How Do You Know If Your Child Might Have a Learning Disability

We hope that this is not the case with your child, but it is common and worth addressing – a child’s inability to learn. Well, it might mean difficulty in learning and grasp as per the average speed or merely going ‘empty-headed’ most of the time. Learning disability goes all the way to disorders affecting how neurons in the brain process information. They are the reason why a child showing this kind of deformity will have a hard time trying to concentrate and understand. It becomes more than a hassle to solve mathematical formulas, write or read or when doing all of the mentioned tasks among others that require cognitive thinking.

Children suffering from learning difficulty may also not be able to:

• Organize themselves
• Plan their schedule
• Reason quietly
• Remember much of what they are taught
• Be attentive most of the time in attention requiring matters

If you are a parent whose child has a learning disability, you need to know that it can affect other aspects of the young one’s life apart from academic performance. Handling it the right way makes sure that the condition does not affect the relationship with your friends and family members.

So that you can be aware of it and take further action, this article will cover the following:

• Learning disability: A more in-depth insight
• What causes learning disability?
• Categorizing learning disabilities
• Common learning disabilities you need to be aware of
• Learning disability signs and symptoms
• Detecting learning disability
• Learning disabilities treatment

Learning Disability: A More In-Depth Insight

If your child has a learning disability, it might disturb you for a while if you don’t know what to do. You need to be aware that it doesn’t involve their intelligence. Some of the known successful individuals such as Winston Churchill and Walt Disney once suffered from learning difficulty.

Inability to learn affects how a child’s brain receives, processes, analyzes and stores bits of information. It makes them learn at a slower pace than those who are not affected by the disorder. There are different kinds of learning problems. The victimized children suffer from more than one form. Some of them interrupt the kid’s concentration which makes the mind to be far away. Others provide a delicate moment when the child tries to write, read, spell or solve mathematical problems.

The brain is involved in a complex information processing task so, things can get frenzy in there. If you are looking at a picture, for example, the brain has to process the contour of the image and recognize what it means before associating it with other pieces of information and storing what it has just acquired.

The same goes for speech recognition and interpretation. We have to listen to the words, recognize what they imply and then take action. All these things happen in different areas of the brain before being connected.

According to statistics, the almost 4 million learning children have learning difficulties where 20% of the number suffer from an inability to focus.

Causes of Learning Disability

There is no particular cause of learning disability. On the other hand, researchers have identified various theories relating to why the disorder occurs. They include:

Brain development: It can be possible to think that poor brain development before and after birth can result in a learning disability. That is why issues such as lower birth weight, premature births and inadequate oxygen are believed to add up to reduced brain activity. If your young one has had a past head injury, he or she may also be at risk of contracting learning disabilities.

The genetic makeup: Researchers now have a reason to believe that learning disabilities pass from family members which makes heredity a key factor. However, others are still arguing about the genes factor since it might either be the case or maybe the children are learning from their parent’s actions.

The environment role: Kids exposed to certain conditions such as lead presence in old homes with lead paint may become affected by the air they breathe. Also, poor nutrition during early development stages can bring future understanding complications.

Categorizing Learning Disabilities

Verbal

A person having verbal learning disability always finds it hard to both speak, write and form words. Dyslexia is one of the most and globally known learning disability which affects victims by slowing down their letter recognition and processing and the sound correlated with them. On that account, an individual suffering from dyslexia will have complications in reading and writing tasks.

In others, different behavior may be experienced where a person can read and write correctly but have problems connecting features of the language. For instance, they may be able to articulate out a sentence or a whole paragraph in the right way, making them valuable readers, although, they can’t contemplate and verbalize them into meaningful concepts (creating a visual picture in mind on different items and situations).

Writing can be a challenge to some since the brain struggles to control what to do next. This is seen where an individual has a problem moving hands to form letter shapes and recalling the correct grammar rules required in writing a proper sentence.

Non -verbal

Nonverbal learning disability involves difficulties in processing visual images and details. A child may have struggle significance on visual information like numeric written on a blackboard. In most cases they tend to confuse the plus sign with the sign for dividing, such as the use of abstract approach like fractions may be so challenging and confusing to master.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a behavioral condition that correlates with learning disabilities because victims with ADHD may have weak focusing strategy to learn and train. Students misfortune with a learning disability are regularly distracted which associates with poor concentration. Furthermore, they may also be super active or have trouble regulating their impulses.

Common Learning Disabilities You Need To Be Aware Of

They are 11 types of learning disabilities recognized by the US federal law. Here, we will discuss four common ones. You can research about the rest in case your child does not fall under what we have discussed below.

