LEARNING DIFFICULTIES
Learning difficulties among children are quite common and also very complex to understand and very hard to pinpoint, therefore, make it difficult to offer children the needed clinical or professional help.
Children are always at the receiving end because of the fact that these learning difficulties with absolutely no understanding of its symptoms by both the parents and teachers tend to blame the children assuming, that they represent behavioral or academic problems.
Learning difficulties are categorized as
1. Input problems
2. Processing problems
3. Output problems.
Input problems interfere with getting information into the child’s brain – that is a problem with his hearing or vision
Processing problems come in the way when the child tries to perceive, organize and store information after it has entered his brain.
Output problems show up in the way the child expresses information – the problems with speaking and writing.
Input problems: Visual: Parents are not usually aware that children often suffer an inability to focus clearly.
A child who is ‘nearsighted’ could see things near to his face but objects in the distance he may see them blurry. The truth here is the child, perhaps, is not aware that he has an issue with his vision.
The child who is ‘nearsighted’ finds it a problem in the classroom not able to see the details on the blackboard. If the class-teacher does all the work standing near the blackboard, he may have trouble understanding the lessons. Parents should always check regularly if the child is suffering from any vision problems.
Hearing problems: Here we are not considering deaf or not deaf but besides there are several hearing problems a child encounters in a classroom. Some children are comfortable even the loudness is confusing but for some, they only can focus if they could find order in the classroom. With so many background noises, when the classroom is not properly maintained the child may find it very difficult to follow what a teacher is teaching. Most of the children prefer silent classrooms and equally quiet surrounding to concentrate on their classroom work.
Attention problems: In a classroom, the child has to simultaneously work with his eyes and his brain. When they are reading or listening to they usually find a thousand distractions that divert their attention. Some children have the ability to filter these distractions and focus on work at hand but for some children, this filtering system works little slowly and they may find it difficult in hearing and concentrating during the classroom tasks. This phenomenon is what the child psychologists term as attention deficit disorder (ADD).
Memory Problems: Children who don’t practice memorization techniques will be less skilled in memory tasks. Children often struggle with the fundamentals that must be memorized – the additions, the multiplications tables. To a large extent English vocabulary has to be memorized too: so a child with low memory skills has a limited memory that allows poor reading abilities in a child. Children memorize things they find interesting: so parents and teachers need to introduce interesting memory-based activities in the classroom.
The child normally doesn’t know or recognize that he is having a sort of academic problem. If he doesn’t do well in the school, naturally he will be devastated. And the child doesn’t have a clue or any remedial measure to improve his scores in the class. At this juncture, the child will need a lot of reassurance, support, and unconditional love from his parents.