Learning difficulties pose the biggest hindrance in the career development of an individual. Often when children do not perform well at school, the fact that there could be a learning issue gets camouflaged under the various complaints that the school teachers or the parents in general have.
The usual complaints from school are that the child is inattentive, irresponsible, naughty, disinterested in academics, has a carefree and a careless attitude, doesn’t complete class work/ homework and that parents don’t have time for their child etc. On the other hand, the parents blame the school for their child’s low performance. This tug of war continues till the child can no longer be just promoted to the next grade. By then, he/she may have developed a low self-esteem, manifested certain maladaptive behaviours and become discouraged by his/her lack of success.
It is then, it becomes imperative that such learning issues be addressed, identified and differentiated from learning difficulties/ disabilities such as
- Oral language (e.g., listening, speaking, understanding)
- Reading (e.g., decoding, phonetic knowledge, word recognition, comprehension)
- Written language (e.g., spelling and written expression)
- Mathematics (e.g., computation, problem solving)