♦ Dyslexia

Dyslexia is a learning disability associated with the poor distinction between letters and sounds and using the correct spelling or even identifying the words. The following are other signs and symptoms of the condition:

• Impotence in picking up rhymes and poor lip-sync
• Wrong spelling of words
• Inability to distinguish left from right
• Poor cramming power of numbers in sequence such as a telephone number
• Taking time to read and eventually giving up on longer articles
• Slow grasp on questions and following guidelines
• Failure to learn foreign languages
• Incompetence in arranging written and spoken word
• Problems with self-expression in saying things frequently forgotten
• Taking time to communicate through a proper speech
• Slow in comprehending other people speech
• There is a lot of frustration studying new vocabulary

♦ Dysgraphia

Dysgraphia is defined by problems that link to writing. Having this disorder may cause a child to tremble and act nervous when holding a pen or a pencil, even in extreme cases there is impairment of his or her body is observed. However, a child with prolonged terrible handwriting he or she may be suffering from dysgraphia.

Signs of dysgraphia include:

• The negative attitude towards writing and or drawing
• Poor use of grammar
• Writing incomplete sentences or omitting some words and letters
• Problems putting down thoughts
• Writing and pronouncing the words at the same time
• The low creativity of forming ideas in a rational manner
• Fatigue during writing due to little interest in writing

♦ Dyspraxia

Dyspraxia affects learning mainly where motor tasks are embroiled. A person participating in motor duties which require hand-eye coordination and a victim of dyspraxia can experience problems learning them.

Other signs and symptoms of this condition includes:

• Weak stability
• High sensitive to loud and constant noise, e.g. the sound of a ticking clock
• Fond of smashing things
• High responsive to touch even a small irritation from bothersome clothing
• Poor organization
• Inability to perform well on activities that coordinate hand and eye

♦ Dyscalculia

Understanding mathematics concepts like fractions, number line and positive and negative integers can be tough when one is suffering from dyscalculia. It is a condition that makes an individual dump when it comes to math understanding.

Some other signs and symptoms of dyscalculia include:

• Incompetence in explaining mathematics process
• Problems keeping track of time sequence of events
• Inability to solve mathematics problems
• Failure to calculate addition and subtraction in cash transaction
• The weakness of math-related word equations
• Snag while identifying logical intelligence sequences

Learning Disabilities Signs and Symptoms

Having problems reading, writing and other studying related activities is so much experienced in growing up children. Despite all these signs, it is not a guarantee that your child is having learning disabilities because they vary from one individual to another and can linger over time. The following are some of the common signs to identify that a person may have a learning disability.

• Problems with reading and writing
• Low coordination
• Struggle keeping up with instructions and guidelines
• Difficulty comprehending arithmetic
• Poor concentration
• Slow in understanding time theory  or concepts
• Organization adversity
• Memory lapse

A child with a learning disability may also show a few or more among the following signs and symptoms:

• He or she is easily distracted
• Feeble speech
• Hearing problems
• Conflicting school performance
• Irrelevant reactions to social interaction and school setting
• Trouble accepting change in life
• Creation of right words and sentences predicament
• Dump insight on words and various concepts

Proper assessment from a certified professional is mandatory in order to determine if a person is suffering from learning difficulty. Each learning disability is identified with its own unique signs, however, a person having a specific learning disability will have almost different signs to a causality of the same disability. It is important to distinguish the difference in signs in children since other factors such as learning second language can be difficult and easily confused to be either, a learning disability or bilingual person.

Detecting Learning Disability

Even when your child has trouble in learning, it doesn’t mean that they have any disability. All people, in general, learn through different styles for example, listening, learning and practicing at the same time or reading by themselves. Some children are slower than others when it comes to reading and grasping the content, but they will still perform as or better than their peers.

Children will tend to struggle for a long time when trying to learn before you realize it is a problem. If you are dealing with a teenager, one of the signs to tell you something is wrong is through test performance when compared to how much he or she has learned before the test. Of course, as a parent, you get worried. So, do not hesitate to talk to the teacher about it.

Diagnosing learning disability needs the specialist concerned to check if there are any hearing or vision issues. If there is no problem with both, you can now go ahead to involve a learning specialist to help in further diagnosis. There is the video about kid’s guide in learning disability.

Learning Disabilities Treatment

Detecting signs of learning disability is never a good thing for your child, but it is the first crucial step towards treating the condition. After knowing what troubles your child when it’s time for the books, you can follow various techniques and even intake of prescribed drugs to help the child pick up the pace. Taking the necessary steps also restores confidence in the child which is an essential component towards positive learning.

Learning disability can also be tackled by involving a special teacher for a few hours per week so that the kid can learn learning skills or get help in learning. You can also do it during the free time since child stuff is not too hard to teach. Also, since they are going to school, see if there is a special classroom with a teacher who helps students with learning problems.

Some schools, for the older generation, have an IEP (Individualized Education Program) which is used to identify an individual’s learning strengths and weak points and arrange for what will make them perform better in school. Use of specialized equipment such as tutorials and materials that can guide in practical applications helps children who are suffering from dyslexia.

Children diagnosed with ADHD are often subjected to medicine prescriptions. Several options in the market can help a child focus during studies and help them control impulses and overactive behavior.

If you are looking for a permanent cure, then know that there is none. Also, your kid cannot outgrow the condition, but you can always get the necessary help. When your child finally realizes they have a learning problem, they will adapt to the situation and find ways to help them learn better and upgrade their performances.

Click here to have more information about the disability in children.