Written by: Murugalakshmi Thirumalai, USA
The way we grew up during our child-hood and the way today’s children are growing are not the same. The various factors involved in child rearing like: house, weather, technology, food and availability of people have changed. Everything have changed to, so called better living .
But what is really happening is, as we advance scientifically we are experiencing more and more challenges in child development. Scientist are still pondering what could be the reason for so many child development issues that we are facing today. They are weighing so many factors from life style changes, food habits, hereditary, etc. But none of them led to any fruitful findings.
Children develop at normal pace will achieve age appropriate growths at the right time or sometimes earlier than expected. But when we consider children who do not reach those milestones on time, they can be grouped under two different categories. They are as follows:
Children who develop slowly
Children who are At-Risk of developing a disability.
When a child is experiencing developmental delays, he/she may not be reaching age appropriate milestones. One of the early yellow flag rises when a child is not reaching the age appropriate mile stones repeatedly.
The only way to distinguish a slow development from At-Risk is through proactive observation. The very first step that a parent could do is to observe carefully child’s development and if they feel there is repeated developmental delay, then it should be communicated to the child’s paediatrician and consequently get appropriate help from appropriate specials like psychologist, Occupational therapist or early intervention specialist, if needed. This should be done only by professionals who are trained to evaluate various disabilities and disorders. This evaluation will involve combination of one on one consultation, observation report from family members, teachers or other related adults involved in that child’s life.
Early (yellow) signals for ages 0-3. A child who fails to achieve the following age appropriate mile stone repeatedly may fall under “At-Risk” group:Physical: Reaching, Rolling, Crawling and Walking.
Cognitive: Thinking, Learning, solving problem.
Communication: Talking, Listening, Understanding. Social and Emotional: Playing, Feeling secure and happy.
Self Help: Eating, Dressing. A child At -Risk of developing a disability in the future should be intervened at the early stage to bridge the gap in development. Early intervention not only saves the child from unnecessary stress but also provides alternate ways to develop the skills that the child is lagging. Also early intervention helps parents to under-stand their child better and provide necessary help to the child.
Early Red Signal for school age children. The most prominent sign for onset of disability is there will be a distinctive and unexplained gap between performance and age appropriate achievement at school. Learning disability is different from intellectual inability, sensory impairment and autism spectrum disorder. Students with learning disability struggle to acquire the skills needed for their academic performance. Learning disability is lifelong, that why it’s crucial to identify as early as possible and proper supportive actions should be provided to promote learning by adopting alternate ways. The sooner the alternate course of action is taken it’s better for the child, as the goal here is to bridge the gap between the performance and achievement not only academically but also socially .
Sometimes Learning Disability(LD) will be found along with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) but they are not the same. LD may affect a per-son’s ability in Listening, Speaking, Read-ing, Writing, Spelling, Reasoning and Mathematics. Getting professional help to identify, evaluate and provide necessary help that the child needs will help the parents to be well informed and help their child get closer to their dreams.
Author’s Insight: Many parents and students has the question why do we need to label a person with their disability? We have common core instruction method and each child learns differently, if we could individualise instruction according to individual child’s need there won’t be any need for labelling, but the only way to help a child with LD is to provide him with alternate course of instruction that would help him understand and learn.
Reference: “Pink and red flags: Identifying children at risk” presented by Meg Drake M.A in learning disability, Canada, New Jersey Montessori association corporation, March 2011-2012. National center for Learning Disability, http://www.ncld.org
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