What is Learning disability in children?

What is Childhood Learning Disorder, and How Can We Treat Learning Challenged children with Kindness?

In modern educational psychology, childhood learning disorders are collectively referred to as Learning Disabilities (LD). These children may seem intelligent, but they face difficulties in acquiring and applying skills related to listening, speaking, reading, writing, and arithmetic, which subsequently leads to academic struggles. Each child's learning ability varies, with some exhibiting strong self-learning skills and memory. By the age of 6, they can recognize over 2,000 Chinese characters, and 7-year-olds may complete coursework equivalent to second or third-grade level. On the other hand, some children at the age of 7 may only be capable of kindergarten-level tasks.

Why do children exhibit such significant differences in learning ability? According to modern biological research, learning disorders are a group of conditions based on biological developmental challenges. Researchers classify these developmental challenges in children based on the degree of learning difficulty, neurological impairments, and clinical manifestations. They have found that the occurrence of these learning difficulties is related to mechanisms involving genetics, abnormal brain structure, asymmetry between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, mild brain functional impairments, and abnormalities in intellectual structure. These conditions may be connected to adverse factors experienced by the child before birth, such as maternal smoking, drug use, alcohol consumption, poor prenatal nutrition, fetal neurological damage due to various reasons, as well as postnatal brain injuries, birth trauma, premature birth with low birth weight, asphyxia, neonatal jaundice, certain infectious diseases, heavy metal (such as lead) poisoning, among others.

Recent scientific studies have shown that learning difficulties may result from delayed cerebellar development. Since the cerebellum is a crucial information processing center during the learning process, it enables us to "automate" our behavioral abilities. With this automation function, many tasks and skills in daily life become effortless, without requiring conscious thought. If the cerebellum cannot efficiently automate processes, every task becomes a fresh learning experience, and some endeavors may repeatedly end in failure, no matter how much effort is put in.

Early signs of learning challenged children: Infants born with high-risk factors often exhibit hyperactivity, increased crying, sensitivity to external stimuli, and easy overstimulation during early infancy. Mothers may find it challenging to comfort and embrace such children, as they tend to prefer playing alone. Poor parent-child relationships can lead to reduced maternal-child language and emotional communication, subsequently affecting language and emotional development in the child. As these children enter their preschool years, some may experience delayed speech, hair pulling, nail-biting, throwing objects, tantrums, aggressive tendencies, and deficits in language comprehension and expression. Upon entering school age, even though their intelligence is generally normal, they frequently face one or more learning difficulties. For example, they may struggle with maintaining attention during class, exhibit restlessness and inability to sit still, omit strokes or add extra strokes when writing, take too long to complete homework, frequently forget borrowing and positioning in calculations, and show disinterest in reading or have poor reading ability.

Even more concerning is that children with learning disorders have a shorter average lifespan compared to typical individuals, and they are more prone to functional disabilities and chronic illnesses. In the UK, there are medical charities dedicated to providing services for children with learning challenges. They collaborate with family members and caregivers to provide targeted treatments such as dietary therapy to help these children gain their rightful entitlements, resist social discrimination and bias, and access medical insurance. They encourage parents and teachers to engage in more conversations with learning challenged children. Moreover, they conduct confidential investigations into cases of premature death due to childhood learning disorders and report the findings to the government, emphasizing the importance of addressing and handling this issue. To prevent childhood learning challenges, they suggest children should avoid exposure to harmful environmental factors and improve their lifestyle. Treatment should be tailored based on the specific type of learning challenge, such as reading difficulties, phonetic difficulties, writing difficulties, or calculation difficulties, which should receive specialized training accordingly. At present, medications for treating this condition are limited, and some drugs may have adverse effects. Therefore, I recommend that clinical doctors adopt a comprehensive approach to treatment, which can improve the children's quality of life and prolong their life expectancy.