A LEARNING DISORDER
By age six most children are ready for formal education. His nervous system can handle it. He has the necessary skills and tools to do the job of learning at school. Parents are already seeing signs that indicate the child may be highly intelligent. Then the teacher sees a different side of the child.
The learning disabled child may not be ready to start school at age six. He is disorganized. He is consumed by disorder. He is immature rather than abnormal. A doctor might say that he suffers from neurological immaturity or minimal brain dysfunction. The teacher would say that he has a learning disability. The parent would say, “but he’s so bright and intelligent.”
This learning disabled child, even if he is gifted and very smart, can’t make sense of what he receives through his senses, even though his sight, hearing, and other sense organs are all intact. The messages he receives are jumbled, scattered all over the place. He is distractible, which most people think is not paying attention; but in fact, he is paying too much attention to too many things. He may have Attention Deficit Disorder.
Because of his many difficulties he is dependent longer on the adults around him and must call for help over a longer period of time. This very bright learning disabled youngster tends to become rigid and inflexible. He may appear paralyzed when faced with two equal choices, unable to select either one.
The learning disabled child is often lost in space. This is why clearly defined spaces or small spaces spell safety to the learning disabled child. This is why security depends on the same seat at the dining room table, the same place in the car, the same chair at school.
Yet there’s a sheer joy that many a learning disabled child brings to life. He seems to embrace life with an enthusiasm and jauntiness that most of us lose with maturity. The spontaneous expression of feeling, the unedited comment, the untrampled upon gesture are all trademarks of the impulsive child. With all the heartache he feels and brings into his home, he often touches his family with a freshness that has a pure natural quality of a highly intelligent youngster.
They usually have problems with school. Learning disabled children need to be taught HOW to learn. Their reading, spelling and arithmetic skills often range from considerable below to far below the norm. Frequently their spoken language, thinking and behavior are also extremely delayed.
No matter how much they love this child, parents too often take the child’s failure as their own. So they try by every means possible to make him do better. They tell him, as his teacher has told him before, that he is not trying or that he is not trying hard enough.
Teachers say or parents may say that it’s time for him to stop being a baby and grow up and take responsibility by learning to read. They talk to him at length. They bribe and punish, spend hours going over his schoolwork with him. Parents can’t understand why all that extra effort doesn’t bring him more success with his school work.
Parents often ask, “Why did this happen?” My answer is simple. It is not because the parents haven’t tried. It is not because parents don’t care. It is not because the child is stubborn. It is not because the child is dull or lazy. It is not because the child is spoiled. It is not because the child is dumb or stupid.
There is no known simple explanation why a highly intelligent child can have a learning disability. There is no one single cause. There seem to be many causes that are responsible for learning disabilities. Research shows some occur before birth, some afterward, and others during the birth process. Then there are still others that are hereditary.
It is not worth agonizing over which one thing produced the problem in your child. Placing blame, pointing an accusing finger, feeling overwhelmed with guilt, giving way to fear that some thoughtless action you did during pregnancy produced a child’s learning problems have never been found to help parents help their children with the problem.
I often listen to parents who are exasperated, puzzled, uncertain, frantic, exhausted, and helpless. These are the feelings of a mother or father of a learning disabled child. He is bewildering. He drains parents and teachers. He is a misfit and his parents don’t know how to handle the situation. Many parents I see are desperate. They have tried everything they know to do. Nothing has worked.
It’s hard for most parents to accept the fact that they have a learning disabled child. For some parents I see in my office it becomes an almost overwhelming tragedy.
Today, more than ever before, there is better understanding and greater hope that a learning disabled child can be tested and treated with a great deal of success. Today it is possible to treat the cause of the problem. Once the problem is corrected the child can become successful in school. I have seen these children progress from failing grades on their report cards to all “A’s” and “B’s.” For the first time they are on the honor roll. They bring their report cards in to our office to show me.
There are new non-drug treatment programs that are correcting learning problems in children and adults. Learning disabled children can receive treatment and help so they will be able to function with greater ease and more effectively in our society. Today we know so much more than we did ten years ago. Recently there have been several technological advances made in this area of treating learning disabilities.
If by the second grade a child is really not doing well, and if a good deal of what has been described above can be recognized in your bright child, it will be worthwhile at this point for the parents to seek competent professional help. To read and understand the information in this book is a good place to start.
THERE MAY BE A GENIUS INSIDE YOUR CHILD
Usually when people hear that their child has a learning disability they think it means the child is dumb or slow or not very intelligent. Because the child struggles with writing, reading, spelling or math has absolutely nothing to do with his IQ level. In fact we are beginning to believe it may mean just the opposite. The child who struggles with writing, reading, spelling and math may indeed have a genius inside their brain.
I often hear parents of these learning disabled children say, “in many ways he appears to be brighter than other children.” I often remind parents of the many great and notable people who struggled academically as children. A few names on this list of very intelligent people who had learning disabilities are some I’m sure you know. Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, General George Patton, Leonardo da Vinci, Nelson Rockerfeller and the list goes on and on. In every single case their genius did not occur in spite of their learning disability, but because of it.
When you examine and study the way a learning disabled child’s mind works and thinks, you’ll discover that their mind works in a similar way as the minds of great geniuses. For example notice the comparisons. 1. They both have a vivid imagination. 2. They both often think in pictures, not in written language or written words. 3. They both are very curious about how things work. 4. They both are very aware of everything around them. 5. They both are insightful to situations around them including their environment. Because of these basic abilities the learning disabled child will grow up to have extraordinary creative abilities and in most cases I have studied, will have higher than normal intelligence.
I have also studied cases where this did not happen, but in each of these cases, I believe it was because parents or teachers suppressed or discouraged that child in such a strong negative way so as to give that child preconceived suggestions that he was dumb, stupid or told him he would never amount to anything.
I believe this is why the learning disabled child needs every opportunity to discover the genius inside himself. It helps if the parent will say to the child, “I know there is a genius somewhere inside you. He’s just struggling trying to get out.”
I encourage parents to help the child see his areas of strengths. His genius may be in music. It may be in art or he may have unusual ability to build or fix things with his hands. I’ve seen many of these children become a genius with computers or in electronics or with automobile mechanics or in creating and running a business. Many of these children grow up to have an uncanny business sense.
Help your child discover the genius within his brain. It’s there in most cases. He has only to discover it for himself. As his parent you must give him every opportunity available to do this. Grab hold of this truth and convince your child that it’s so. Once he begins to discover even a little bit of the genius that is inside his brain, it will start to revolutionize his thinking. It will change his self image. It will change his life.
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