A positive approach part II: Changing perspective

In an attempt to explain the possibilities of a person with ADHD and how we need to change our perspective on learning disabilities, a physician coldly responded to me, "The only option for kids like these is medication. The "success" stories you are proclaiming are the one in a million case."

Stunned, I was immediately brought back to a conversation I had with a young woman in a cold hockey rink during our kids' hockey practice. I listened as she told me the misery of her elementary years in school and her undiagnosed learning disabilities. She told me that her third-grade teacher proclaimed that she was lazy and stupid and wouldn't amount to anything. This woman sitting beside me was now a successful businesswoman and mother of two. She told me that her early years in school nearly crushed her completely, but as she entered middle school, a teacher came beside her who believed in her and got her the help she needed. After all the years since elementary school, this woman confided, "I still want to find that third-grade teacher and tell her that she was wrong!"

Imagine for a moment being continually described as an academic failure, stubborn, lazy and incapable of following directions. Yet these are the words that were used to describe Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet, Philip Schultz. In his personal tale about his struggle with dyslexia in "My Dyslexia," he describes the pain of not learning to read until he was 11, despite his love for words. Or another little boy explains, "The worst thing about having a learning disability is that people call you stupid when you know you are not!" Stories like these define children by their weaknesses and it is a prescription for failure.

We get from our children what we expect. So let's expect success! It's time to change our mindset. We need to believe in the ability to achieve, especially with those children with learning disabilities. Broke Eide, MD MA in his book, "The Mislabeled Child," says, "children currently identified as 'learning-disabled' are literally 'wired' to learn differently than most other children." It isn't that they can't learn, but rather that they need to be fed information in a different way. We are wired to learn at birth. This can be easily seen in the amazing things children learn in the first few years without being told how to learn them: to talk, to feed themselves, to walk, to run and to play. That potential is still there when they enter school.

If we are going to change our mindset then we need to be able to see the strengths in these children. We need to be more interested in the special talents of these children than in their deficits. That does not mean that we should ignore areas of weakness, but rather approach these weaknesses through strengths. We should utilize the unusual problem solving skills, the vivid imaginations and the emotional intelligence often found in children with learning disabilities to help them overcome their deficits. In addition we should use their personal strengths: the musical, artistic or mechanical gifts; or sports, story telling, sales, business, designing, building or engineering.

It is our job as parents and educators to help children understand their gifts and use them. We need to help children reinforce their strengths. The Information Age is also encouraging us to change our perspective about these children that so many call "misfits." The Economist reports in the June edition that companies are looking for the strengths found in those with autism, dyslexia or ADHD and placing them in jobs that fit those strengths. Although children with learning disabilities often do not fit neatly into the world of education, they do possess strengths and talents that are valued outside the walls of academia. It is time to change our perspective!

For more information on how strengths can be used to remediate deficits in strengths-based interventions or how you, as a parent, can leverage your child's strengths, please call Wired2Learn at 699-6232.