Learning Problems in Children

What’s going on, and what can be done to help

You have tried tutoring, adjusted your child’s diet, even had her tested for hearing loss – but nothing has helped? Our learning software targets deep-seated cognitive and language issues, using various learning mechanisms to bring about profound and enduring change.

Elementary Age Learning Problems

Cannot follow multi-step instructions

The ability to take in and retain directions or instructions is a common learning difficulty for children that impacts classroom productivity and homework efficiency. Sometimes, this is just “5-year-old-itis,” but more often, it indicates a processing or memory deficit that should be treated.

What’s Going On: Following directions requires many skills, including accurate listening, vocabulary, focus, good working memory, and efficient processing to derive meaning from what is heard. Most often, the heart of the issue is processing speed—people are talking faster than your child can process. This can lead to all kinds of learning difficulties in children of all ages.

What Gemm Can Do: Our Fast ForWord learning software focuses on processing skills. It speeds up processing in tiny incremental steps, with the end goal of accurate processing at natural language speed. Clients often report an improvement in following directions as one of the first changes.

Weak vocabulary and/or sentence construction

Delayed use of multisyllable words and/or intangibles are symptoms of vocabulary difficulties, as is mispronouncing of words, e.g., mazagine for magazine. This often coincides with an inability to form more complex sentences that use words like because or after to join ideas.

What’s Going On: Weak auditory processing makes it difficult to process words clearly enough to feel confident using them. Processing deficits also create inefficiency that distracts from absorbing sentence language structure and all of its nuances simply by listening and observing, as is the case with skilled learners who learn language structure with only minimal instruction. Imperfect language understanding leads to all kinds of learning difficulties in children, academic and social.

What Gemm Can Do: Our Fast ForWord program strengthens auditory processing to improve learning and reading skills. It is used by 5,000 speech and language pathologists in North America, and in many cases, it is purely focused on these kinds of vocabulary and speech delays.
Speech and language program

Inattentive & drifts off in class

If your child is constantly unsure of homework assignments and/or unfamiliar with the content, he/she is likely not engaged in class. Often, this can be easily confirmed by asking your child’s teacher.

What’s Going On: If a teacher seems to your child to be talking too quickly, it will be hard to stay engaged because he/she is not keeping up — meaning material is missed — or listening is exhausting, and so the tendency is to tune out. While this behavior is often diagnosed as an attention deficit disorder, most often, it is an auditory processing disorder-related learning difficulty that can be treated.

What Gemm Can Do: Our software effectively slows the world down for students by improving processing. This makes classroom instruction less exhausting and more interesting. These gains in classroom performance are an important driver of the improved grades experienced by most Gemm students.
Programs to help ADHD

Does not participate — in conversation or in class

While some children are quiet by nature, participation is an important aspect of learning. It builds confidence, allows children to test their understanding, and promotes learning.

What’s Going On: If a child cannot process at natural language speed, a lot is missed or not properly understood. This lack of certainty about what is being said leads to a probably wise decision not to participate. The challenge is a little different for outgoing children who want to participate. By the time they have processed what is being said and formulated a response/question, the moment has passed.

What Gemm Can Do: Our programs help participation by improving processing efficiency and slowing the world down for your child. More involvement in class and in conversation are amongst the early signs of change we hear from our clients.

Eroding confidence or self-esteem

A lack of confidence or low self-esteem can cause your child to be fragile, e.g., might shut down if corrected or act out at school over minor issues,

Furthermore, healthy learning involves being open to new information and ideas, even when you know you may not understand them at first, i.e., healthy learners are risk-takers. Taking a chance requires the confidence and self-esteem to take failure in stride, confidence that many struggling learners do not possess.

What’s Going On: There are a lot of factors that go into confidence and self-esteem — most relate to learning, some not. While most children start life brimming with learning confidence, failure takes its toll. A key indicator of learning difficulties in children is learning risk aversion. It is a combination of frustration that others seem to find it easier, the humiliation of not being able to get what your parents or teachers clearly think should be easy, and the disappointment and fatigue of living in a world where everything is coming a little too fast that gradually eats into a child’s confidence reservoir. Being a risk-averse learner is the natural outcome — it’s self-defense.

