People with learning difficulties are not suffering from mental retardation; they are not the consequence of an emotional disorder or a lack of ambition, a weak academic background, or visual or hearing clarity issues. Someone with a learning problem can have average or even above-average intellect.
Galileo was visually impaired. It’s been revealed that Elton John has epilepsy. James Earl Jones struggled with a speech impediment throughout his life. The late President John F. Kennedy struggled in school due to a learning handicap.
Learning difficulties occur in a startlingly high percentage of the population. They are the consequence of changes in the brain’s anatomy, but they have no bearing on intellect, conduct, or concentration. In a nutshell, they are distinctions that have only a marginal approach to the activities that comprise everyday life.
People who have learning disabilities are all unique in their ways. Adults with learning difficulties need to undergo rigorous clinical evaluations to understand their condition’s exact form and the relevant measures for adjustment.
It is the responsibility of the parents and the teachers of a child who has been diagnosed with a learning disability to assist the child by organizing the learning process in such a way that it is psychologically manageable to the greatest extent possible and causes the minimum percentage of desperation feasible. This article will provide a few different strategies that can be used to help children with learning disabilities.
Make an effort to describe what a learning obstacle is to children
If you wish to assist a kid who has been diagnosed with a learning disability, the best way to begin is by establishing a trusting connection with the child and describing in detail what it means to have a learning disability.
If the kid is young enough, you should explain that having a learning handicap does not diminish their value; instead, it means they just need a distinctive way of learning to achieve the same academic outcomes as their classmates. The educator has the flexibility to test out several distinct methods of instruction based on the specific challenge at hand to see which one works best for the individual student.
Always put in more work than you expect to get out of it
In light of the fact that children who have trouble learning won’t always be able to get good marks, their parents and instructors need to make it clear to them that the level of effort they put in is more important than the actual outcome. When the children focus only on the result, they risk becoming unmotivated and disheartened, particularly if they continue to judge themselves about other children’s accomplishments.
Overcoming one’s limitations and capabilities is essential to achieving success. The only way this can be accomplished is by devoting time and energy to perfecting a particular talent or studying a specific body of information. When an adequate amount of work is put in, the wanted outcome will undoubtedly be accomplished; it is only a question of time.
Emphasize a child’s strengths, not shortcomings
Recognize the positive qualities possessed by a child with a learning disability, and by devoting our efforts to developing these positive qualities, we can help the child develop exceptional skills that will set them apart from their contemporaries.
For example, if a kid has difficulty with dyscalculia and is gifted in kinesthetic skills such as acting, we would try to get the most significant outcomes by developing kinesthetic skills such as rhetoric, reciting, and dramaturgy.
In the end, one of the primary benefits of living in these specific times is that everyone has the opportunity to find a place for themselves on the enormous global market rather than having to conform to the standard templates of conventional professions.
Provide encouraging role models
Everyone on earth has a deep-seated need to live up to a specific archetype, and they often accomplish this goal by looking up to famous people. If you are helping children with learning disabilities, provide them instances of famous people who overcame learning challenges comparable to or even the same as their own. You will most likely inspire them to maintain their motivation and progress toward accomplishing their objectives.
Helping children with learning disabilities by identifying a role model who similarly struggles with learning might demonstrate to youngsters that it is possible to succeed despite these challenges. Whoopi Goldberg and Jay Leno are just two famous people who have overcome learning impairments and achieved significant levels of professional success despite their struggles. However, the individual serving as a model need not be well-known.
There are several examples of notable people, such as politicians, athletes, and entertainers, who have surmounted the obstacles provided by learning disabilities by putting in a lot of hard effort and persevering through tough times. You and the kid may sit down together and read a biography or watch a movie about a person to whom you believe the youngster would feel a connection.
Have a conversation with the youngster about the individual’s road to success and ask them to think of many techniques from which they may benefit in their own life. This technique of helping children with learning disabilities can motivate a youngster to persevere despite educational challenges and strive toward accomplishing a high goal.
Motivate and monitor their emotions
Children who have trouble learning often have more difficulty either in or out of the classroom. Therefore, it is the responsibility of parents and instructors helping children with learning disabilities to keep an eye on how the child is feeling.
Chatting to the youngsters is the most effective technique to stimulate them when their spirits are down since it helps them realize that you care. The conversation may be used to address the child’s difficulty in several different ways, including the following:
Break the unpleasant experience down into its component pieces. Taking this method will enable you to recognize the primary factors that contributed to the escalation of the disagreement and comprehend what took place.
