Does Your Child have a Learning Disability?

Does this sound like your family situation?

 

Your child struggles in school. You know he’s a bright and curious child. He’s interested in everything. He asks intuitive questions. He loved school when he started kindergarten.

But, in grade one, he began to lag in reading. He avoided reading and writing at home. His teacher said he was a bright, little boy but he was having trouble attending to tasks.

Every child has difficulty with his homework once in a while but for your child evening knowing what he was to complete was vague. He had difficulties consistently with math problems. When you helped him with his homework you, too, noticed that he had trouble sitting still and attending to the assignment. Homework time became a nightly struggle of wills. Your bright, curious, little boy had become an uptight, unhappy child with low self-esteem.

If this scenario has a familiar ring, chances are your child may have a learning disability. As a parent, understanding everything you can about learning disabilities will ensure that your child gets the right assistance to help him overcome classroom challenges and be successful at school and in life. You are likely to be first to note the academic problems your child is experiencing.

What is a learning disability?

The term learning disability, or learning difficulty, covers a wide range of learning problems.

Let’s start with what a learning disability is NOT.

• It is not a lack of intelligence. Your child is not a slow learner.
• It is not a lack of motivation. Your child is not lazy or obstinate.
• It is not a physical, visual, auditory or motor problem. Your child hears, sees, and manipulates writing tools just fine.
• It is not a neural dysfunction. Your child’s intelligence and brain functioning are normal.
• It is not a behavioral disability although some of the effects may manifest themselves in behavior changes like resistance, frustration, anger, inattention, not following directions.

So what IS a learning disability?

 

 

Kids with learning disabilities are wired differently. While they have the same ability to see, hear, and comprehend information, they see, hear and comprehend it differently.

The most common types of learning disabilities involve problems with reading, writing, math, reasoning, listening, and speaking. Some children have problems in only one or two areas. Some experience difficulties in several. For example: Your child has trouble reading and writing. Math poses a problem when it involves reading and solving word problems. Orally your child shines.

By now you are probably saying:

Oh no! My child is never going to do well in school!
You are not alone. Although you may not have heard of learning disabilities until your child began to experience troubles at school, chances are you know someone who has a learning disability. At last estimate, nearly three million American school children were identified as having a learning disability. This works out to 5% of the school population. I chose to write my scenario about a little boy because boys with learning disabilities outnumber girls with learning disabilities three to one.

Take heart!

Children with learning disabilities can, and do, succeed at school and in life!
Finding out that your bright, curious, little boy has a learning disability can be like finding out he has an incurable disease. Anger, grief, frustration and a sense of loss are common reactions.

It can be tough to face the possibility that your child has a learning difficulty. No parent wants to see their child suffer. You may wonder what it could mean for your child’s future, or worry about how your child will make it through school. Maybe your concern is that with a “label” like “learning disabled” your child will become a target for bullying at school.

Perhaps you fear that your child will be held back a year or placed in a special needs class.

What you need to focus on is the fact that your child is as smart as or smarter than others in his class. He just learns differently. As a parent, you need to work with the school’s teachers and support staff to teach your child strategies for learning that accommodate his learning disability.

What are the Signs?

First, learning disabilities and behaviors that indicate them vary widely from child to child and even with the same child throughout his school years. There is no neat little check list. There is no one indicator or proof positive that a child has a learning disability.
Just as we described in the opening scenario, there are some warning signs that your child may have a learning disability. These signs vary from child to child but also from age group to age group.

Early years/preschoolers who have a learning disability often display behaviors like:

• Problems pronouncing words
• Trouble finding the right word
• Difficulty rhyming
• Trouble learning the alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes, days of the week…
• Difficulty following directions or routines
• Inability to control crayons, pencils, and scissors or to color within the lines
• Trouble with buttons, zippers, snaps, laces, fasteners

Children in kindergarten to grade four who have a learning disability often have difficulties:

• Learning letters sounds
• Blending sounds to make words
• Acquiring basic sight vocabulary
• With spelling and reading aloud
• Learning basic math concepts
• Telling time and recalling sequences
• Learning new skills

Middle school and older students often exhibit learning disabilities in the following ways:

• Difficulty with reading comprehension or math skills
• Trouble with open-ended test questions and word problems
• Avoidance of reading and writing—especially when asked to read aloud
• Inconsistent spelling—sometimes even in the same document
• Messy, disorganized, lacking in a plan for completing a task.
• Inability to follow classroom discussions or instructions
• Poor skills at expressing thoughts and ideas aloud
• Illegible handwriting

What Should You Do?

