Jason P. of Princeton, New Jersey, was a kid who didn’t have to study to make straight As, which he did through the eighth grade. But as the work became more difficult in high school, as he was expected to work more independently, things started to unravel. He got a few Cs in the ninth grade. His parents wondered if he was hanging out with the wrong crowd. Drinking? Doing drugs? Just lazy?
“But it wasn’t like he was watching TV and playing video games,” according to his mom, Susan. “He was sitting in his room studying, but he couldn’t focus.”
Jason’s parents took him to a psychiatrist who, to their surprise, diagnosed their fifteen-year-old son with attention-deficit disorder, or ADD. Fifteen to 20 percent of the U.S. population has a learning difference such as ADD, dyslexia, or any number of processing difficulties. While most kids are diagnosed during the elementary years, some are so good at coping; the issues don’t become apparent until they’re teens.
Jason’s parents became detectives, trying to determine the best route through the educational, medical, and social system for their son. Because there are almost as many versions of learning differences as there are kids, parents play the most important role in solving this puzzle.
“I’ve come to believe you can have seven kids and each one of them learns differently,” Susan says.
True. Which is why all this is so tricky.
Clues to Look For
Dr. Jeffrey Green, a Princeton, New Jersey, psychiatrist, explains that a teen with a learning difference may characterize the teacher, the subject, or school in general as “boring” as a way of rationalizing why his performance is off. It can also mean that he isn’t getting the concepts.
Other clues your teen’s difficulties could stem from a learning difference:
- The problems start when the content at school gets more complex.
- The problems revolve around school, and everything else is going reasonably well.
- Your teen finds herself in the middle of a situation—the teacher yelling at her, for example—and has no idea what she did to get in that situation.
- It’s difficult for your child to keep a natural flow of conversation going, reflecting an inability to read a social scene.
- You see a pattern—waiting until the last minute to do things, leaving books at school, can’t manage his time, etc.
“These kids have always thought of themselves as smart,” Green says. “They initially had success in school and it’s not happening anymore. They don’t really put a lot of energy into studying and get grades back that don’t fit their perception of their intelligence.”
Instead of making assumptions, Green suggests, “let your teen explain it to you. Since learning different children often have trouble with “why?” questions, you might phrase it, “Tell me what’s going on with you at school. I’m concerned.” Kids who have purely LD or attention problems may be able to tell you, ‘I’m just having a hard time. I’m getting to the bottom of the page, and I don’t know what I’ve read.’”
The Next Step: Treatment
Start with a professional you trust: a pediatrician, adolescent psychiatrist/psychologist, or school counselor. Then, try not to fixate on labels.
Dr. David Clark, a chiropractic neurologist in Dallas, feels that the labels usually placed on LD kids aren’t specific enough. There are many different types of reading issues, just as there are different types of ADD, ADHD, and dyslexia (see sidebar). There is no one answer that works for every child. His exams and treatments involve different types of auditory and visual stimulation for the right and left-brain.
Some kids with LDs have visual processing problems. Dr. Harold Friedman, chief of Vision Therapy and Rehabilitation Services at SUNY College of Optometry in New York City, explains that children must be evaluated by an experienced optometrist using accepted standardized testing. If it is discovered that their learning difficulty relates to a visual processing dysfunction, an individual therapy program is designed to help the child compensate. Less mainstream options are also worth looking into: behavior modification therapy, chiropractic neurology, the interactive metronome, homeopathic remedies, nutritional changes, biofeedback, and neurofeedback.