Any advice is helpful, but it is most useful when offered by someone who has successfully passed a challenge identical to what one is now facing. For this reason, it is a good idea to determine if you or someone in your circle of family and friends has met a circumstance comparable to this one, and then ask that person to describe how they overcame the challenge.
Instilling in them a sense of self-worth might be the most effective means of overcoming a challenging circumstance and preventing future occurrences of the same kind of challenge. You can aid in developing a robust and healthy personality in the youngster by providing encouragement and drawing attention to the child’s relative advantages and abilities.
Boost children’s intellectual curiosity
Every youngster is born with a healthy dosage of curiosity. However, as children become older, if they continue to face severe and adverse reactions from their parents and instructors, this interest typically gets repressed. This is especially the case if the children are in the middle of a complex developmental stage.
Therefore those helping children with learning disabilities must know that curiosity is one of the essential characteristics of children with learning challenges when preserving continuity in their activities and discovering innovative solutions for issues.
Therefore, it is essential to avoid discouraging children when they ask many questions; instead, offer them answers and direct them to resources where they can learn more about topics they find intriguing. It is a good idea to explore the areas the kid is interested in since this is a fantastic approach to determine the domain in which the children may accomplish excellent outcomes.
Teach a child to attain flow via play
Most people believe that studying and playing are two different activities, a legacy of the rigorous, conventional, formal education system. Those helping children with learning disabilities formerly considered learning a more serious endeavor, while playing was seen as an unstructured hobby. However, times have changed.
As we’ve recently learned from the notion of flow state (the state of mind when a person is entirely engaged in a feeling of attention, absolute devotion, and delight in an activity), strictness in learning reduces our ability to concentrate properly. As a result, the youngster must learn to treat learning like a game, studying whenever it’s convenient and not worrying about how long it will take. Instead, following their own goals and speed.
Divide tasks into sections
This is sound advice for children of all ages, but it is essential for children who have ADHD. Those helping children with learning disabilities ensure that for youngsters lacking attention, it would be preferable to break down a job so that the child may look back at each completed stage and eventually see how it all fits together to accomplish the assignment.
The regular release of the happy hormone serotonin is one of the primary advantages of breaking jobs down into component pieces. Another advantage is that the likelihood of giving up because of the magnitude of the activity or the need for delayed satisfaction is reduced.
Include the child’s chosen activity in your schedule
Children with difficulties learning often need a significant amount of additional time to do their schoolwork. It is essential for those helping children with learning disabilities to make sure that the kid with NF1 and a learning handicap has time set aside regularly to participate in an activity that is to their liking and at which they excel, even if this will take up a lot of the family’s time. Your child’s sense of capability and self-esteem will increase due to participating in this activity.
Share your own experiences
Anecdotes that can assist children make connections between various components of the education process can benefit them. Teachers can discuss how they coped with topics that were not their favorites or worked around complicated stuff. When you talk about your past experiences with a kid, you strengthen your connection with them, increasing the likelihood that they will be honest with you about how they are now feeling.
Improve your emotional and social intelligence
Your kid may experience sadness, anger, or withdrawal if they have learning disabilities and the problems that come with growing up. Your kid’s brain learns differently than most people’s brains. Therefore it will be difficult for them to learn new things.
You can help your child by showing love and support. Make it a point to join organizations and sports teams, emphasizing togetherness. These exercises need to boost self-assurance. Also, remember that winning is not a competition’s only objective.
Make preparations for the future
Concern over their child’s ability to learn and think is typically a common source of anxiety for many parents. You may help your kid prepare for adulthood by encouraging them to think about their skills and interests while making decisions about their schooling and future careers. Remind them that their ability to learn differently is not dependent on their IQ.
Many individuals who struggle with learning disabilities are knowledgeable and go on to achieve great success in their chosen fields. By teaching participants how to make decisions and develop professional skills, specialized career and employment programs can help create confidence in participants.
What factors contribute to difficulty in learning?
There are a variety of factors that might contribute to a child having trouble learning. Although the reasons are not always clear, it is common for children to have a parent or other relative who struggles with learning and thinking in a manner that is either identical or very similar to their own. Other characteristics that put a person at risk include having a low birth weight, being premature, or having an illness or accident during infancy.
Conclusion
You can assist children with learning impairments if you adopt the available solutions. Children with difficulty learning will have a much easier time avoiding many unpleasant experiences if their talents are identified, and they can adapt those gifts to these more general supporting techniques.
Your role as a teacher or a parent in helping children with learning disabilities is to put these strategies into practice. After some time, you should be able to see a good influence of these strategies on the students’ healthy psychological growth and the achievement of all of their intended objectives.
