Overview
What's Wrong?
(A brief look at some specific learning differences that may affect scholastic performance)
Nine-year-old Susie has trouble reading. She is a smart child, and she has little problem understanding verbal communication from her teacher. When it comes to reading and writing, she tends to take longer than her classmates to complete the task. She often makes simple mistakes like confusing or inverting letters. Frequently, she reads and often even re-reads basic words and sentences without comprehending them. Susie has a fairly common learning difference called dyslexia. While it takes extra effort to learn to cope with this learning difference, Susie finds ways, with the help of parents and teachers, to improve her reading and writing skills over time.
There are many different types of learning differences. They invite one to search for creative alternatives to traditional methods of learning, and they need not be debilitating over the course of a person's life. London Bridge Educational Services prefers the term learning difference to the term learning disability. The latter expression is commonly used in medical and psychological literature, and appears in the definitions below. To call learning disabilities learning differences suggests that challenges or impediments to learning need not be disabling for someone like Susie. In the ever expanding, multi-tasking world in which we live, learning differences are an asset. Learning differences can be creatively engaged and utilized in the way a student approaches learning the same things as all other students. Explaining to the student that they have a learning difference rather than a disability, lessens the stigma that students with learning differences may face. Presently, the Susie's of this world may be thought of as less intelligent by their peers, teachers, parents, or even by themselves. The truth is that Susie's learning difference is not an indicator of her intelligence. Learning differences are neurological in origin and have to do with the way a person processes information. They are not reflective of a person's intellectual capacity, and they certainly need not spell inevitable scholastic doom. People with learning differences who recognize and learn to work with their unique situation go on to be very successful in school and life.
