Many of you have watched Aamir Khan's movie "Taare Zameen Par (Every Child Is Special)", which is translated into Turkish as Stars on the Earth (Every Child Is Special). In the movie, Ishaan, an 8-year-old boy who has problems perceiving and learning letters and numbers, is treated as a lazy and mentally retarded child by his environment and family. Everyone makes fun of him and humiliates him. He is a child who is unsuccessful in his classes and inconsistent in most of his work. Even though he was in the 3rd grade, he could not learn to read and write. As a result of this academic and social failure, he becomes introverted and depressed. Ishaan, formerly known as "dyslexia" and now known as "Specific Learning Disorder" where all these disorders are gathered under one roof, is actually a child who does not have mental retardation but only has difficulty in learning to read letters. His life changed when he met the teacher who understood his illness and tried to get him treated. The movie ends beautifully with the child discovering himself and his shortcomings and making up for these shortcomings. It is a work that I can definitely recommend to those who have not watched the movie, which has a good place in the IMDB rankings.
Indeed, the story of children with specific learning disabilities is very similar to Ishaan. Although some children do not show their intelligence deficits in the first few years of school, they can cope with this disorder at most until the 5th grade (10th year). Immediately afterwards, the child struggled with the difficulty of reading, understanding numbers and explaining what he understood; In addition to failure in school and social life, it gets worse with complaints such as depressive mood, conduct disorder, school refusal, and low self-esteem. Lucky children first reach the guidance counselor at school, then the child and adolescent psychiatrist, and then begin to gain what they lost thanks to the individual education programs prepared. The unlucky ones, on the other hand, are exposed to unfair stigmas such as being retarded (!), or not good at studying (!), and try to withdraw from school at an early age and live their lives on their own. It is a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by the interaction of hereditary and environmental factors that affects the ability to process information. . This disorder is characterized by persistent difficulty learning academic skills, such as reading, written expression, or mathematics, that begin in early childhood and are not compatible with the child's general intellectual abilities. Even if children with specific learning disorders are successful than their other friends; They often have difficulty reaching the level of their peers in certain academic subjects. Disorders collected under the umbrella of specific learning disorders are examined under three headings; reading disorder, mathematics disorder, written expression disorder. These disorders may be found individually or together in the child. Compared to the general population, the risk of reading disorder in first-degree relatives is increased 4-8 times and the risk of mathematics disorder is approximately 5-10 times increased. Specific learning disability occurs 2-3 times more frequently in boys than in girls. Adolescents with specific learning disorders are at least 1.5 times more likely to drop out of school than normal.
When it comes to the treatment of the disease, the most important step is diagnosis. Because, thanks to the diagnoses made in the early stages, the child is directed to special education. Thanks to this one-to-one education, children will close their gaps in the relevant subject, will never encounter irreversible problems, and will continue to learn throughout their lives like their other peers.
See you next week, stay safe…
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