Dei'ah veDibur - Information & Insight
  

A Window into the Chareidi World

20 Elul 5763 - September 17, 2003 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
NEWS

OPINION
& COMMENT

OBSERVATIONS

HOME
& FAMILY

IN-DEPTH
FEATURES

VAAD HORABBONIM HAOLAMI LEINYONEI GIYUR

TOPICS IN THE NEWS

HOMEPAGE

 

Produced and housed by
Shema Yisrael Torah Network
Shema Yisrael Torah Network

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home and Family


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.

 

All material on this site is copyrighted and its use is restricted.
Click here for conditions of use.