My child is struggling 
Now that my child has 
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Sheldon Horowitz: This is such an important question. If you remember I mentioned a Roper survey that was done in 2010 in an earlier podcast. What this survey revealed was that parents are prone, not all parents, but some parents are prone to waiting as long as an entire year even when they suspect that their child is struggling in school before initiating a request for help. And some educators and parents, too, even physicians are prone to say things like, “Well, let’s just wait and see how he or she develops over the next few months,” suggesting that the problems of paying attention, learning the foundational skills in reading and math, and even fitting in socially with peers might be something that the child will outgrow. My best advice is “do not wait.” And take a look at NCLD’s LD checklist, which is free to view and download from the LD.org website. Become familiar with the signs that might place a child at risk for LD beginning as early as the pre-school years and extending right up through adolescence and adulthood. And if one of the players -- either a parent or an educator or the child him or herself -- is pushing back and denying that there’s any reason for concern, my advice is not to allow everyone to step back but rather to invite discussions, meet informally to share information, define some expectations that each person might have, collect some information both screening, diagnostic information, even informal work samples, and come up with a plan for how to ensure that the child continues to make progress.
Karen Golembeski: Thank you. Our final question is an interesting one to me. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this topic. A teacher asked about the biology of learning disabilities. Please help us all gain a better understanding of the brain structure and function as it relates to learning disabilities.
Sheldon Horowitz: The brain is an incredibly complex and very vulnerable organ and there’s no question that any medical insult to the brain, any changes in the brain, can cause problems that result in compromised learning. Many decades ago scientists discovered that in some instances the brain had an almost remarkable capacity to recover from what was thought to be irreversible and even traumatic injury. So, for example, a young child who had by virtue of her having a fast-growing tumor in her brain had to have the left side of her brain removed. This child was still able to develop language. Not perfect but certainly well-developed enough to allow her to enjoy learning in school and social interactions with her peers. The brain’s ability to re-distribute functions once thought to be controlled only by one part, one hemisphere, and then have them be assumed by other parts of the brain convinced researchers that the brain was not a hard-wired control center for learning and emotion but rather a sort of living machine that was changeable, that was flexible, that was malleable, meaning that it could change and adapt to meet the demands of the day. The term that we use for this is plasticity, or recovery of function.
We also know that there are certain points in the course of development when learning seems to be easier for the brain. So, for example, during very early infancy it seems that the brain is much more likely to take in the fine distinctions needed to learn speech sounds of a particular language. And we also know that windows of opportunity for brain development open and close repeatedly throughout the course of development, sometimes as a result of just normal physical growth and maturity, sometimes because of some illness that results in changes in brain chemistry, sometimes due to disease, and sometimes just for reasons that are unexplained.
Parents and educators need the best information they can get about different types of brain-based disorders that children may have acquired for any number of causes and the kinds of teaching approaches that have been proven effective to help them grow into successful, independent learners.
The bottom line, the presumption should be that these children -- in fact, all children -- can learn. This especially true for children with complicated medical histories who have co-occurring learning disabilities.
Karen Golembeski: Dr. Horowitz, thank you so much for giving us your time today. If you’d like to learn more about learning disabilities, please access the other two podcasts in this series with the focus on Learning Disabilities Basics, and Sorting Facts from Fiction. We appreciate you joining us today. Thank you.
The podcasts for this series and the Student Success Collaborative are generously funded by the Cisco Systems Foundation. The Student Success Collaborative consists of partners City Year, Silicon Valley Education Foundation, Teachers without Borders, One Global Economy, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities.
