You are following your child’s schoolwork, and you notice that his performance is quite inconsistent. Sometimes he surprises you with his speed and intuition, while other times he gets easily distracted.
This gives you the impression that your child is just throwing tantrums, but in certain cases, he convincingly communicates his learning difficulties to you. Therefore, you would like to know how to educate a child with these characteristics and support him in his studies.
You have probably wondered about your child’s abilities and how to help him develop them. In this case, I believe I can lend a hand, and I will start by providing some clarity on the situation that children with learning difficulties experience.
1. Common situations in children with learning difficulties
Generally, when facing academic difficulties, nowadays, everyone immediately thinks about specific learning disorders (SLDs). Actually, they have almost always nothing to do with it.
Unfortunately, dyslexia has become very trendy, and as often happens in this field, people start seeing dyslexics everywhere. No different than how they saw hyperactive children everywhere fifteen years ago or autistic children in the previous decade.
These disorders certainly exist, and they deserve the utmost attention. However, it is essential not to be carried away by current trends.
When we refer to learning difficulties, we are talking about all the problems that make learning challenging for a person.
The causes of these difficulties are numerous; I’ll mention just a few to give an idea of how many factors can influence the effectiveness of learning:
• First of all, there are causes related to possible disorders, both specific and nonspecific:
Specific Learning Disorders (SLDs)
Dyspraxia
Hyperactivity
Attention disorders
Other types of disorders (e.g., Asperger’s syndrome, etc.)
• In addition to this, there are all the other possible causes:
Language difficulties
Poor habit of mental effort
Prevalent use of mechanical learning methods
Inadequate study techniques
Lack of stimuli in school engagement
etc.
All these aspects, to varying degrees, can contribute to generating difficulties in a child’s learning process.
2. What to do when facing your child's learning difficulties
These difficulties become more evident at the beginning of compulsory schooling when the child must face the first formal learning experiences and acquire the so-called «basic skills»: reading, writing, and basic arithmetic.
However, it is possible to take preventive action even before that; for example, some schools organize screening activities starting from the end of kindergarten. Nevertheless, it is essential to approach screenings with caution as they are useful only to identify early warning signs of potential difficulties.
In any case, the best strategy to prevent or mitigate many of the causes that generate learning difficulties is to allow the child to practice skills that can help them approach school tasks more effectively. These skills can be categorized into four axes:
– Accompaniment in logical-mathematical aspects;
-Reinforcement of thinking abilities;
– Motor coordination;
– Stimulating the motivation to learn.
3. Specific learning disorders that may be present
Usually, specific learning disorders are often attributed to a deficit when, actually, extensive scientific literature links them to a neuro-motor disorder.
As I explain more thoroughly in that dedicated post, a specific learning disorder (SLD) is a disorder in the execution of reading, writing, and mathematical skills. This means that it’s not the learning of the skill that is disturbed, but rather its utilization.
It’s a partially pervasive disorder and affects many executive functions of a person; not only reading, writing, and math but also other aspects such as sequential memory, motor coordination, spatial-temporal organization, etc. With that being said, the disorder is expressed in particular through these forms:
– dyslexia: disorder in the execution of reading;
– dysgraphia: disorder in the execution of grapho-motor skills;
– dysorthography: disorder in the execution of formal and grammatical aspects of writing;
– dyscalculia: disorder in the execution of mathematical skills.
4. What to do when your child has a specific learning disorder
As a first step, let’s start by saying that the incidence of this type of disorder in the school population is around 4%. Nevertheless, the attention of schools, families, and services towards this type of issue is very high.
Starting from the past decade, in fact, we are witnessing, also as a result of regulatory developments, a rather massive referral of children with learning difficulties to healthcare services for evaluation of dyslexia.
This policy has undoubtedly altered the perception of this type of disorder, and the push for families to seek certifications has created two negative effects that have also been noted by some in the scientific community: the inclusion of many children in therapeutic paths that are not suitable for their needs; on the other hand, the exclusion of children with other disorders from therapeutic paths that are suitable for them.
By this, I only mean to raise awareness of the strong conditioning that a parent with a child with SLD receives when resorting to tools that can lighten their school workload but to the detriment of the most useful developmental path for a child with SLD: the correct exercise of functions that may be more complicated for them (reading, writing, math, etc.)
That being said, what can be done when facing a specific learning disorder in a child? In the case of suspected SLD or confirmed disorder, the essential thing is not to give up on teaching the child to read, write, and do math.
These skills can be effectively and calmly cultivated even in the presence of significant difficulties, and you only need a strategy to do so and possibly a targeted developmental treatment addressing the neuro-motor origin of the issue.
