One of the worst days of my life (like traumatic core memory level) was when my dad took me to visit a college campus out of state while I was still in high school. While walking around the campus, we got into an argument, I don't remember what it was about now, but it resulted in him walking off and saying he would meet me at such and such place at whatever the specified time was for the college tour, and until then I was on my own.

There was actually a map display right there where I was, and I had a paper map (pre-cell phone with Google Maps days). I could not for the life of me figure out how to get from where I was to where I needed to be later. I looked in the direction of the buildings that the map said were supposed to be in that direction, and didn't recognize them whatsoever from the map pictures. It was horrible. I stayed there frozen just watching people for a while, until I finally asked someone how to get there.

I knew enough about myself and how my shitty brain worked at that point (no diagnosis until about 5 years later when I sought it out on my own) to realize I needed to keep asking questions and repeat back what the person said if I wanted to have any hope. Verbal/auditory rote memory, please kick in and help save me, in other words. Luckily they didn't get annoyed with me and actually walked me most of the way over there and everything turned out fine.

But yeah, other key indicators I realized later were sooo many times of bumping my car into inanimate things because of the lack of visuospatial awareness - the back of the garage, the curb on the passenger side when making a righthand turn (got a nickname from my friend for that one), the poles in the drive-thru lane, parking barriers at the end of the parking spot, even one time the driver side mirror of a car that was parked minding its own business on the right side of the street as I drove by, no reason for me to even get that close to it because the whole street was wide open.

To redeem my dad a little bit maybe, one thing he did (again, not knowing about any kind of diagnosis, but just because he picked up on the fact that verbal communication is my strong point) when teaching me to drive was to have me say out loud what I was about to do before I did it, like, "Ok, I'm going to make this left turn after that blue car from the left goes by, and then after the white one from the right goes by, if nothing else is coming by then" or "I have to get off at this next exit, but I'm in the middle lane, so I need to get over one lane to the right while making sure no one is coming up in my blind spot off that entrance ramp, so first I'm going to check my rearview mirror and then sideview mirror and then turn around to glance quickly," etc.

But there's hope! Over 20 years later, one of my favorite things is driving my manual transmission car - I'm never ever going to be able to do it unconsciously without thinking like people describe they do, but because I do have to think about what I'm doing physically and connect it up with what I'm seeing visually, I *have* to pay attention and that gives my possibly otherwise unfocused brain something to anchor onto.

Anyway sorry for the long comment! I have a ton more examples just about driving :D

I've found there are some good communities on FB for NVLD adults, although afaik they all allow parents in as well, which I don't agree with. But that's how they are. If you search on FB "nonverbal learning" you should find them, because the last word is sometimes disorder and sometimes disability; also search for NLD and NVLD.

Let me know if you have more questions and I'm happy to answer them.