If your child has difficulty in learning to read and write or shows academic success below his/her capacity.....
What is a specific learning disability?
In individually administered standard tests, the child's chronological age, Considering the measured intelligence level and the education he received; He/she is behind his/her peers in reading, mathematics and written expression.
The term Specific Learning Disability includes "dyslexia" (difficulty in reading), "dysgraphia" (difficulty in writing) and "dyscalculia" (difficulty in mathematics). It covers all the terms (difficulty).
Specific Learning Disability; It should be distinguished from visual, auditory, motor-sensory disabilities, mental developmental delay, pervasive developmental disorders, school-related difficulties such as lack of opportunity and inadequate education, cultural factors, emotional disorder and communication disorder, and environmental factors.
Learning disability. It is a disorder whose effectiveness can be reduced when timely and necessary educational support studies are carried out.
What are the symptoms?
Symptoms of the preschool period:
1. Delay in speech and other speech disorders. (difficulty in pronouncing words correctly, insufficient and slow development of vocabulary, difficulty in explaining something, speaking less)
2. Poor concept development (big-small, thin-thick, top-bottom, inside-outside). , inability to learn concepts such as before and after, confusion)
3. Inadequate motor development (difficulty in learning self-care skills, inability to learn to fasten buttons, clumsiness), reluctance to draw or copy
Symptoms related to the primary school period:
1.Academic success: Although they seem intelligent in many areas, they experience academic failure. The success rate is variable; in some courses, the success is normal/above normal, while in some courses it is low).
2.Reading / Writing Skills: Children with dyslexia have difficulty and are delayed in learning to read in the first grade. In other classes, their reading is behind their peers in terms of speed and quality. He cannot learn the sounds of some letters, he cannot combine the shape of the letter with its sound, he has difficulty spelling words or separating them into letters, he cannot understand when he reads a passage at grade level. He/she has difficulty in reading and understands better what others read. They have difficulty and are delayed in learning to write in the first grade.
3. They write some letters, numbers and words backwards or mix them up. Like “ram” instead of “many”, “and” instead of “house”, “stick” instead of “stove”, b-d, m-n, i-i, 2-5, d-t, ğ-g. While writing, they skip some letters or syllables or add letters/syllables, make spelling and punctuation errors depending on the grade level, make errors in lower-case letters, punctuation, syllable division, do not leave any spaces between words while writing, or write by dividing a word into two or three parts. .
4. Compared to their peers, their handwriting is illegible and ugly, they write slowly, and they have difficulty drawing the writing on the board into their notebook or writing down what the teacher reads in their notebook.
5.Arithmetic Skills: Learning numbers and mathematical symbols. they have difficulty. They have difficulty learning some arithmetic symbols and confuse them. They fall behind in learning the multiplication tables according to their grade level.
6.They are slow in doing the four operations. They cannot decide on the procedure that will solve the problem, and they have difficulty in reacting automatically when doing math problems at a level appropriate to their age.
7.Other areas: They have difficulty in learning the concepts of right-left, east-west, north-south. They confuse concepts related to time (such as yesterday-today, before-after, day, month, year, season). When asked what month we are in, they may say Tuesday, and when asked what season we are in, they may say February. They have difficulty learning the time.
8. Even if they count the days of the week, months, and seasons correctly, they have difficulty answering or answer incorrectly when asked (which day comes before Friday, which month comes after March, which is the fourth day of the week, etc.).
9. They are clumsier than their peers in tasks such as catching a ball, jumping rope, and tying shoes and ties. They are clumsy, they often fall, get injured, and break things unintentionally.
10. The habit of working on their own has not developed. They lack learning strategies, they do not know how to study, how to obtain more information and how to remember what they have learned.
Reasons
1. Lack of oxygen during birth or difficult birth,
2.Mother's smoking, alcohol and drug use during pregnancy,
3.Nutrition deficiency, unconscious drug use and traumas,
4.Metabolic brain diseases, meningitis or ear infections,
5.Environmental factors
>How is it treated?
Since SLD is a lifelong disorder, if this condition is not treated and managed correctly, it will cause some psychological problems in the child over time. Lack of self-confidence, anxiety disorder, depressive disorder......
The most effective method in the treatment of Specific Learning Disability is psychosocial education and the treatment of other accompanying psychiatric problems.
These practices include the development of the child. It is necessary to identify and correct the psychological process or processes that make it insufficient.
Education includes the development of visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic perception, the differentiation of these perceptions, increasing attention and memory, sequential abilities, and the development of motor coordination skills.
In addition, increasing phonetic awareness, developing listening, speaking, reading, writing (language) skills, supporting the development of concepts and thinking processes are included in this process education.
Supporting or providing support for various perceptions. These remedial studies are given together with the training of academic skills.
Beyond all these, necessary studies should be carried out so that children spend more time in natural environments, education should be taken out of the four walls and a practice-oriented approach should be supported by educators.
What should families of children with specific learning disabilities do?
1. Accept the child's difficulty. Do not blame or judge the child for his/her failure, remembering that this is due to a structural, functional problem in the brain.
2. Reinforce the skills gained in education with various games and activities at home. Remember that these children learn much better by doing and experiencing something.
3. Inform the school and teachers about your child's difficulty and try to cooperate. Remember that the treatment of specific learning disabilities through education requires special expertise.
4. Encourage and support your child in the work he will do. yin You need to make him feel this in order for him to find himself valuable and self-confident.
5. You can make him be willing to achieve difficult tasks by starting with simple tasks that he can do.
6. You may need to study together with your child in the beginning. Accompany him, but do not do his homework instead.
7. If studying at home has started to wear down the parent-child relationship, you can get support for daily homework from a high school graduate or university student sister/brother who can help.
>8. Be an example for him to read. You can plan reading hours and have 10-minute sessions at the beginning.
9. Ask the child to read out loud. Be sure to listen while he reads.
10. Be determined and consistent about discipline and rules. Just because a child has a learning disability does not mean that he or she cannot learn the rules.
11. Educational treatment is a slowly progressing treatment and you can get results after a long time (at least 6 months).
Therefore, be patient. During the treatment, try to see the positive changes and share them with your child, instead of focusing on the things he still cannot do.
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