If your child exhibits warning signs of a learning disability, you need to document these behaviors and discuss what you are seeing at home with your child’s teacher. The school may be seeing similar patterns and will suggest a psychometric assessment. This will identify the learning disability and suggest learning strategies for home and school.

Trust your instincts. As a parent you are the most likely person to see signs of learning disabilities. The earlier a learning disability is caught the sooner strategies can be put in place and the less likely your child is to develop frustration, avoidance of tasks, and/or low self-concept. Don’t let school or medical personnel minimize your concerns with a “wait and see” attitude. Even if it turns out that a learning disability is not the problem, your concerns about your child’s learning difficulties need to be addressed.

Try to be patient. The teacher may want to assess your child’s learning in the classroom before suggesting a costly assessment. Psychometric assessments—even when schools request them immediately—do not often happen quickly. Locating a professional to assess your child accurately may take time. Not every psychometrist or psychologist is an expert at identifying learning disabilities.

Ultimately, what you and the school want are practical strategies to help your child learn effectively and feel successful at school.

Practical Strategies for Helping Students with

Learning Disabilities

• Whether or not your child has a learning disability these practical strategies will help your child become successful at school.

• Teach your child to aim high and be a cheerleader convincing he CAN do it and you believe in him! Never let him forget he is smart.

• Chunk learning assignments that seem overwhelming. For example: If your child has an assignment to write an essay on The Aztecs, work with him to make a list of the steps necessary to complete this assignment. Divide the task into smaller, more manageable pieces. If your child is studying the American Revolutionary War help him organize his notes to focus on the various reasons for the war or the chronological order in which events occurred. Students with learning disabilities often need help with organization of notes, assignments, studying.

• When you are helping your child with an assignment or note writing or studying for a test, help him create a synopsis of what is to be learned or studied.

• Encourage creativity in your child’s area of strength. For example if he struggles with essay writing, negotiate with his teacher to have him create a play script, a PowerPoint presentation, or a video of the topic. If your child struggles with reading material in a history or geography or a science text book, supplement or replace the textbook with audio recordings, shorter books and study notes.

• A child with a learning disability may not be able to get content the first time he is exposed to it. Help with a review of the lesson at home.

• Students with strong visual skills may find visual representations like maps, charts, diagrams, flow charts and photos helpful. For example, help your child create a picture time line of the events that led up to WWI. Show a movie about the incident. If your child’s learning strengths are in the auditory field, have him audio tape the lesson and play it back. Create audio notes.

• Give your child verbal and/or visual clues to important facts by numbering them or highlighting important words or flagging oral information with words like “very important”, “remember”, “This is the key sentence!” or “Know this for the test.”

• Help your child with assignments by working together as a team.

• Negotiate with the school for copies of theme study outlines, notes, assignment descriptions, announcements about upcoming tests and assignments. Teachers are often willing to put these on a school website. If not, they may be quite open to your doing so.

• Discuss with the school alternatives to tests or more time to do them or a scribe for writing exams or the used of the computer or your child’s taking a test or exam orally. If your child is identified as having a learning disability, this strategy will often appear on the follow-up suggestions.

Your job as the parent of a child with a learning disability is to build your child’s confidence and success by negotiating learning opportunities so he will be successful. In addition, you need to help him become adept at using learning strategies that contribute to his academic successes and proactive in negotiating his own learning alternatives.

Resources

Bertin, Mark. (2012) “ADHD Evaluation” http://www.ldonline.org/article/ADHD_Evaluation

Bertin, Mark. (2011) The Family ADHD Solution. Toronto: Macmillan.

Pieraangelo, R. & Giulani, G. (2006) Learning Disabilities: A Practical Approach to Foundations, Assessment, Diagnosis, and Teaching.
Silver, Larry. “How do you Know if your Child has a Learning Disability?” http://www.ldonline.org/article/How_Do_You_Know_If_Your_Child_Might_Have_a_Learning_Disability%3F

Silver, Larry. “What do you do if you suspect your child has a learning disability?” http://www.ldonline.org/article/19293

Does your child have a learning disability? Do you have strategies to share with us? We’d love to hear from you!