With thousands of research studies published on a daily basis, no one expects parents to know all the latest facts about learning disabilities.
We know you have a busy schedule and still need to find time to invest into your child with learning disabilities. We’ll help you out by quickly updating you on five of the most contemporary learning disability facts parents should know:
1. Learning is Exhausting.
With learning disabilities, multiple learning activities are much harder for students to complete.
For example, listening is exhausting for those with attention deficit disorder (ADD). Yet listening is one of the primary tasks required for all children. And when a child has a learning disability like ADD, it’s a lot easier to simply stop listening than to struggle through.
Consider what happens when you want to start up an exercise program. How interested in working out are you if exercising is overwhelming, and your trainer punishes you for things you can’t do after starting the program? The normal reaction is to give up.
Similarly, for a child who has learning disabilities, school is a brain workout that is beyond his capacity. He is expected to process things at a level higher than his brain capability. Meanwhile, the teacher might unknowingly hurt the situation, and the student loses motivation to try. This experience is common to children with learning disabilities.
2. Addressing Behavior is Not the Solution for Kids with ADHD.
Often, teachers believe that a child with ADD or ADHD who acts out does so willfully. This is not true. A child usually has no comprehension of why he or she is acting out. It’s not the behavior that is the root cause of the problem.
By addressing processing issues and sensory integration issues with the child, she can make great leaps in cognitive skills. Once the cognitive skills are improved, learning efficiency is also improved.
3. A Child with Learning Disabilities Can Succeed in School.
If learning disabilities are discovered and addressed, especially early, academic success can be achieved.
Along this path of success, though, your child will need help. Children have to develop over 40 cognitive skills in order to read successfully and process information — a daunting task for anyone with learning disabilities.
The Fast ForWord™ program addresses each of these 40 skills, improving your child’s ability to excel rapidly in each. Your child might have already mastered some but need help with the others. By improving areas needing improvement and enriching his current cognitive skills, the gains in brain power are exponential.
4. Dyslexia is More Than Switching Letters and Numbers.
Research studies have reported a high correlation between problems processing language in the auditory center of the brain and learning disabilities such as dyslexia. Over 50% of people with dyslexia are late talkers. And often, there are cognitive deficits in skills related to sequences, spelling, phonics, and/or other areas.
5. Many School Programs Treat Symptoms of Reading Problems.
Did you know that 90% of struggling readers share a common issue – poor processing of sounds they hear? Many schools don’t realize this, and they simply concentrate on the reading problems. Unfortunately, if you can’t hear the sounds correctly, the brain can’t decode them properly. This ends up causing problems with brain fluency and reading comprehension. It also makes a child unwilling to read. When the cause of something isn’t addressed, real results cannot be expected. The root, not the symptom, must be treated.
If your child can’t read, the answer is to individualize a program to him or her and create enough intensity in learning new skills so that the brain rewires itself. This is a strategy that works – and is proven consistently with the Fast ForWord™ program. Check out Gemm Learning to find out more.
Do you have any learning disability facts parents should know? Share your tips.