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Once you get over the shock of hearing that your child, who otherwise seems bright and intelligent, is learning disabled, you may wish to consider taking the following steps:
- Ask the person who delivered the diagnosis (teacher, counsellor, principal) to identify the specific disability by name.
- Ask for a letter from the person who diagnosed the child with both a professional and a non-professional explanation of the specific disability.
- Take the letter and the diagnosed child to the family doctor. Ask the family doctor for a referral to a specialist in the field -- other than the person who wrote the letter -- who can give you a second opinion.
- If the second specialist agrees with the first diagnosis, ask him/her to prescribe a remedy or treatment for the specific disability.
- If the specialist does not agree with the original diagnosis, ask what he/she would do next if this was his/her child.
- Insist that the impairment is remedied, that the necessary changes are made to deal with a disability, or that a handicapped student is given the proper instruction and/or tools to mitigate the handicap.
(Blindness is not often remedial, but the blind student can receive a quality education through the use of braille and other necessary lesson material and instruction. Students with visual impairment may need glasses, specific lighting needs, material to obscure the reflection off white paper, and so on. The student who has a handicap learning to read by memorization, needs focused phonetic instruction, as well as memorization enhancing exercises. Students with auditory deficiency may need more written lesson material, as well as the oral instruction. They may also need different surroundings adapted for their particular needs. Students who have memory recall deficiency may require specific consideration by the instructor to permit them to have more time to respond to a question as well as exercises to help them develop more efficient memory recall.)
Once armed with the facts (the name of the specific disability), and while waiting for the next round of doctors' appointments, do your own research. Find general information, including some of the terminology (jargon), on the internet. The World Health Organization(14) and the National Institutes of Health(15) are two good places to start. Don't rely only on this information because, as was pointed out earlier, a definition or a description used today may be changed by tomorrow. An entire industry has grown up around learning disabilities in only a few years.
Call a university library and ask the librarian to recommend a few books, which provides information about the research done on a particular disability. The most accurate information is usually found closest to the original source.
Above all, consider the possibility of exhausting all other options before medicating the child's symptoms. Just because an active child is made to sit still, does not mean the child will learn the material that is being presented in the way it is being presented.
If your child is already medicated, do not stop the medication without consulting the doctor who prescribed it and the pharmacist who supplied it. Meantime, consider exploring the possibility that something else can be done to give your child the instruction and the tools he/she needs for a quality education. Get the facts by retracing the steps that culminated in your child being diagnosed and prescribed a medication. Ask for a second medical and/or psychological opinion. Ask about options, for remdial help or private tutoring, and so on. Insist that your child be given every opportunity for a quality education without chemical (drug) intervention.
Look for possibilities and suggestions from other parents who have found themselves in similar circumstances. [Next]
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