Smart Kids with Learning Difficulties
I want to recommend a book to any parent dealing with children with learning disabilities. Smart Kids with Learning Difficulties is an easy read which has a lot of practical advice on managing a struggling child’s education.
I really liked the charts at the center of the book. These materials give practical advice on how to help children struggling with specific areas such as memory, writing, organization, reading, social/emotional issues and others.
The book also has good checklists for parents and teachers to use in attempting to discern the individual strengths and struggles of the learner.
The legal section is basic and provides a good base for parents to begin to delve into the world of IDEA, IEP’s and 504’s.
The book really hit home for me. I was privileged to attend a great school and to attend Gifted and Talented classes for most of my elementary years. These classes were the highlight of my classroom experience. Still I struggled with the regular subjects in junior high, high school and even in college. Having two parents who were educators kept me afloat most of the time, though I can remember one hot summer attending summer school at Absegami High School. I had failed junior year English. Failed English while I was finishing my second year as the school newspaper editor and writing sports a couple nights per week for the Atlantic City Press!
It was not until I entered seminary that I ever considered I had a learning disability. Then one day a kindly professor, Dr. Donald Joy looked at me in the middle of a lecture and blurted out, “Jim, you have ADHD, don’t you.” I have no idea what I was doing at that moment but that was a moment I will never forget. After class Dr. Joy invited me to his office and spoke to me at length, questioning me about my education to that point.
Maybe it is ironic but I cannot remember what he said other than when he scored the test and told me I was off the chart for ADHD. I was confused, what did that mean? Dr. Joy began to explain to me the blessed double-edged sword of the diagnosis and I felt like this man who had known me for seven weeks or so had been following me around in secret for the two and a half decades I had walked the earth.
Over the past fourteen years or so since that day I have studied the unique blessing that is ADHD. I was able to finish two Masters and tackle and succeed in law school and pass the Bar exam on my first try. I believe those successes are in part linked to a greater understanding of my individual learning abilities and disabilities. I have learned to harness the abilities, to work around the disabilities and no longer carry the guilt of feeling lazy, incapable or stupid.
There are several books that have helped me along the way and if you are interested email me and I will share some of the titles with you. For today I want to recommend Smart Kids with Learning Difficulties to you in the hope that you will be able to help your student along the path to educational success as early as you can. They might make it without this help, but why handicap them when you have the opportunity to launch them forward?
Smart Kids with Learning Difficulties
Weinfeld, Barnes-Robinson, Jeweler, Roffman Shevitz
Prufrock Press, 2006
