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SickKid.Net - Learning Disabilities (cont.)

Learning disabilities are not all the same. There are listening troubles, speaking troubles, difficulties in sounding out words and difficulties in understanding paragraphs.  Some people have troubles with mathematics calculation, while some have more troubles knowing how to set up the problem.  Writing can also be hard, both in terms of making the letter shapes themselves, to organizing what you want to say so that it makes sense.  Students (and their parents) can find any of these areas difficult to master, and often the basic short-circuit in the brain causes other kinds of problems, too.  Children who don’t quickly understand what they see often miss out on little facial expressions and social cues.  Kids whose speech is hard to understand learn to keep quiet rather than to be teased and criticized by others who think they do it on purpose, or are “slow.”  Often times, children with learning disorders have other troubles too. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders, for example, often add to the struggles children face in school by causing them to be impulsive, to blurt out at the wrong time, or to seem spacey and “out of it.”  Repeated failure and criticism leads to depression, and anxiety.

It is important to understand, however, that learning disabilities do not mean that the child is slow, lazy, bad, or crazy.  A child who has missed out on key educational experiences, or who is crippled by poverty, or who has another kind of medical disease or disability may also have troubles in school, but does not have a learning disability.  Children who learn slowly may also lag behind their peers, but are not considered learning disabled.

© 2000 Christopher J. Nicholls, Ph.D.