Back-To-School Tips On Learning Disabilities

The book bags are packed, the new clothes bought, and parents around the country are sending their children back to school with bright hopes for their academic success. But many students may not excel because their parents and educators may not have recognized the symptoms of learning disabilities (LD). According to the National Institute of Health, there are approximately 2.8 million children nationwide with learning disabilities, problems that can be very difficult to accurately detect.

Symptoms of learning disabilities in preschoolers include late talking in comparison to other children, pronunciation problems, slow vocabulary growth, trouble learning numbers, the alphabet, or the days of the week, extremely restlessness and easy distraction, trouble interacting with peers, and poor ability to follow directions or routines.

Symptoms in children grades K–4 include slowness in learning the connection between letters and sounds, confusion of basic words (run, eat, want, etc.), consistent reading and spelling errors, including reversal of letters (b/d), inversions (m/w), transpositions (felt/left), and substitutions (house/home), slow recall of facts, impulsiveness, lack of planning, poor coordination, accident proneness, trouble learning about time and in learning new skills.

Parents must first know how to distinguish a learning disability from typical childhood anxieties related to learning. The Coordinated Campaign for Learning Disabilities is an established website and outreach group aimed at helping parents seeking to learn more about the identification and treatment of various learning disabilities. For more information, visit www.focusonlearning.org.