Questions to Ask About Controversial Treatments for LD

Some people will believe just about anything... and that’s not a criticism, it’s just human nature. And parents of children who struggle with learning are no exception. In fact, they are likely to be more vulnerable to believing what they hear about promising treatments for learning disabilities (LD) because of the enormous pressure they feel to make the right decisions about how best to help their children succeed.

Making good decisions about trying (and often investing in) a particular therapy for your child starts with asking a few key questions about the therapy or approach being considered:

• Does the approach sound familiar? Is it easy to understand and does it seem to make practical sense?
• Do I believe what others tell me because they sound like they know more than I do?
• Am I prone to try a particular treatment because the description includes scientific-sounding words, impressive looking charts and graphs, or pictures of the brain?
• Am I not sure what I think but I feel that doing something is better than doing nothing?
• Is making a decision to go with this treatment helping me stay calm and helping to manage my insecurities and emotions about what is best for my child?

Reflecting on these questions is an important first step to helping make careful, informed decisions about whether a particular controversial, alternative or complementary therapy is worth introducing to your child. Before diving into the specific types of questions you should be asking yourself and others about a particular treatment, also consider that:

• Good science is cumulative, meaning that even as a non-expert you should be able to discover lots of information from different sources about a particular treatment approach. Make it your business to understand what the “field” is saying about what works and what is not yet proven to be effective.
• Just because it was published in a journal doesn’t mean that it is true, or that it will work for your child. Look for characteristics in the program materials or descriptions of the subjects in studies that evaluated effectiveness, and see whether they seem to match those of your child.
• Trust your instincts. If it sounds too easy or too good to be true, it probably is!

Asking Good Questions About LD Therapies and TreatmentsHere are some important questions to ask yourself and the treatment provider, and why they are important to ask:

What is this therapy intended to do and how will I know it is working? If you don’t know what it is supposed to do, how will you know it was successful? Your child’s improvement might be attributable to the extra attention he is getting and have nothing to do with the therapy itself.

WHAT TO ASK	WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO ASK
Does this therapy work directly on an area of weakness or does it focus on other areas that will then have a positive impact on learning?	“Training the brain” is like saying “feeding the body” or “watering the plant.” Therapies that offer practice and focus on particular subsets of skills or cognitive abilities cannot promise that these experiences will result in better reading, spelling writing, etc.
How long (days, weeks, months, years) will my child have to be in treatment for it to work, how long is each session, and how will I know when to stop?	Some programs promise radical improvement in a short period of time while others are less specific about the length of time that a child is likely to need to engage in treatment before realizing results. Think about it this way: LD is lifelong, and while children can (and do) develop skills and become adept at using accommodation that help them work around their challenges, their LD does not go away. When will a treatment no longer provide real benefit? Who will make that decision? What criteria will the decision be based on (child is bored, cost is prohibitive, not enough time given other priorities)?
How much will this therapy cost?	Many (if not most) controversial therapies are not covered by insurance, nor are they funded or reimbursed through school districts. You would never buy a car or a house with an open-ended payment plan that had no terms and no end date. Be an informed consumer, know the ongoing costs of your investment, and like any good business, stay in tuned to your “return on investment,” knowing when to begin, intensify or pull back, and when to stop.
How does the premise of this therapy explain why my child has not made progress so far and why will this program, as compared to other more conventional approaches, have better results?	If the underlying description of the therapy sounds too good to be true, proceed with caution. It may be that certain targeted interventions can be introduced by the school or begun at home (at no cost). Look “inside the box” before expanding your search.
Has the effectiveness of this program been tested by independent scientists (including educators) who have no investment in this vs. another program that purports to accomplish the same results?	This is not easy for most parents to do. “Studies have shown…” doesn’t mean that the studies were done by disinterested parties, that a random sample of students was selected for these investigations, that reported progress was statistically significant, or that reported benefit was sustained over time. Look online for impartial opinions and ask qualified professionals for help figuring this out.
Are the claims made about this therapy “too good to be true?”	If the results are so powerful, why aren’t more parents, professionals and school systems using it? And why hasn’t the scientific community studied it and made public announcements about its efficacy?
Have other parents tried this approach and decided not to continue?	It is often hard to gather information about what did not work and why a particular intervention failed to deliver benefits as promised. But keep looking and asking. Testimonial success stories are great for business but not for science. Anecdotal information can lead scientists to ask different types of questions and test different hypotheses about what does and does not stand up to rigorous investigation. But if its scientific evidence you want, don’t look for it in feel-good stories and advertisements.

For more information to help you evaluate possible treatments for your child, visit NCLD’s Cures for LD? Consumer Beware!