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The Learning-Disabled Person
by A. Ross, M.Ed.
When a child has a learning disability, it is a disability!
He is not coping with learning difficulties; he has a
disability like any other disability. He can be helped
considerably, but he will grow up with the disability. If a
child is born with a physical handicap, we treat it as soon
as possible, either with surgery and/or with various
therapies, and come to terms with the fact that he may have a
slight or even sever, limitation. If a child is born with
Downs Syndrome, or autism, however difficult the diagnosis is
for the parents, they will try to help him reach his
potential and come to accept him as he is.
We are discussing the `normal' bright intelligent child,
interested in everything, who starts school. The teacher or
rebbe loves him, the child is full of confidence and the
parents see a bright future before him. Strangely, it is
often the parents rather than the teacher who notice that he
does not know the letters of the alef beis. Teacher
tells them not to worry, that many children are not quite
ready to learn to read at an early age. This is perfectly
true, and the parents wait... and wait.
By the time the child is seven, the parents are really
concerned, and they take him to be assessed. If there are any
vision problems, or hearing problems, these will be attended
to, and in most cases, whether or not there was a problem,
the child will learn to read.
Now we come to the real issue. Some of these children,
however well they have been taught, by the most expert
teachers with years of experience, still read haltingly and
with mistakes. Or their writing and spelling remain
appalling. These children have a real disability, and the
parents and teachers have to come to terms with it as soon as
possible. Praise them for what they can do and build
their self esteem. Some of these children are highly
intelligent, and if they are told, "Of course you know it. If
only you tried harder, you would succeed," they will give up
altogether. However hard they try, they will read and /or
write with mistakes.
During the past five or six years, sophisticated scans have
shown that these people have a different brain formation than
`normal' people. The more intelligent the disabled child is,
the better he will be able to compensate and to cover up,
especially during the first few years of school. He will
learn much of the material by heart, and will make
intelligent guesses about the rest. However, in the same way
that a color blind person cannot learn certain colors, this
person cannot learn all things, so it is vital not to keep
harping on his disability. He is well aware of it himself!
A really intelligent boy can go through yeshiva without
anyone discovering his disability. His chavrusa will
do all the reading, he might borrow notes from other boys,
and he has a phenomenal memory which compensates for his
reading difficulties. Let me stress; he is not unable to
read. He understands what is before him, only he cannot read
out loud without making mistakes. Teachers with integrity do
occasionally tell the parents that they have done the best
they can, and will not be able to improve on the situation.
They should accept the fact that he only reads 95% correctly,
not 100%.
There might be an intelligent girl who has semantic /
pragmatic difficulties. She does not understand body
language, facial expressions or sarcasm (in the same way as
little children do not understand sarcasm, and who only take
words at their face value). Perhaps therapists have tried to
help her, or maybe the parents did not even notice anything
unusual; it is usually strangers who observe that there is
something not quite right, something strange. She, too, is
learning disabled.
None of these disabilities are perceptible to an outsider.
The girl with semantic / pragmatic disorder may seem a little
strange to others, but not if she is the shy type, and it
will only become obvious once she is engaged or married, and
has frequent contact with the in-laws.
So what happens to these adults who get married? The wife
discovers to her dismay that her husband cannot write. If she
is sensible, she will take it as a fact, and appreciate and
love him for all the things he can do. A marriage guidance
counselor told me that these things are only brought up in
conversation after all the other problems are aired. When a
couple appreciate and love each other, they will not mind
compensating for the partner's difficulties. I personally
have seen a married man glance surreptitiously at a small
scrap of paper which he withdrew from his pocket, when he
wrote out his full name. He is a talmid chochom, yet
he can never write a note to his sons' rebbes. When his sons
learn to read, he leaves the practice to his wife. The older
ones now learn mishnayos and gemora and he
learns with them, while they are none the wiser about his
disability.
Someone who cannot add, and has difficulty with numbers in
school, has a learning difficulty, not a disability. He will
get low marks in any exam, but the problem is not likely to
trouble him as an adult. Nor will it decrease his self
esteem, unless the teacher decides that he is useless in all
subjects and (unfortunately, as a rare teacher does,) makes
insulting comments to him on a regular basis.
Dyslexic children and also dysgraphic ones, know full well
that they cannot read or write. Once they have been well
taught, they will not realize that they are making mistakes
unless someone tells them. Teachers and parents who
encourage, and do not insist on such a child reading aloud,
or being the class chazan, may not be building his
self esteem, but at least they will not be decreasing it. The
child will not become a rebellious teenage girl, or a dropout
from yeshiva. Once again, accept the child, who is one of the
three percent in every population, for what he is.
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