Children's "Learning Equipment"

Is your child’s learning equipment up and running?

Over the summer holiday period most parents of children with learning difficulties delight in a significant decrease in anxiety levels in their children. Once school begins again however it does not take long for stress levels to rise. Getting ready for school in the morning can be an ordeal which affects the whole family. Strategies such as reluctance to get out of bed, sore tummies, frequent forgetfulness of normal daily routines and sometimes full blown meltdowns are common.

What is the reason for such behaviour? Most children with learning difficulties simply do not have the basic learning “equipment” needed to perform the academic tasks.Imagine how stressed you would feel to arrive at a job where you were required to perform tasks day in and day out without the necessary tools.

Most teachers pour time and expertise into developing a variety of teaching strategies and special programmes for these children, but for little or no lasting result because these children do not have the reception gear to receive and retain the learning.

What is really needed is an in depth assessment of the child’s learning “ equipment”.

Parents can start by taking their child for vision and hearing checks. If these tests are all normal then it is time to look more deeply.

Your child’s vision may be normal but they may not be processing what they see accurately. Reversals of letters and numbers may persist beyond the usual age ( 6-7 ) because they have an underlying spatial orientation immaturity.

Your child’s hearing may be normal but they may not be processing what they hear accurately because they have an underlying auditory processing difficulty. Poor auditory discrimination skills will result in the child frequently confusing similar sounding words, difficulty understanding and following instructions and in repetitive spelling mistakes because they cannot perceive the differences between similar sounds.

These are not issues which can be addressed by the teacher. These are underlying developmental immaturities which must be addressed by movement, vision or sound therapy to rebuild the child’s learning equipment. Once this has been done your child is then free to grow and learn to their full potential.

To access a developmental assessment of your child’s learning equipment Contact us.