Learning Disabilities

Today we talked about Learning Disabilities (LD). The discussion was led by a Kingston Paediatrician who has since risen to the rank of demi-god in my personal reverence! The rest of this post comes directly from him – I have no claim to its originality.

What is a learning disability?

 

• Difficulty reading (dyslexia)
• Difficulty with written expression (dysgraphia)
• Difficulty with mathematics (dyscalculia)

 

The following are NOT learning disorders:

 

• Visual or auditory impairment
• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
• Emotional disturbance
• Motor (movement) disability
• Developmental delay (e.g. down syndrome)

 

Here was the first eye-opener:

People often say about children with learning disability that they lack motivation, or are uninterested in school work. These children are accused of not producing enough effort. Closer to the truth, however, is that children with learning disability produce enormous effort that fails to yield a positive result. The result is immense frustration, and a decline in motivation since failure is a poor motivator. The chain of causation is crucial to appreciate: children with learning disabilities don’t do poorly because they lack motivation, rather they lack motivation because they do poorly.

Another interesting fact: language-related learning disabilities are more common in English-speaking countries. The most common type of dyslexia is phonetical dyslexia, which is the difficulty or inability to translate letters or words into sounds. In the English language, the same letters and letter-combinations can make a variety of sounds! Take the following (stolen) verse, for example. How confusing for a child with phonetical dyslexia!

When the English tongue we speak
Why is ‘break’ not rhymed with ‘freak’
Will you tell me why it’s true
We say ’sew’ but likewise ‘few’?
And the maker of a verse
Cannot cap his ‘horse’ with ‘worse’
‘Beard’ sounds not the same as ‘heard’,
‘Cord’ is different from ‘word’.
‘Cow’ is ‘cow’, but ‘low’ is ‘low’,
‘Shoe’ is never rhymed with ‘roe’.
Think of ‘hose’ and ‘dose’ and ‘lose’
And think of ‘goose’ and yet of ‘choose’.
Think of ‘comb’ and ‘tomb’ and ‘bomb’
‘Doll’ and ‘roll’, and ‘home’ and ‘come’.
And since ‘pay’ is rhymed with ’say’,
Why not ‘paid’ with ’said’, pray?
We have ‘blood’ and ‘food’ and ‘good’,
‘Mould’ is not pronounced like ‘could’,
Wherefore ‘done’, but ‘gone’ and ‘lone’
Is there any reason known?
And, in short, it seems to me,
Sounds and letters disagree!

-Anonymous 

Perhaps the most meaningful part of the material we covered this morning, was the library of evidence indicating that school failure is a good predictor for behavioural problems in adolescence, school drop-out, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, and even criminal activity. The convicting realization is that there is considerable opportunity to have a dramatic impact on the course of a child’s life by identifying learning disabilities early, and arranging for adequate accommodation. In nearly all cases, these children just need a little bit of extra, devoted attention to help them overcome the particular difficulty they are having.