If kids could, kids would. Children are NOT lazy! Children with a learning difference need to be taught differently.  They are putting in the hard work, but not getting the reward.  They watch their peers soar past them – some of which aren’t even TRYING to learn to read!  It is no wonder that children feel ashamed, get frustrated, and start to demonstrate behaviours to AVOID THE PAIN of the near-impossible work.

Our children experience reading as a “failure”, and they come up with a subconscious message; a story to explain their struggle.  The message becomes “I’m stupid”, “I’m different”, “I don’t belong”, or “I’m not worthy”.  Kids LIVE that story like it’s the truth, and it impacts all areas of their lives – and it can last a lifetime.

Many children with learning problems take on shame.  Children that experience shame often become socially withdrawn, isolated, reactive, explosive, or depressed. They stop BELIEVING.  They stop DREAMING.

I love when my students come to me with a report from a psycho-educational assessment.   Ability scores for cognitive skills like processing speed, working memory, and diagnoses such as ADHD are informative about why a child is having trouble reading.  They can all be important factors, but they don’t tell the whole story!  Reading and writing are LANGUAGE SKILLS and without a comprehensive language assessment, a child’s true learning profile cannot be determined – what is wrong, and WHY?

A student may receive a diagnosis such as Dyslexia or Specific Learning Disability in Reading, but what happens next?  There are still unanswered questions – WHY do they have this disability?  They have average intelligence and cognitive skills, but their achievement does not match their abilities.  Parents are told they are just “born with it” … there are no ANSWERS; just a label!

With the diagnosis of learning disability come recommendations – usually in the realm of accommodations.  Speech-to-text software, text-to-speech software, scribes, extra time on tests, test readers … but none of these address (or solve) the problem!  Kids get stuck with the label – AND the disability.

The state of literacy should NOT be as dismal as it is.  The way reading is taught in schools is badly lagging what the research tells about how children learn to read, write, and spell.  Brain imaging tells us that children learn to read by processing the way a word looks, the way it sounds, and what it means – SIMULTANEOUSLY.  We MUST teach visual processing, sound processing, and language meaning processing TOGETHER during integrated, functional literacy tasks.

Many schools are STILL working from old, incomplete, and poorly designed research.  Popular school programs such as Reading Recovery and Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) have been proven to be ineffective for children with a learning difference!  Their 3-cueing system teaches “guessing”, NOT reading.  Their “whole language” approach provides ZERO instruction at the sound/word level of language processing.  Just look at traditional reading activities – flashcards, “sight word” and spelling word lists, writing words out 25 times – they train children to MEMORIZE, not PROCESS!  They focus SOLELY on the visual processing system and neglects the language system entirely!  It is DOOMED to fail

First you must identify the learning profile.  How can you make a teaching plan without looking at the underlying SKILLS to see which are intact and which aren’t?  With accurate, comprehensive SKILL-based assessment, we can learn which underlying, foundational language skills are lacking.  That’s when a Speech-Language Pathologist does what they do best – create a therapy plan to address the language disorder that has been there behind-the-scenes the whole time.