Part 8: Smart Kids and Learning Disabilities

As mentioned in prior articles, when a child struggle in school, many resources are devoted to that student:  independent time with the teacher, when possible, small group instruction, instruction with a math or reading instructor; help from the experts in an area education agency, peer helpers, volunteers, parental support.  Many parents tutn to tutoring only to fined it doesn't work.  Why is that?

Tutoring only teaches temporary academic material; it's reteaching information that the child didn't learn the first time (or the 2nd, or 3rd, or 4th, etc.)  Tutoring can be effective for a child who missed a lot of school due to an illness, injury, or family move.  But because tutoring reteaches WHAT you should learn and not HOW you learn, it doesn't address underlying learning struggles.

Kids who are struggling are doing so for a reason.  It's not because the instructor told the rest of the class that 7 x 2 = 14, but kept that fact from "Sylvia."  Sylvia wasn't sent out to the hall and allowed to miss math class day after day; she was present for every single lesson. So the fact that she is struggling in an academic area is because of a weak cognitive skill.

What can be done?  That's the next article in this series.

Part 7: Smart Kids and Learning Disabilities

Part 7 :  The IQ Myth

In reality, IQ is simply an average of the measure of a person's cognitive abilities.  So someone could be in the 90th percentile or above in most of the different cognitive areas, but have an extreme memory deficit.  That person's IQ score would undoubtedly be very high, but they would still struggle to perform at an appropriate level.

Albert Einstein had ADHD.  Thomas Edison had dyslexia.  Because IQ is simply a measure of cognitive abilities, it's easy to see how a very smart child could still have a learning disability.  Just imagine a child whose cognitive skills are all very strong except one. A bright child who struggles with selective attention (the ability to remain focused on a task while being subjected to distractions) will struggle with work completion, the quality of the work they do will be subpar, they may not get work done in a reasonable length of time, and they may have to be constantly drawn back to the task at hand by a parent or teacher.

Or what about that brilliant teen whose memory skills are so weak that he/she can't remember what the homework assignments are, or can't remember to turn the homework in even when completed?  They might understand the material they read, but writing cohesive thoughts may be an issue for them because the thought "disappears" before they can get it down on paper - they are simply unable to recall the thought they wanted to write. They might struggle to remember the right equation to use in math; math facts and sight words and spelling may have been a problem when they were younger. 

It's not only possible - but even common - for intelligent children to have a learning disability.  As I've mentioned in each article, there is hope!  Their struggles do not have to be ongoing!

Part Six: Smart Kids and Learning Disabilities

In this segment, I'll explore that insidious issue of attention, or lack thereof, in most cases.

I once heard from a presenter that ADHD/ADD was the only disorder that actually worked against people who had it:  Because there are instances where they are able to focus, the expectation is that they can focus when they choose to.  The conclusion is that they must be choosing not to focus the remaining times.  That, of course, leads to frustration by all involved; parents, teacher, spouses, employers, etc.  I thought that was a very succinct statement.  I also recently heard this about ADHD/ADD and medication:  The focus just switches from the disorder controlling the person to the medication controlling the person.  Again, I thought that a very compelling statement. 

That launches my article about attention.  I'm not actually going to address ADHD/ADD, but want to talk about the three types of attention:  sustained, selective and divided.

Sustained attention is the ability to stay on a focused task for a continuous period.  Giving someone a magazine article and having them circle all the "the's" in the article would be an example of this type of attention.

Selective attention is the brain's ability to focus when distractions are present.  It's the ability to concentrate with extraneous distractions.  Examples of this would be when you are trying to pay attention to one person at a noisy party or carrying on a conversation when the television is on.   Think of all the distractions that are continuous and ongoing in a classroom!

Divided attention is the ability to shift focus back and forth from one task or situation to another.  It's the ability to focus on two or more things.   This is used in situations such as:  sorting objects by various attributes, playing card games (remembering the rules and some of what other cards have been played), and especially when driving -- just think how many times and how quickly your focus has to shift while doing that function!

Weak Attention, no matter which type, can be devastating to academic learning.  Someone with very high cognitive abilities may have very poor attention and because of that, every day is a struggle for them.

Cognitive, or brain training, targets and strengthens the underlying skills that are commonly associated with weak attention.   And the procedures don't use medication! 

