Youth Focus: Why Support is Needed for Kids with Learning Differences
ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Executive Function Skills and other Learning Disabilities (or as we like to call them, Learning Differences!)….what do you think of when you hear these terms?
Many people will think about how these learning differences affect education, schooling, grades, and classroom performance. However, along with all of the factors related to learning itself, learning differences can often affect much more than just these education-specific outcomes.
When a child deals with learning challenges in a setting that doesn't understand or place value on their unique way of learning, it can impact their emotional and mental health and their self-perception.
This can lead to...
Self-doubt
Feelings of isolation
Low self-esteem
Feelings of being inadequate
Anxiety
Depression
Social skill and relationship problems
Sleep issues
Often as adults, we default to focussing on the NEEDS of our kids and students. The things that we think they are “lacking”, that they need help with, where they are falling behind, and their struggles. We just naturally revert to spending our time working in that deficit approach - figuring out how to ‘fix’ our child or put out the fires.
How do you think you would react if YOU were defined almost exclusively by the weaknesses you have? How helpful would that be in your own learning, career or relationships? How would that affect your mental and emotional health?
Sounds pretty rotten, right? It would be frustrating, discouraging, and unmotivating.
So what do we do about this? At school and at home, we need to notice, focus on, and make use of the strengths of our kids. We need them to see how incredible they are (even if it doesn’t always show in the standardized, measurable ways that occur in a school setting).
But what about those areas that kids DO need to work on? We can’t just forget about those, right?!? Right. However, we can focus on the abilities without denying the challenges. We do not ignore the areas that kids need to work on, but we start first with strengths.
We build
We encourage
We approach with positivity
We notice and call attention to
We help create understanding
Using a strengths-based approach can make use of the incredible gifts, talents, and character traits of a child as a TOOL to help them find success in other areas.
Learning is not only about content and curriculum, it is about those emotional, self-perception, and mental health pieces as well. We need to explicitly teach our kids about who they are, about their strengths, and how those strengths are assets they can lean on to help them in other areas of their lives.