What Gemm Can Do: One of the first changes many parents report from our learning software is improved confidence. This is because Fast ForWord slows the world down for the learner, making it a little more manageable. While it takes a few months for these changes to convert into academic achievement, the feeling for your child that the learning difficulties are melting away — learning success now seems more possible. This can have a profound impact on self-esteem and confidence. And, of course, improved confidence in itself is a powerful driver of improved learning.

Reluctant writer

Many children with reading problems also have writing difficulties. In elementary-age children, this most often manifests as an unwillingness to write or a drawn-out period where one sentence takes far too long.

What’s Going On: Writing is a reading and language skill. If a child is not processing information efficiently, he/she is not observing language structure—how sentences are organized—when listening or reading. If your child is not reading well, expecting any real progress in writing is premature and misplaced.

What Gemm Can Do: While we are not a writing program per se, we develop the building blocks for writing. First, we make processing more efficient so that your child has more capacity to absorb language and storytelling skills naturally. Second, we build reading skills so that this same process can occur while reading. Along the way, we build spelling, grammar, sentence syntax, and vocabulary skills — confidence and dexterity in these fundamental skills will promote writing fluidity.

Middle School & Older

Slow worker — too much time on homework

Is homework stress taking the joy out of parenting? If your child spends more than an hour on middle school homework or two hours on high school homework, chances are there is a study-skills glitch. You can confirm this by checking with the school.

What’s Going On: Homework independence is a major source of learning difficulties for middle- and high-school students. It requires strong executive functioning skills, in-class focus, good reading and writing skills, and attention stamina. The most common difficulty is slow and/or ineffective reading, where students read and reread questions without understanding.

What Gemm Can Do: Homework efficiency and independence are goals for most clients and Gemm. Our software enhances classroom engagement, boosts executive function, improves attention stamina at home, and improves reading efficiency—it provides automatic, efficient decoding for faster reading and significantly improved comprehension.
Our reading programs by age

Disappointing grades

While some children struggle with grades from the outset, many only run into learning difficulties in middle or high school, where the escalating complexity of content exposes flawed learning skills.

What’s Going On: If reading is challenging, grades are hard to maintain as it impacts the absorption of material and test-taking performance—slow reading of questions and misunderstood questions. While many other factors contribute to disappointing grades—learning and behavioral—some non-reading-related deficits stand out: working memory issues that affect test-taking, particularly multiple-choice, and attention deficits that undermine study skills and test-day effectiveness.

What Gemm Can Do: Fast ForWord targets reading, attention, and executive function. Arguably, our biggest impact on grades comes from improving reading efficiency. However, working memory is another fundamental skill we emphasize heavily in our program. It helps test scores, most notably in multiple-choice questions.

Poor writing skills

Weak writing skills—torturous effort, poor grammar and spelling, and overly simple storytelling or structure—represent the final and most challenging hurdle to high school graduation.

What’s Going On: Good writing skills, in most cases, develop only after a student becomes a good reader who can read with metacognition and think critically about the text. This, in turn, requires sound reading fundamentals. Unfortunately, curricula content pressure and artificial grade-level standards divert educators from these fundamentals too early in many cases, leaving learning problems unresolved. This leads to subpar reading skills and then to subpar writing skills.

What Gemm Can Do: Just like reading proficiency, writing requires practice. Our program builds reading practice by making reading easier and less exhausting. If your child is struggling with reading and writing, we advise focusing on reading first. Improved reading efficiency helps your child better absorb how content is written, supporting writing through natural learning.

Dislikes school — school problems

While most children don’t mind the school environment, many claim it is boring or that they are not learning anything.

What’s Going On: It is human nature to avoid things you are not good at, such as the famous F.A.T. City videos identify, for many students, that school is overwhelming and filled with daily frustrations — teachers talking too fast, tests too hard to read, unable to stay organized — and humiliations — being asked a question in class and having to read aloud. It does not help that many children with learning difficulties are confined to “resource rooms,” where they receive extra instruction that is often drill-oriented and therefore boring.

What Gemm Can Do: Children are born curious and love learning. Our software works at a fundamental level to help children with learning difficulties by removing the impediments to learning and reading, and slowing the world down for children. If we can make processing efficient and improve executive functioning, learning will be more natural for your child, and school will be fun again.

Although advice on parenting a struggling learner has evolved over the years, the underlying learning delays remain. There are a number of myths and misconceptions about learning. However, if a child has had more than two years of academic education and the delays continue, the best advice is to take action.