because my algebra understanding was beyond everyone else’s. But I was tracked and getting off the track in math is almost impossible. I likewise had challenges in geometry and trig until I “got it,” all of which meant when I finally hit calculus and got the concepts of differentiation and integration I took off like a rocket and never looked back.

After failing out of college I went out to the valley and was very successful. I went back to college in my late 20’s using a loop hole to transfer into a top CS school. I knew myself better now and studied all the time knowing I wasn’t stupid just learned differently. On things that weren’t yet clicking I would relentlessly keep studying it and practicing and trying until it did. I graduated highest in my class at a top public engineering program - which gives gentleman F’s to 70% of original freshmen unlike private schools.

My daughter is the same way, so I found a private school that is very careful about differentiating learners and letting them move their own pace. I was suicidally depressed about public education growing up as it ground me down for being different. She is thriving at the stages I fell off the rails.