Part 5: Smart Kids and Learning Disabilities

Cognitive strengths and weaknesses affect the overall success of a person in school and in life.  Listed below are the cognitive areas that we've found have the greatest impact on performance AND that are the most easily strengthened, thereby lessening  struggles and enhancing performance.   Also listed are some of the symptoms commonly attributed to each skill area,  although there are several that can be problematic and attributed to more than one area.

Please note:  These are just some of the symptoms that could be seen.   Someone does not need to exhibit all of them to  be weak in a particular area, and if interest level is high, that affects what the symptoms look like.  I often have potential clients that comment that their child can remember in detail a vacation the family took two years ago; because that was an extremely positive memory, they are able to remember.  Our goal is to make that possible with things that are not of high interest.  

Long Term Memory:  As it's name indicates, this skill is useful in remembering information over a long period of time.  Reading and listening comprehension can be attributed to this cognitive area. If it is a weak skill, a person might struggle with:

•  sight words, math facts, spelling 
•  reading could be an issue because remembering the sounds letters make is affected negatively
•  reversals (both letters and numbers)
•  remembering people's names
•  their daily work might be fine but they do poorly on unit tests
•  they may have difficulty writing papers because they have a hard time remembering what they have read. 

Short Term Memory:  This is the brain's ability to hold pieces of information briefly and utilize that information as needed to perform a task.  For example:  if someone asked you verbally, "What's 7 x 3 + 10 - 7?"  You wouldn't need to remember those numbers for very long at all; just long enough to use them in order to come up with an answer.
     Symptoms of weak short term memory include:

• difficulty copying from the board or a book (inability to remember more than a word or two)
• Taking notes (the important pieces of a lecture are gone before they can be written)
• Attention difficulty
• Skipping lines when reading
• Inability to multitask
• Having to read and reread passages or story problems to understand the meaning
• Difficulty with multi-step directions
• Poor handwriting

Visual Processing:  This is the brain's ability to make pictures where there are none.   This is an important skill for reading comprehension and general math areas.
     A person may exhibit the following if this area is weak:

• poor reading comprehension
• difficulty parallel parking
• catching a ball (or golf, or shooting a basketball, etc)
• poor coordination
• struggle understanding geometry
• riding a bike
• inability to understand and retell jokes
• unable to find an item if you describe where it is (EG:  Go the basement and get my hammer.  It's on the workbench next to the red paint can.) 

Logic and Reasoning:  This is the brain's ability to work through tasks that are not routine.  Symptoms may include:

• difficulty with higher math
• difficulty with story problems
• sequential writing/retelling an incident
• difficulty learning to tell time and count money
• prioritizing tasks can be problematic
• easily frustrated/ has melt downs or shuts down
• doesn't understand the correlation between math problems such 9+1 and 1+9
• difficulty learning new tasks and new material
• unable to get started on a new task/paper/project

Executive processing speed:  This is the brain's ability to take in stimuli and filter out what is unimportant and focus on what is needed to perform a task.  A weakness in this area may look like:

• homework taking too long
• putting off a task 
• daydreaming
• tasks done quickly with poor quality results
• routine tasks may be overwhelming
• may have trouble filtering facts when relating an incident, so may include everything
• Easily overwhelmed
• simple tasks take a long time

Word Attack:  These are the written rules of our language, and lends to poor reading skills.  A person may guess at words.  Initially, they may have a  lot of words memorized, but that quickly becomes a non-efficient way to proceed with reading.

Auditory processing:  This is how the brain hears the sounds of our language and a weakness in this area is the cause of 88% of the reading problems in our nation.  This may be a weakness if a person is a choppy, nonfluent reader and mispronounces simple words:  "Anventureland" for "Adventureland",  "Prentzel" for "Pretzel,"  "Amblance" for "Ambulance", for example.

The good news is that all of these cognitive areas can be strengthened through the administration of non-academic, more game like procedures that kids engage in much more readily than the same academic challenges with which they have had limited success in the past.  These skills can be strengthened comparatively quickly and have long lasting impact, far exceeding the short term gains of hiring a tutor, for example, to get someone through Algebra or Spanish.

The next segment will address attention, the different types of attention, and how a weakness in that area can lead to learning struggles -- as if that isn't glaringly apparent!  

