Diagnosing Learning Disabilities

Inconsistencies Are The Norm

Children that are diagnosed with a learning disability are often considered to also be disabled due to their inability to learn certain subject areas or skills. Many children are diagnosed when they first exhibit problems learning in a certain area, such as in reading comprehension.

Many people have their own unique way of learning and others do their best to conform to the controlled standards of learning that is presented in many schools. Some individuals refuse to allow others such as teacher, political leaders and other people in influential places affect their mind. Other people will investigate and use their creative minds; this is something that is rarely utilized in schools.

A person who is not interested in creative art, writing or another creative area rarely uses their creative mind's abilities. Therefore, a child who shows mild symptoms of a learning disability are often diagnosed of a learning disability and may reach the point to where they are essentially tortured by mental health experts afterwards.

The problem with mental health experts is that they range in their abilities. There are those individuals who seem to be "out in space" while others are truly quality therapists. It can be a frustrating experience working with counselors and therapists, but once you find someone you click with and you seem to be getting results with then that will be the person you want to stick with.

Not all counselors are alike and many are more concerned with following the code of ethics and the route that other counselors deem as "normal" or the correct way of doing things instead of allowing their own intelligence and intuition guide them through the correct steps. This is what makes the more intelligent individuals who have been diagnosed with learning disabilities different from the rest. Instead of simply believing what they are told and going along with it, they seek out information on the condition and they seek out facts to support their diagnosis.

Often these individuals find the reading materials to be more confusing than informative and they notice the faulty facts in this material. So in essence, you must wonder if learning disabilities are a result of a breakdown in communication between the child, the tests they are given to diagnose learning disabilities, the counselors and their parents.

A breakdown in communication is one of the most common reasons for failure in diagnoses. Simply looking at the past of diagnosing learning disabilities in the country and provide you evidence of this. If you notice, we look to history for information, yet we strive to live for the future. Anyone who looks at the past of the school system in this country will see a lot of contradiction.

Contradiction also tends to be another major issue in the country. Children with little stress and without a background of negligence or abuse tend to be less intelligent than those children that do have a background of abuse or negligence. Children with mental illness are often more observant those children without a mental illness. This is due to the experience that the child or individual uses knowledge from past experiences to think on a different level because of that experience.

Unfortunately, mental health experts and even teachers often judge the neglected or abused child and will claim that they are mentally ill. The fact that the child is acting out from a learned behavior versus mental illness often makes more sense. Learned behaviors are something that has caused misdiagnoses by mental health experts for quite some time because they are often inconsistent themselves. For example, when a therapist notices the oppositional traits in a child, they first consider Oppositional Defiant Disorder as the cause for the behavior instead of a learned behavior that a child uses to get what he or she wants.

A child with true Oppositional Defiant Disorder typically opposes a set of rules, such as those presented by educational leaders or other leaders in life. Oppositional Defiant patients will often become extremely aggressive when their beliefs are questioned. Sometimes these individuals will act out aggressively without remorse for the person they are acting out against.

On the other hand, a child with oppositional behaviors will allow these behaviors to come and go as they need them. These behaviors are not as frequent as they would be if the child was suffering from Oppositional Defiant Disorder. These behaviors are learned patterns from experiences in their life. These behaviors are very rarely consistent and this is seen because the person is able to turn them off and on as needed and can function in society normally throughout their life.

This is best seen in children who throw temper tantrums. From experience they have learned that if they throw a fit in the middle of the grocery store that their mom or dad will buy them the toy or candy bar just to make them be quiet and not cause a scene. This is a perfect example of a learned oppositional behavior. So, as you can see, learning disabilities are easily over dramatized.

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