The Learning Center Foundation

Children with learning disabilities suffer from a delay in either their cognitive, verbal or motor skills. Similar delays are likely to occur in their emotional development and social skills as well. Delays in these equally important areas can make a learning disabled child seem babyish. These children are also often described as intense. Every developmental stage they progress through seems turned up a notch. This can tempt parents to mold their children into more acceptable versions of what they wish they would be. It is important to note that scientists believe many aspects of our disposition are genetically pre-determined and working against your childs nature will only frustrate them and make matters worse. Help them become the best that they were designed to be. Protect their uniqueness, work with their individuality and they will thank you for it and you will reap the rewards of a well-adjusted kid.

A well-known psychologist, A.H. Maslow, studied motivation and found that certain needs have to be met before human beings are capable of getting their needs met at a higher level. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs demonstrated that all of an individuals needs at one level must be met before he or she can succeed on the next level. For example, a child who lives in fear of their safety, will have trouble getting their needs for affection and acceptance met at the next level until their security is restored. The order of Maslow's Hierarchy is as follows: first we must have our physiological needs met for food, drink, and shelter before we can move to the next level and meet our safety needs for security, order, protection and family stability before we can move to the next level and meet our love needs for affection, group affiliation and personal acceptance before we can move to the next level and meet our esteem needs for self-respect, prestige, reputation and social status before we can move to the top of the hierarchy and meet our self-actualization needs for self-fulfillment, achievement of personal goals and ambitions, and finally realization of talents.

It is not only children who move through this hierarchy. These needs, how we access them and how we get them met, play a crucial role throughout our developmental lives. Having difficulty with getting needs met in any one of these levels can be a helpful guide as to where we might be having difficulty. Accordingly, let's look at how children behave in the various stages of development as they grow up and what you can expect in each stage.

The first three years of life are extremely important. Developmentally, these are the years that a child's social and emotional makeup has the potential to become irreversibly formed. A remarkable amount of encoding takes place during this time and children who enjoy secure, stable relationships with their primary care takers will be attentive, motivated and responsive to challenge. On the other hand, children who do not receive proper nurturing will manifest more passive personalities. When faced with challenges, they will be more likely to become discouraged, withdrawn or fearful in unfamiliar situations.

Around age 3, the ability to "play well with others" develops and interactive skills also begin to form. Kid to kid and adult to kid; children begin their real world education in how to relate. It is by relating to others children get a chance to practice their social and language skills. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on the child, there is a snow ball effect. The more outgoing and self-confident the child, the more practice they get to develop their social and language skills thereby increasing their self-confidence. This in turn increases the chances they will keep putting themselves out there to be social resulting in more and more practice gaining more and more skill. Once in school, these students often out perform their peers who often possess higher academic intelligence.

Those who suffer from learning disabilities are similar to their non-disabled peers in that a loving supportive home environment that provides ample opportunities to socialize will cause them to be more resilient than a harsh home environment where the inhabitants are disengaged, critical or chaotic.

The causes of learning disabilities are still being researched, but as already mentioned, uneven brain development has been implicated as the culprit in many cases. Consequently, infants with underdeveloped or unevenly-developed nervous systems can present special challenges to caregivers. Sometimes cranky but impossible to console, many learning disabled babies refuse to conform to an eating or sleeping schedule. They turn away from affection leaving parents few options with which to bond as fully as they may have done with their other children. Bonding however is especially crucial during this period and a lack of it negatively impacts the infant indefinitely.

When a preschooler becomes a toddler, their challenges continue. Their learning disability manifests in new ways presenting different riddles for the parents to figure out. As toddlers, learning disabled children experience difficulty following directions or remembering the rules of a game due to problems with processing verbal or visual information. They may also learn to talk, dress or feed themselves later than other kids their age.

When most people hear the term "hyperactive child," they readily form an image that has been reinforced time and again by the media. Everyone feels they have had experience with someone who was "hyperactive." It's Dennis the Mennis at a dinner party snagging the table cloth and pulling everything down with him. Mayhem seems to follow the hyperactive child wherever they go resulting in isolation for the family which in turn cuts them off from the support they badly need in order to give the child the nurturing that he so badly needs.

Learning disabilities seem to spawn impossible situations everywhere you turn. That"s why at the Learning Center, we encourage parents to get the professional support they deserve. You can imagine that if relationships outside the family can become strained that those within the family can too. Indeed, husband and wife often turn against each other. Blame is the order of the day, one holding the other responsible that the problem exists at all and feeling as though not enough is being done about it. We can"t adequately express how damaging this pattern is and the heavy toll it takes on your marriage not to mention the mental health of your child. Again, this is where outside support proves indispensable.

Most importantly, learning disabled children already feel "different". They are acutely aware that the family is in turmoil over "their problems". If parents inadvertently start diverting approval and love away from the "learning disabled" child to the more acceptable children, the wounding that is inevitable in the lives of these children will only go deeper and essentially double the trauma. If it helps you to remember they did not ask to be learning disabled and they need your help to learn to live with it. We understand you need support in order to do that. There are resources available for you to get the support you need so your child can get the help they need. We at the Learning Center will assist you in doing exactly that.

Toddlers later diagnosed with learning disabilities will often linger in the "mine" stage longer than their peers and preschoolers with auditory-processing problems will usually move about or talk during story time and become completely frustrated during a game like "Simon Says". Hence, as tasks, games, and social interactions get more sophisticated kids with learning disabilities get left in the dust. Many enter school and get hit twice with the realization that they are socially and academically behind the eight-ball. If their home environment wasn"t supportive, they begin an up hill battle at a disadvantage. If their home environment was supportive, their self-esteem is in a place to make friends, enlist support from their teachers and give it their best shot.

In the pre-school years, most children:

Potential problems

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Activities

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