Does my child have a learning disability? | Integrated Learning Therapy

Perhaps you sense that your child is not performing up to her potential. Perhaps she is struggling at school or doesn’t show the same mastery of age-expected skills as older siblings. Could she have a learning disability?

For reasons not well understood, learning disabilities are fairly common these days. This has led to increased interest into the relationship between brain functioning and a child’s ability to cope with school demands. As a result of many studies, we now know that a child who finds schoolwork hard is not ‘naughty’, lazy or stupid. We know that even exceptionally intelligent children and those who have the privilege of attending the best schools can still show problems with learning. But we also know that children with a learning disability are not doomed to lifelong failure.

As a parent, the more you know about learning disabilities the earlier you’ll be able to recognise the symptoms. This is important because timing can be crucial to addressing and perhaps resolving a problem before school going age, when children begin to find learning hard, lose interest, develop a lack of confidence and even develop unhealthy coping techniques to compensate.

But there is a difference between recognising symptoms of a learning disability and being able to identify and define its nature. This is where you need a specialist to help you correctly identify the source of the difficulty and know what to do to eliminate it. Remember that sometimes the symptoms of a difficulty may have no clear connection to the underlying cause. Josh might have problems with mathematics but hiring a tutor or remedial teacher to help him with his computational problems may not be the solution. If he has a language processing problem, for example, he may not understand the problems presented to him as ‘story sums’ (e.g. ‘If Betty has seven Rand and loses five ….). Trying to ‘fix’ a symptom without addressing its source can only lead to frustration and a loss of time (and money). To the child, such efforts can compound the problem because in spite of trying, they don’t show improvement. They become discouraged, frustrated and even angry. Some might begin to act out or withdraw, but either way, the family experiences a deluge of emotions which affects all members.

As a parent, you feel responsible for finding the best solution possible for your child. But before you seek out the help of professionals, you could try to understand more about learning disabilities so that you can speak to professionals on a more equal footing. It is also important to project confidence to your child. If you display anxiety and become stressed because of your concerns, your child will also begin to feel more anxious. Remember that there is help out there, and you’ll be doing all you can to help in the most effective way possible.

The causes of learning difficulties are many, and their symptoms are sometimes mistaken for the cause. For example, a child who struggles with inattention and restlessness may quickly be said to ‘have’ ADHD. This isn’t true. The ability to concentrate and keep the body still can be linked to allergies, nutrition, retained reflexes and other aspects of neurodevelopment, which refers to the development of the brain.

Other commonly diagnosed disabilities include dyslexia, (reading, spelling), dyscalculia (understanding numbers and maths concepts), dysgraphia (writing), dyspraxia (uncoordinated body movements), and auditory processing disorder (trouble with interpreting sounds).

If your child shows any of these difficulties, remember that the symptoms suggest that the child’s brain may not have developed in all areas needed to process information. A good starting point may be to find a professional who is knowledgeable about neurodevelopment and willing to look further than treating the symptoms the child shows.

Image supplied by Freepik.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.