by Pat Lamb (Author of: Let the Children Come; Children, Come to Me; When the Stars Fall Down; Widening the Church Doors to Teach the Narrow Way; My Thinking Book; Love is…) Books are available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble. www.patlambchristianauthor.com
Children and Learning Disabilities
Train up a child…
Children and Learning Disabilities
We hear a great deal about children who have learning disabilities. There are children who have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Behavior Disorder, Dyslexia, and recently I heard of an instance where children were being diagnosed with obedience disorder. One has to wonder about the authenticity of many of these diagnoses.
With the wide use of drugs and alcohol during recent years, we have to consider the possibility that many babies have been born carrying the effects of the usage of these substances by their parents. No doubt, there has been some effect upon the ability of those children to cope with life. On the other hand, one can’t help but wonder if many children are labeled with the terms mentioned simply because those working with the children can come up with no way to deal with the needs the children have. In addition to the effects of substance abuse, children are also affected by nutrition and inherent interests.
I had occasion several years ago to visit a neonatal ward in a hospital that specialized in babies born with problems. It was horrible to watch little babies, so small you could hold them in your hand, shiver and shake with withdrawal symptoms from drugs because their mothers had used drugs while carrying them. When my husband and I worked on the Navajo reservation, we learned that some parents would put alcohol in the baby bottles on the weekend to put them out while they had a good time. Now, I know of homes where children are constantly with cigarette smoke and they are getting the effects of the secondhand smoke. This affects their health and possibly they have withdrawal symptoms needing “a smoke” during school hours. Research shows that a large percentage of retardation is caused by mothers using alcohol while they were pregnant. There is much evidence to indicate that substances affect a child’s behavior and learning ability.
When I was teaching GED classes, I had a student enroll in my GED class who told me that he drank two 2-liter bottles of Mountain Dew and smoked two packs of cigarettes each day. He couldn’t understand why he was having a difficult time sitting in class and concentrating on studying! Although this sounds extreme, it is not an isolated incident. Caffeine is not a good thing for children and too much caffeine and sugar is not good for adults. (Four grams of sugar equals one teaspoon. One large Mountain Dew has about 23 teaspoons of sugar.) Many adults allow children to drink a great deal of soda with caffeine, give them large amounts of sugar, and do not watch the diets of their children. What a child consumes certainly affects learning and behavior.
When God created us, He didn’t create us with the idea in mind that all were to fit in a mold of behavior expected by the educational personnel in today’s schools. I’m not sure that our ideas of how children are to respond to our teaching are how God intended all children to respond. Children are born with dominance in three or four intelligences. Children who have the “body” intelligence will naturally find it more difficult to sit quietly and pay attention in school.
There is probably no person alive who does not have some difficulty at some time or another in learning something. We have to find ways to work with ourselves to cope with the difficulties we have in order to learn what we need to survive. As parents and teachers, we need to help children learn to cope with their challenges. Unfortunately, labeling a child with a disability name often enables a child to feel excused for lack of accomplishment. Children grow up thinking they can’t do some things and they simply stop trying. We need to use common sense in working with children when they have challenges to learning.