When Learning Is Hard For Your Child

 

As Peter encountered various stumbling blocks in his learning, it became clearer to me how the difficulties were related. His problematic areas over the years--recognizing numbers, reading sight words, cursive, spelling patterns, math facts, telling time--have all been tied to visual processing.

With passing time, and/or with the right materials, he's experienced success. One of the remaining stumbling blocks--spelling patterns--he's now progressing nicely in, thanks to Avko Sequential Spelling.

If he truly has visual problems, he may benefit from vision therapy, which is something I intend to look into in terms of insurance coverage.

I need to be prepared for possible further difficulties as he encounters new visual information, such as chemistry symbols, higher-math symbols, and the like.

You may not have a learning-disabled student, but knowing something about learning disabilities helps you pinpoint weaknesses, and then motivates you to find materials that work for your child. School teachers often teach a curriculum, instead of a child. That is to say, they try to fit the child to the learning material, rather than the learning material to the child. 


No one has more motivation than you do to help your child succeed. Your child's teacher may certainly care, but he or she doesn't possess the same time or sacrificial love that you do. Classroom teachers have many students and they can't go the extra mile for all of them.

A teacher may be using a learning style or technique, or curriculum, that is all wrong for your child. And for this reason, I invite you to read an article on learning difficulties. Many articles on this topic aren't easy to comprehend, but I found a jewel of an article that is parent friendly.

Very comprehensive, it details all types of learning disabilities. The truth is, we all have learning strengths and weaknesses. Learning something about how our brains acquire and process information can help your child even if no disability is present. If a weakness isn't addressed or identified, it can lead to problems later, when school work becomes more difficult and the pace more rapid.

It's important to note that children with learning disabilities do not have low IQ's. Their IQ's can be average or even high. Unlike "shady eighty" children, who possess lower-than-average IQ's, a child with a learning disability has the same potential as a person without a learning disability. Learning disabilities don't affect potential...but they can affect performance, if not addressed.

Once the disability is compensated for, either through interventions at home, at school, or in the workplace, learning and performance rates jump. These children can make it to college and excel in the workplace! Once they understand how they are different, they learn to make adjustments, such as sitting at the front, bringing a tape recorder, framing text to block out distracting images, etc.

The article in it's entirely isn't very long and I found it amazingly helpful.
You'll find it here:  http://www.helpguide.org/mental/learning_disabilities.htm

For in-depth information on auditory and visual processing disorders--the most common difficulties--this article is the best I've found:
http://www.ldonline.org/article/6390/



photo source