Part 4: Smart Kids and Learning Disabilities

Part 4:  Smart Kids and Learning Disabilities

Today, I'll delve into the root of most learning struggles.  In a previous article, I mentioned that as a teacher, it was very confusing and disconcerting when I had kiddoes that struggled to learn the content I was presenting.  After going through the recommended remedial steps to help those students and not getting the knowledge return that the efforts should have realized, I was one of the many adults that felt that I had not done enough, that I had let the child down, that if I could have just done something differently, their world would be "fixed."  And the child was sent on, with all the adults in their lives hoping that next year would be different.

Then I discovered that the majority of learning problems have weak cognitive skills at their root.  From a scientific research standpoint, we now know more about how the brain works and how it responds to training.  The weak cognitive skills that lead directly to academic struggles include visual processing, attention, processing speed, logic & reasoning, memory, and auditory processing.  Schools, teachers, and parents can't "fix" those skills, because they must be trained, not taught and academic institutions are focused on teaching. 

The good news is that, because we now know more about how the brain works and how it responds to training, these weak cognitive areas can be strengthened, making academic and life struggles much less, if not disappear altogether!

Tomorrow, I'll break each of the cognitive areas down and list the symptoms that someone might exhibit if they are deficient in each area.

Part 3: Smart Kids and Learning Disabilities

The last few days, I've been writing about learning disabilities.

Part One discussed the usual academic, remedial approaches to learning struggles.

In part Two, a loose definition of a learning disability was discussed.

Today's article is about some of the symptoms that you may see that may indicate a learning disability.

Sometimes, learning disabilities are blamed on lack of motivation, immaturity, or behavior problems.  I like to talk about a person becoming "de"motivated rather than "un"motivated.  By that, I mean that if what your child is expected to accomplish is difficult to achieve, and this level of  difficulty lasts all day long, and it is ongoing every day,  it would be very hard to stay motivated for very long.   So I like to qualify the learning struggle by whether or not the problems are significant and ongoing and are historical with learning the basic skills like reading, writing, and math.  When those things are in place, he/she may have a learning disability.

Here are some of the things a parent or teacher may observe that may indicate a learning struggle, especially if seen on a fairly consistent basis:

1. difficulty recalling facts/vocabulary words/spelling words
2. taking excessively long to complete homework or tests
3. unable to stay focused on a task for a reasonable length of time
4. easily distracted
5. difficulty doing two things at once
6. frequently asking to have things repeated
7. difficulty with reading comprehension
8. difficulty with organization; either physical organization or cognitive organization (getting thoughts down on paper in a logical sequence or relating events  sequentially and logically.)

This is a partial list, it is very generic and covers multiple ages and grade levels, so use your best judgement.  Basically, though, if what you are seeing is outside the realm of typical for your child's age, give more weight to what you are seeing.   Children just learning to read, for example, will have different indicators than older students who have been reading (or struggling to read) for years.

The good news is that this does not need to be a diagnosis that follows your child throughout his academic career.  Stay tuned for more information in the days to come! 

Part 4 will cover the root of most learning struggles; yes, there is a reason!

Learning Disabilities Month: Part 2

2^nd in series:  “Smart Kids and Learning Struggles”

Yesterday’s article was about the protocol that is usually employed by teachers and parents when there is a struggling student.  

Today,  let’s get into what defines a learning disability.

A learning disability affects  the way children of AVERAGE TO ABOVE AVERAGE INTELLIGENCE receive, process, or express information.  It impacts their ability to learn  basic skills like reading, writing, or math.    As with many other disabilities, the impact on life and learning can range from mild to severe. 

 

According to the Coordinated Campaign for Learning Disabilities (CCLD), a coalition of national organizations within the learning disabilities community, a learning disability is “a neurobiological disorder in which a person’s brain works or is structured differently.” 

Academically, a learning disability is measured by standardized tests, with the child scoring substantially below expectations for their age, intelligence, and education.  The most common learning disabilities are difficulty with basic reading and language skills.  

Learning disabilities are not caused by lack of educational opportunities, such as frequent changes of schools, poor school attendance, or lack of instruction in basic skills.  Many struggling students have had exceptional educational and life experiences from birth to their current age, so that is not necessarily a factor.  In fact, drawing from numerous studies determining the prime causes of learning problems in the U.S., 10% are due to poor or inadequate instruction.  5% can be linked to one or more sensory defects such as hearing or vision problems.  Up to 5% can be blamed on low motivation.  The balance, roughly 80% of learning difficulties are the direct consequence of a cognitive skill weakness. 

The next installment in this series will address the signs or symptoms that a child may have a learning disability.