Vocational School of Justice
LEARNING DISABILITIES
It has been stated that people with learning disabilities worldwide was 8% and that early diagnosis and proper treatment brought academic success. The experts reported that more research was required on the subject and 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), children get cold feet about going to school.
Ezgi Oral, Lecturer at Child Development Program, Vocational School of Health Services, Izmir University of Economics, emphasized the negative impact of learning disabilities on school success. She 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. Also, child’s skills and interests become blunt since the system fails to explore them.”
‘Support for Happy and Successful Children’
Oral mentioned that child’s school readiness and academic maturity affected success and it was important to get to know children at early age and provide the necessary support. Oral, who reported that academic failure affected the individual’s whole life, stated the following:
“Learning disability is reduced intellectual ability in acquiring and using speaking, listening, writing, math, and reasoning skills even though the individual has average or above average 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 and experience anxiety and depression. Children with low self-esteem turn into individuals 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. I suggest families immediately take their children to a child psychologist or a child psychiatrist if their children are experiencing such problems.”
‘Detailed Assessment is Necessary’
Oral reported that detailed assessments were required to diagnose the child with any learning disability. She said, “Individuals with learning disability have average or above average intelligence. They may be hyperactive as well. They have difficulty in starting or maintaining daily activities. Their attention span is short and they are easily distracted. 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 poor time management skills and they are messy. 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, writing wrong, and imaginary writing.”
‘Misdiagnosis’
Oral reported that researches failed and only 6.6% cases in Turkey were correctly diagnosed, therefore pre-school age child should be monitored closely.
Some of the celebrities with learning disability are Leonardo da Vinci, Edison, Albert Einstein, Agatha Christie, Churchill, Picasso, Walt Disney, and Tom Cruise…