What IS a Learning Disability, Anyway?
The term learning disability has gone out of vogue because the word “disability” is now politically incorrect. And in many ways, when talking about students who actually fit this profile, the term learning disability, can be very confusing.
By definition, someone who has a learning disability has average to above average intelligence. In fact, many of our students are extremely bright or even gifted, but in spite of being smart, these children and adults have difficulty with some aspects of learning that cause them to struggle in school or at work more than would be expected.
Bright, Talented, and Able!
Learning disabilities are perplexing because they may cause very "able" individuals to be unsuccessful or "disabled" in certain situations.
Children and adults with learning disabilities look and act like the rest of the population. They are bright and often talented in creative or physical areas. Their "disability," with its accompanying frustration, withdrawal, or coping behaviors, rears its head in the face of specific tasks or expectations.
There are many underlying learning/processing skills that support efficient learning. These are things such as body and attention awareness and control, memory, auditory and visual processing (how the brain perceives and thinks about information that is seen or heard), processing speed, language processing, and reasoning.
Weak or inefficient learning/processing skills can cause smart students to struggle. Sometimes, they get diagnosed as having a learning disability and sometimes they don’t, but parents and the students themselves know that there is something making learning harder than it should be.
Lazy? Unmotivated?
Unfortunately, because they are obviously intelligent and generally do some kinds of tasks very easily, parents and teachers may, at first, see the student with learning challenges as lazy or unmotivated. Older students often view themselves as lazy.
With very few exceptions, learners of any age want to be successful and would if they could. In spite of what it may look like, there is almost always a reason why a child is not performing as expected and it’s almost NEVER because they’re lazy or don’t care.
Great News!
The great news about learning disabilities is that they don’t have to be permanent! Brain plasticity research shows us that the brain can literally develop new neuropathways, or quicker, more efficient connections for learning.
Students of any age with diagnosed or undiagnosed learning disabilities including dyslexia can become comfortable, confident, and independent learners.
Don’t Live a Learning Disability
The key to correcting learning challenges is to identify which of the underlying learning/processing skills are not supporting the student well enough and develop these areas. Then remediate the troublesome basic academic areas such as reading, spelling, or math, and the student is on his way to being the learner he has the potential to be.
Learning disabilities don’t have to be permanent. These smart students CAN become confident, independent learners.
Jill Stowell, M.S.
#1 Bestselling Author, At Wit’s End A Parent’s Guide to Ending the Struggle Tears and Turmoil of Learning Disabilities
There are many unanswered questions that I have asked. After spending millions on research and years studying why kids are unable to read don't we have an answer to "...these children and adults have difficulty with some aspects of learning that cause them to struggle in school". Which 'some aspects' are they having difficulties with?
"...Then remediate the troublesome basic academic areas". Start teaching letter sounds correct and you will straight away reduce the number requiring remediation. This is not going to be easy with toddlers viewing TV episodes that teach the wrong sounds of alphabets.
Yes, ask yourself why "Their "disability," with its accompanying frustration, withdrawal, or coping behaviors, rears its head in the face of specific tasks or expectations." I have asked my former students and have heard it directly from them that they were unable to read in English because of confusion. Yet, they could rattle away in Romanised Mandarin - using the same letters as does English. The Western world simply brushes this off as 'transparent language' vs 'Opaque language'. Because this thing about transparent language is written by someone with some initials the Western world accepts this as the Gospel truth. We have to ask ourselves as to how these kids managed to learn to read in the opaque language after a short period of intervention. Once that hurdle is removed - by explaining to them that the sounds of alphabets taught to them were wrong- and teaching them the correct sounds, without extraneous sounds added to consonants, they are able to read. All my students have done well in school and some are in universities doing very well in their academic performance. How many teachers explain to students that all alphabets in English have more than one sound? Yet you see everywhere about teaching explicitly and systematically. How do you teach explicitly when you don't explain to kids that all letters in English have more than one sound?
Jill, you wrote;" these children and adults have difficulty with some aspects of learning that cause them to struggle in school or at work more than would be expected." I quit working in the accounting field in 2004 to study why smart kids could read in Malay and Romanised Mandarin but not in English. This is something that the Western world has yet to accept. These kids shut down from learning anything that is illogical. This is more of 'teaching disability' than 'learning disability'. These kids cannot make sense of the sounds of letters (as wrongly taught by teachers) and how to connect them to words taught. Please read my post a few days ago on this matter. Please question me on anything that you disagree with. https://lnkd.in/fSP63k9