‘DON'T LET LEARNING DISABILITIES PREVENT YOUR CHILD FROM LEARNING’

The new academic year is about to start for millions of students after a long summer holiday. The experts state that educators and parents have major responsibility during this time, and students with learning disabilities who are not diagnosed early, may have trouble and get cold feet about going to school. 

Ezgi Oral, Lecturer at Child Development Program, Vocational School of Health Services, Izmir University of Economics, stated that in the event of unidentified learning disabilities such as dyslexia (reading and related language-based processing skills), dysgraphia (handwriting ability and fine motor skills), and dyscalculia (ability to understand numbers and learn math facts), going to school becomes a major ordeal for children.

Oral, who reported that child’s school readiness and academic maturity affected success, said, “Diagnosis may be delayed because of educators and doctors misleading from time to time, or families failing to notice or neglecting the disorder. This has a clear effect on child’s school success. Lack of self-containment causes the child to avoid going to school.”

‘Don’t let children get affected’

Learning disability is reduced intellectual ability in acquiring and using speaking, listening, writing, math, and reasoning skills, reported Oral. She said that academic failure affected the child’s life, and therefore, educators and parents needed to watch their children closely. Oral indicated that individuals with learning disabilities had regular or above regular mental intelligence. “Families and educators find it difficult to understand why a student falls behind in class; fails to learn how to read and write, does not want to do homework even though he/she is very talented and intelligent. Children, who are academically challenged, feel they are different than peers, have disrupted relations with parents and teachers, display behavioral problems. They turn into children with low self-esteem who cannot express themselves and experience failure all the time. Children experiencing these problems feel cold towards school in time and they do not want to go to school,” said Oral.

‘Watch out for the symptoms!’

Oral, who said that children with learning disabilities have short attention, stated the following:

“They have difficulty in starting or maintaining daily activities. They have weak motor coordination. They tend to be clumsy. They have weak visual differentiation skills; they confuse some of the letters. They forget instructions; look like they do not listen to the instructions. Some of them have delayed linguistics skills. They have difficulty in expressing themselves. They are messy and they have poor time management skills. They have difficulty in distance and measurement. They are confused about time. They act before they think; they are always in a hurry. They may show many symptoms like failing to read, reading wrong or slowly, and writing wrong and imaginary writing. All these symptoms change from child to child.”