How can learning difficulties affect development

Learning difficulties can affect a person massively. This includes their education, work life, relationships and general daily life. The challenges of a learning difficulty can be difficult to cope with. This confusion and lack of understanding can lead to feelings of frustration, anger, anxiety or stress. Sometimes extra support can help - like speaking to a counsellor.

This gives the person the opportunity to talk about how they feel and learn ways to cope. A counsellor can also help those involved understand that there are many methods of support available.

They can show you that you can live a very happy, successful life, despite the difficulty. Counselling at an early age can give the child the techniques needed to manage the learning difficulty, and cope with their feelings. Occupational therapy can be a helpful method for children who experience a difficulty with motor skills, while solution-focused counselling can be appropriate for older children.

Other techniques such as group and play therapy can help children develop social skills, which are often associated with learning difficulties. Specific learning difficulties also know as SpLDs is an umbrella term, used to cover a range of difficulties including:.

Dyslexia is a hidden disability and the most common of the SpLDs. Usually hereditary, the most visible signs of dyslexia are literacy problems. Dyslexia may mean a child mixes up letters within words, and words within sentences while reading.

They may also have difficulty spelling while writing. Dyslexia also affects the way information is processed and retrieved, meaning individuals may struggle with memory, perception of time, organisation and sequencing.

Dyspraxia, also known as developmental coordination disorder DCD is a relatively common disorder. The difficulties presented by DCD can vary between individuals. They may change over time, depending on their daily lives, and persist into adulthood.

This makes the functioning of everyday life difficult, such as in education and employment. Children with DCD may experience difficulties in educational and recreational activities, such as self-care, writing, typing and riding a bike.

Often, these continue into adulthood, as well as having difficulty learning new skills, like driving a car and DIY tasks. Dyscalculia is difficulty understanding numbers and symbols. These disparate definitions do agree on certain factors:. Experts estimate that 6 to 10 percent of the school-aged population in the United States is learning disabled. The Foundation for Children With Learning Disabilities estimates that there are 6 million adults with learning disabilities as well.

Little is currently known about the causes of learning disabilities. However, some general observations can be made:. Children with learning disabilities exhibit a wide range of symptoms. These include problems with reading, mathematics, comprehension, writing, spoken language, or reasoning abilities. Hyperactivity, inattention and perceptual coordination may also be associated with learning disabilities but are not learning disabilities themselves.

Learning disabilities typically affect five general areas:. Some of these symptoms may indicate dyslexia. For more information go to About Dyslexia. Some of these symptoms may indicate attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Federal law requires that public school districts provide special education and related services to children who need them. Simultaneously, the parent should take the child to the family pediatrician for a complete physical examination.

The child should be examined for correctable problems e. Children with Down syndrome show specific delays in learning to use spoken language relative to their non-verbal understanding. Almost every child will have expressive language that is delayed relative to their language comprehension. The children experience two types of expressive difficulty - delay in mastering sentence structures and grammar, and specific difficulties in developing clear speech production.

The gap between the children's understanding and their ability to express themselves is a cause of much frustration and can sometimes lead to behaviour problems. It can also result in the children's cognitive abilities being underestimated. Language delay also leads to cognitive delay as much human learning is through language and language is internalised for thinking, remembering and self-organisation.

Most children with Down syndrome struggle with basic number skills and their number skills are typically some 2 years behind their reading skills. There is a need for more research into the reasons for this. Currently, the best available advice is to draw on what is known about the children's learning strengths and to use maths teaching systems that make full use of visual supports to teach number concepts.

Short-term memory is the immediate memory system which holds information 'in mind' for short periods of time and supports all learning and cognitive activity. It has separate components specialised for processing visual or verbal information. The ability of children with Down syndrome to hold and process verbal information is not as good as their ability to hold and process visual information.

These verbal short-term memory problems make it more difficult to learn new words and sentences.