I was tested for learning disabilities around the 2nd grade. At the end of the process they offered to let me skip the 3rd grade (I declined, but I only recently came to regret my decision).

I don't recall if I figured this out on my own or someone trained me but I do know this was about the time I started a process of metacognition, wherein my internal dialog became a deliberate process of repackaging the things the teacher was saying into something that made sense to me. Instead of trying to cram their mental model into my head, I would build my own hypotheses and test them against all the examples that were provided, then abandon them for a new one if they didn't fit. [Edit] And when I got the answer wrong I would halt the presses and try to figure out why I was wrong. I used to joke that if I wanted to remember something forever all I had to do was get it wrong on a quiz and it would stick in my brain for eternity.

Prior to that I assumed if the teacher said something that didn't make sense that I was stupid. After I assumed that the teacher was just speaking a foreign language and I needed an internal translator. I went from almost held back to honor roll in the space of about a year.

(this trick, incidentally, made me an exceedingly good troubleshooter in my professional life, and "If you can't figure it out go ask hinkley" is common strategy almost everywhere I've worked. Not only can I probably solve your problem but the mental tax is lower on my than it was on you, because it is my idiom to process facts this way. I am literally always thinking about thinking).