How To Deal With Learning Difficulties In Children
While parents are waiting for their child to be born, they usually have certain expectations about the child’s appearance, personality, abilities, and so on. But if the child is born with a disability, they must learn to face this new reality. Therefore, we have prepared the following article on how to deal with a child’s learning difficulties.
Extra homeschooling in addition to regular schooling can be a way to help children with learning disabilities grow and mature and give them the best start in life. It is important to treat them fairly and take into account their limitations. However, one should not go to the other extreme and overprotect them.
What do learning difficulties mean?
A learning difficulty is characterized by the presence of a significantly lower level of development than expected for the person’s chronological age, in the following two areas:
- Intellectual ability
- Adaptive behavior
In addition, these children usually show the following symptoms:
- Problems with gross and fine motor skills
- Muscle hypotension (commonly known as floppy baby syndrome )
- Difficulty relating to one’s physical environment
- Problems in establishing social and communicative interactions
- Difficulties in developing their independence and autonomy
How to deal with a child’s learning difficulties
Getting used to the fact that you have a child with learning difficulties is often very complicated. You can even go through a kind of grief. Therefore, in these cases, you need to have specialists around you who will help you adapt.
This is useful for both the child and the parents because they all need advice to adjust to the situation.
It is also important to really understand the diagnosis and you should contact specialists and associations to get a source of support. In this way, the parents can:
- Learn observation and intervention strategies
- Acquire abilities in stimulation and parenting
- Develop skills to understand and interpret the child’s behavior
- Get the necessary information about learning difficulties
- Get in touch with other families who are in the same situation
Parents will need all this knowledge and help so that their children can develop properly in all aspects of their lives and deal with their learning difficulties in the best way. But at the same time , parents should not be overly protective of their children, nor should they underestimate their abilities.
Help for parents
Parents should also ask for advice on their own relationship. It is quite common for the relationship to deteriorate due to the constant stress, conflicts and disagreements that arise while dealing with the child. There is also a risk that one or both parents will feel overwhelmed by the situation.
In addition to this, one must understand how to deal with friends and relatives (grandparents, aunts, aunts, uncles, uncles, cousins, etc.). They must also understand the situation as well as the child’s behavior.
Disability: Another way
The birth of a child always means a time of change in a person’s life. This is the point where the path to parenthood begins. But if the child has some form of learning difficulty, it can take the parents to bed, and then the path will be completely different than the one they expected. A path along which they need to respond to the child’s specific needs.
This is why mothers and fathers of children with learning disabilities need guidance to improve their children’s quality of life, as well as their own and their family’s.
Finally, it is worth mentioning Pablo Pineda, a teacher, conference lecturer and actor, and the first European with Down syndrome to take a university degree. He has proven to be a perfect example of how to overcome learning difficulties.
This quote should be memorized by all mothers and fathers of children with learning disabilities. It helps them to trust their children’s qualities and abilities and gives the children the opportunity to achieve amazing things in their lives.
