Coping with Your Child's LD Diagnosis
Tips for Parents on:
Coping with Reactions to Diagnosis
Your initial reaction may initially be one of relief, but don't be surprised if you find yourself on an emotional roller-coaster in the months or years to follow. The process you may experience may include initial shock, denial, blame, envy, fear, anger, guilt and depression before you are able to accept the fact that your child has a learning disability.
Some initial steps to take:
- Get support: talk to professionals, educators & other parents with similar difficulties
- Get information: from books, the internet, professionals or your local community provider
- Get selective: once you have gathered sufficient information, exercise your judgement in making informed choices on therapy alternatives or issues applicable to your child and situation. As parent, you will be in best position to understand strategies that would work best.
The more informed you are, the more comfortable you will be sharing your knowledge with family members and friends. This acceptance or comfort level will help you speak up for your child in all settings school, social and family and will eventually have a direct bearing on your child's acceptance of the learning disability and his ability to be his own advocate.
You may be surprised to discover how helpful and supportive you can be to others who may be a little further behind you on the journey.
Documentation Tips
Keeping good records goes a long way in helping track your child's learning and progress. Information that could go into a binder or folder, in different coloured sections, include:
- Medical records since birth
- School reports and feeback from teachers, from preschool up
- Professional/Developmental Assessments
- Personal/parent observations and reflections
- Child's writing, artwork and other personal work at different stages of development
- Special Needs Resources on Support Groups or Informational sheets
Some parents may also find it useful to keep a journal on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to track progress against learning goals set with the child. The journal may contain feedback from informal feedback from teachers, other caregivers and the child himself. Such information would be useful for reflection and in helping make informed choices about strategies and management of issues at hand. It may also be useful to keep a record of out of routine events and how these affected the child emotionally, to better help manage behaviour and reactions going forward.
Schedules & Homework
Many children who have learning disabilities have to work so hard at school to achieve passing grades. A nurturing home environment, with firm guidelines on simple homework routines goes a long way in reinforcing learning:
- Set aside a fixed time and place for learning at home, routine can help settle a child
- Set up reasonable timelines and keep worktime free of interruptions/phonecalls
- Plan how to approach homework and maintain patience
- Work on strategies which suit your child's learning styles (eg. reading aloud chapters, using visual diagrams etc)
- Give lots of encouragement and praise, particularly when the task is completed independently
Learned helplessness can be a problem for the child with learning disabilities. Parents may have to make special efforts to empower the child to talk to teachers about frustrations and work out solutions by role playing with him to provide him with the confidence needed to approach the teacher. Stay in touch with teachers about homework expectations so that you can feel confident that your child has enough work to challenge him but not to overwhelm him.
Emphasize not just the academics, build on the child's strengths outside the classroom environment. Children with learning disabilities may feel frustration that they are unable to meet their parents' expectations academically.
Reinforcing the child's talents through activities he enjoys (e.g., ballet, music, sports, gymnastics, drama, art) takes this pressure off and help build self esteem, which could positively affect the child's performance overall.
Self Esteem & Stress
Low self-esteem can be a heavy burden for the child with learning disabilities. If he's being rejected by peers, experiencing failure at school and constantly scolded for being late, lazy or messy, he will have a very difficult time feeling good about himself. Protect your child from depression by learning and using esteem-building strategies in your daily interactions.
Provide your child with lessons in something that interests him, such as swimming or art. Give him plenty of opportunities to be in groups with other children. Pair him up with younger buddies, either through your neighbourhood or the school, to whom he can teach or share his special skill.
Make sure you have a cozy, "close time" with him each day, a time when he can tell you how his day went and when you can coach him on ways to work things out. Encourage him to vent his feelings with you so that you know what he's thinking. Two way communication between parents, children and siblings are healthy, rewarding and fulfilling to family life.
Adapted using information from Learning Disabilities Association of Canada (LDAC) ©Copyright 2000
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