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The Nitzan Israel Association Suggests 11 Basic Tools for Coping with Learning Disabilities and/or ADHD
Taken from an article that appeared on the NFC website, January 2008
It's easy to get confused between learning disabilities and ADHD. The source of the confusion can be traced back to the beginning of the 20th century when learning disabilities and ADHD were included as part of a single category that was called MBD, Minor Brain Damage. Today, there's a distinction between the two disabilities:
Learning Disabilities are difficulties in acquiring basic learning skills, on a neurological basis. This excludes learning disabilities that are based on mental retardation, environmental retardation, or severe emotional problems. A student is defined as having learning disabilities if he has following two qualifications:
1. A significant and continual gap between academic accomplishments expected from him at his age is present (on condition that he exerts effort, receives acceptable instruction, learns without being in a language or cultural transition, and is physically and emotionally healthy).
2. There is a significant gap between the student's accomplishment and his intellectual talents, as have been examined in objective exams.
ADHD is a neuro-psychiatric syndrome characterized by disturbed concentration, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.
Research findings indicate the presence of a high frequency of comorbidity of the two disorders, between 15%-80%. The presence of both learning disabilities and ADHD is likely to impede learning performance and emotional and social functioning.
A child with behavior and concentration problems, experiences a world lacking quiet and organization, and characterized by confusion, disorder, and feelings of tiredness and being overwhelmed. He has difficulty behaving in the world in a way that leads to success and praise, and even when he understands what he needs to do, he has difficulty being persistent. In general, the gap between the intentions and the results disappoints him too. The daily behavior at home and at school is difficult and hampering and full of crises. The difficulties in concentration and in behavioral skills influence all areas of life: academically, behaviorally, and socially. Unfortunately, as a result of the failures, a child like this tends to decide that he's not successful.
There are cases in which children like this want to protect themselves from the feeling of failure, and they do this buy by means of concluding that their parents and the adults around them are the ones who don't understand.
In order to bring children like these to normal functioning, they need restructuring, guidance, and support of the management skills that surround them. Parents of these children must enter the role of the child's "advocate", to represent him in the educational setting and to demand response for the variety of his needs.
11 Basic Tools to Assist Children with Learning Disabilities and/or ADHD
1. Explain to the Child About His Problem
There is a direct and fundamental connection between the child's understanding of what's not normal with him to his ability and desire to cope with the difficulty. When the child understands what isn't working regularly with him, how his attention and control systems work, what helps him and what causes him to fail, then he will become more motivated and find an increased ability to cope with difficulties. A child like this will be ready to follow external routines and procedures which for him are like the "the bed of Sodom". Because of this, it's very important to explain to the child, on a level that's appropriate for his understanding, which specific system is disabled with him.
2. Supervise Rest, Sleep, and Diet
The processes of attention are directly influenced by situations of lack of sleep and unbalanced division of time between rest and being awake. Children who wear themselves out for hours in from of the computer and television, or children who go to sleep late, or sleep non-continuous sleep, have difficulty gathering mental energy for learning. Also, non-orderly eating patterns spread throughout the day, and the type of food, also have an influence on liveliness and awareness. Bringing in healthy and orderly life habits increases the ability to exert effort for an extended period of time and for focusing attention on different tasks.
3. Building Daily-Schedule Routines
For children with (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder - ADHD), the biological clock is different as are the times when they are more awake and aware. Most of the day the child must adjust himself to his surroundings, but sometimes it is possible to adjust the surroundings to the child. It's a good idea to do homework at the optimal time for the child. A short nap after school and afterwards homework allows the child to what is required of him before he gets tired and absorbs more stimuli from computer games and television.
4. Parental Presence /or Other Important Adult
The difficulty to enlist energy to learn increases when the child is alone. Repeated failures to gather up strength and persist until reaching the desired goal cause feelings of despair. In contrast, the presence of an important figure - stimulates, motivates, helps, and ensures that the results won't be disappointing and painful to the same extent. The child, in general, will want to learn to make the adult happy and to receive his appreciation and admiration. This helps to regulate the child's motivation and desire.
Many children insist that their parent sit next to them at least when they do their homework. With time, the adult can decrease his presence gradually. If in the beginning he sits next to the child and encourages, later he can move farther away from the child, but still to remain in the room, while doing something else, to glance on the child every couple of minutes and to encourage him, etc...
5. Secure and Loving Learning Environment
Only in a secure and loving environment can a child who suffers from learning disabilities and/or ADHD have a chance to deal with academic requirements and also with failures. In order for him to succeed to develop concentration and management skills, he needs an adult that he can turn to when he's having trouble, an adult that can assist him to regulate himself effectively. Minimizing corrections and criticism and decreasing reprimanding, these are the guarantee for maintaining a positive relationship and supportive routine.
6. Routine of Positive Reinforcements and Rewards
It's important that the positive reinforcements and rewards become a structured routine. Clear expectations from the child provide a structure that brings less frustrations and anger. The more the child feels physically and emotionally secure and stable, his doubts and fears will lessen.
In order that the positive reinforcements and rewards will be effective, they must be given in a consistent manner and close to the performance of clear tasks in which the achievement is clear to the child. The reward must be small, but attractive enough, immediate and nonnegotiable. Incentives that are too large only increase the inner conflict, the thrill, the overload, the anger and frustration, when the reward isn't given.
7. Use of the Child's Repertoire
When the child is attracted to certain familiar content, it's worthwhile to focus on a liked topic and to use it first. Gradually, it's possible to broaden and vary the repertoire and to insert different content.
8. Assistance in Organizing and Planning
It's possible to assist the child to get organized by means of teaching set, behavioral routines that are performed at set times according to a written list or a list accessed by memory. It's worthwhile to practice with the children building a set schedule of school and home assignments. Write down goals, plan a daily schedule and set a time slot for each task.
Children that succeed in getting used to writing in a daily calendar, preparing a list of tasks, and also remembering to follow after it, improve their ability to get organized significantly. Similarly, it's advisable to teach the children to rate their own performance on tasks, "Are they progressing as they should? How good did they fulfill the task?"
9. Assistance in Recruiting and Allocating Concentration
In conversation or ongoing activity when the stimuli alternate and are non-sequential, those with ADHD tend to enter within themselves or to be distracted by all extraneous stimulation. It's necessary to remind them every so often to pay attention to what's happening. Make sure they are involved in the activity or in the topic of conversation. When it seems like they're getting cut off, it's worthwhile to get their attention, to summarize in short the main points of the conversation and to involve them in the summary that's being done by asking questions or by performing tasks.
Children like these need tasks to be separated to short periods of time (for example, at home, setting a period of time for doing homework in each subject, and after finishing the task, leaving some time for resting). At school, it's advised to make sure these children sit close to the teacher, so that it will technically be easier to make sure every so often that they're paying attention.
10. Assimilation of Complicated Learning Material
New and complicated learning material should ideally be taught individually before it is presented to the class. The early exposure to the new ideas allows better integration in the group and the ability to follow after what's being learned.
Preparing the child early is especially important with regard to passages from the Tanach (Bible) or literature in which there are many new words, complicated sentences, and implicit ideas.
11. One-on-one Learning Situation
It's important to incorporate throughout the day situations in which the child learns alone with someone else, one-on-one, situations in which the instruction is adjusted for the child's pace and focuses on him. Individual learning improves understanding and helps relax from being overwhelmed by stimuli and by changing activities within the classroom setting as a whole. Where there isn't the opportunity to teach individually, the child can be referred to a computer or a worktable on the side where he can rest and work on something familiar.
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