Troubled Teens or Learning Different?

“I have yet to find a child, in all my years of working with them, that can’t learn,” says Dr. Carole Lampert Barrish, a New York educational psychologist. “We haven’t always unlocked the materials that they have to learn with, but the challenge is really ours.”

Parents of LD teens have a lot of sleuth work to do. Your child’s strengths, weaknesses, struggles, successes, treatments, and labels are all pieces of the puzzle you and your teen are putting together. As more pieces come into place, the big picture becomes easier to see. But it’s those details and your advocacy that bring it all together.

Common Learning Differences

• All these learning differences are neurologically based; meaning something in the brain isn’t functioning at its highest level. Treatments try to change that, whether through medication or other therapies.
• Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Inability to pay attention, focus. ADHD kids are often impulsive, hyperactive, and act inappropriately for their age.
• Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD): The lack of focus and attention without the hyperactivity.
• Auditory Processing Disorder (APD): Inability to process and interpret spoken words because the ear and brain aren’t connecting properly.
• Decoding: Taking the written word and translating it into speech.
• Dysgraphia: A processing disorder involving the motor movements needed to write letters or numbers, making it difficult to read, write, and speak.
• Dyslexia: A processing disorder making it difficult to read, write, and speak.

Source: LDonline.org

Strategies for LD Teens

• Help them be independent. Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic offers textbooks that let kids read along while they listen to someone else reading through a CD or MP3 player. Hearing the words spoken aloud can make a big difference in comprehension.
• Help set the course for organization. A big desk calendar can help your teen plot down on paper each step between the assignment of a research paper and its due date. Write in pencil and factor in a catch-up day.
• Teach teens the details of their learning difference. Understanding and being able to explain it will teach them to ask for the help they need.