Learning Disability or Trouble Learning?
Rienzi Haytasingh
According to the National Institutes of Health (2012), 20 percent of Americans have dyslexia, but only 10 percent of dyslexic kids get the special education or support they need. Sometimes simply struggling to learn a concept or master a subject doesn’t always mean the presence of a learning disability. There are numerous reasons why children have trouble in school. Here are some reasons not to suspect a learning disability
- It’s probably not a learning disability if your child previously did fine in school. Learning disabilities surface early in a child’s academic career. A good student who is suddenly falling behind may experience difficulties from divorce, death, family problems, peers or even adjusting to a new school.
- It’s probably not a learning disability if the student gets better from short term help such as meetings with the teacher, after school support, or tutoring.
- It’s probably not a learning disability if the child isn’t
completing homework and practicing skills and concepts. Good consistent study habits are tough to develop but they play a very important role in academic success.
Children who experience problems being successful in school often have demonstrated this pattern of difficulties early on. At Brain Learning, when we look back at educational records and interviews with teachers and parents, we often find the pattern of problems dating back to kindergarten and sometimes earlier.
- It’s probably a learning disability if trouble reading and /or doing basic math problems were struggles from the beginning despite extra help.
- It’s probably a learning disability if the child can’t keep up even with extra support such as tutoring or help after school.
- It’s probably a learning disability if the child has difficulty remembering all the steps needed to follow directions.
More and more studies are pointing in the direction of memory problems resulting in learning disabilities. For example in 2010, Alloway & Alloway reported in their study that “children’s working memory skills at 5 years of age were the best predictor of literacy and numeracy 6 years later. IQ, in contrast, accounted for a smaller portion of unique variance to these learning outcomes.” Learning disabilities have nothing to do with being “smart.” However, studies have consistently demonstrated that when asked if they are smart, second graders who were poor spellers consistently report that they are not smart.
Most of the research on learning disabilities and the brain conclude that there isn’t a “cure” for such disabilities. Learning disabilities vary on subtype and degree of severity. It’s important to identify learning disabilities early on and work with educators and professionals to help the child feel good in school and learn strategies getting around the disability.
