Child Learning Disability

Is a Child Learning Disability Affecting your Child?

A child learning disability can contribute to learning and academic problems.

Do You Think Your Child Has A Learning Disability?

Use the following checklists to help you explore whether your child exhibits the warning signs of a learning disability.

Warning Signs of a Child Learning Disability in Pre-School or Kindergarten

Does the child experience problems with the following?

Learning the alphabet
Recognizing letters
Rhyming Words
Remembering the association between letters and their sounds
Counting and recognizing numbers
Fine motor skills and/or using pencils, crayons and scissors
Learning the names of colors
Being understood by others
Developing age appropriate language skills.
Delayed language development (with articulation or pronunciation, first words, speaking in sentences)?

Warning Signs of a Child Learning Disability in Elementary School Children

Does the child exhibit the following concerns?

Listening to class discussions and following instructions
Remembering routines
Fine motor activities (holding a pencil, printing or handwriting).
Understanding lessons and new concepts
Remembering lessons and new information
Learning new information and skills
With organization (e.g. keeping notes organized and neat)
With task completion and remembering and meeting deadlines
Drawing or copying shapes.
Learning new vocabulary.
Speaking in full sentences.
Remembering and retelling information from stories
Paying attention and concentrating on school work
Expressing thoughts orally or in writing
Succeeding in one or more subject areas (reading, writing, math or spelling).
Understanding conversation and questions

What Is A Child Learning Disability?

Children who struggle to learn and keep up with their peers at school may have a child learning disability. The learning disabled child performs poorly in one or more academic areas and well below expectations based on the child’s age, education level and IQ. A child learning disability is characterized by specific weaknesses in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or using spoken or written language.

The term does not include children who experience learning problems as a result of visual, hearing or motor handicaps, or developmental delays or emotional disturbance. Nor does it apply to children who experience learning problems that are primarily the result of environmental or economic disadvantage.

What Weaknesses Do Learning Disabled Children Exhibit?

Some learning disabled children exhibit auditory processing deficits. This includes problems discriminating, sequencing and comprehending sounds. These children find it hard to assign meaning to sounds and remember the association between the sound and its letter. Processing and remembering auditory or verbal information, including lesson content and concepts, instructions or letters and numbers and words is also often difficult.

Other learning disabled children may exhibit visual processing difficulties. These children respond more slowly to visual material and experience problems remembering, organizing and understanding visual information.

In addition, learning disabled children often have memory problems. They recall fewer items from lists of letters, words, and nonsense syllables, sentences, digits and objects, whether they view this information or hear it.

Learning disabled children may also show executive skill deficits, including failure to consider and use appropriate strategies to complete tasks and to monitor how well they are doing.

Language skills can also be weak. Language based learning weaknesses compromise learning in all academic skill areas, including spelling, writing, reading and math. Language is also tied to thinking and information processing.

Language based learning deficits include problems with:

Phonology or the sounds of language and rules for combining them.
Articulation or production of speech sounds.
Morphology or formation of words.
Syntax or the formation of words into phrases or sentences.
Semantics or meaning in language.
Pragmatics or the use of language in social contexts.

Children with language based learning disabilities experience problems with receptive language, or understanding what is said to them. Expressive language weaknesses are often evident as well. Children with expressive language problems experience difficulties expressing their ideas, thoughts and needs.

How Can You Help?

If you suspect that your child has a leaning disability contact a psychologist to help with a child learning disability.

The psychologist will do an assessment to determine whether a child learning disability is a concern for your child. You can ask your child’s school or pediatrician to refer you to a psychologist. In addition, most schools have a psychologist assigned to their school. Ask your school if they can arrange an assessment for your child with their school psychologist.

Dr. O'Connor runs her practice, Assessment Based Solutions, in Toronto (Yonge & St.Clair.)

She can be reached at 416-592-0838.

You can also contact Dr. O'Connor by email.

Dr. O'Connor is the author of I Can Be Me-A Helping Book for Children of Alcoholic Parents.

SBI!