Know About Learning Disabilities In Children

I attended an interesting workshop on learning disabilities of children and thought I would share it with my readers of indiapulse.sulekha.com. We could suspect learning disability in a child when the development or academic performance of a healthy child falls short of what is expected of his/her age and intelligence. Learning disability or LD affects learning first and sooner or later affects performance in school especially in the areas of reading, mathematics, spelling and writing.

This disability is a lifelong condition and eventually also impacts daily activities, relationships, work and careers. Children with learning disability would have significant difficulty in perceiving information, in processing and remembering information and in expressing information. It is significant to understand that we could categorize a child as having learning disability only when such a disability exists for a period of time.   

Some of the warning signs found in elementary school children: 

Learning disabilities in children may not be diagnosed in the early stages, with it being diagnosed only when the child is in elementary school. Disabilities interfere with increasingly, demanding and complex learning tasks. There could be difficulties in learning academic subjects and social and emotional skills.

Here are a few warning signs to look out for:  

Language/Mathematics

a) He/she could be slow in learning of corresponding sounds and letters.

b) The child could be unable to retell a story in sequence.

c) There could be consistent errors in reading or spelling.

d) There could be difficulty in remembering basic sight words.

e) The child could have trouble in learning to count money or tell the time.

f) The child could have trouble memorizing math facts and trouble with place value.

g) He/she could be confused with math facts and math signs like +, -, x, /, =.

h) He/she could have difficulty in transposition of number sequences.

i) He/she could have difficulty in memorizing math facts.

j) There could be difficulty in remembering the steps of mathematic operations such as long division.

Motor Skills

a) There could be awkwardness and poor co-ordination in the child.

b) He or she could have difficulty in aligning columns especially in math.

c) The child could experience difficulty in copying from the blackboard.

d) The writing of the child could be poor.  

Attention/Organization

a) The child may experience difficulty in concentrating or focusing on a task and may not finish tasks in time.

b) He/she may have inability to follow multiple directions.

c) In addition children with learning disability may be unusually sloppy and careless.

d) He/she may have a poor concept of the left and right direction.

e) The child may reject new concepts and changes in routine.

            

Social Behavior

a) The child may experience difficulty in understanding facial expressions or gestures.

b) He/she may experience difficulty in understanding social situations.

c) The child may show a tendency to misinterpret behavior of peers and /adults.

d) The child may apparently lack common sense. 

An evaluation of the child is required if not already noticed and advised by the teacher; the parent can request for such timely evaluation by submitting a request to the school principal.

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