Pediatricians help identify learning disabilities in children
As many as 20% of people in the United States have a learning disability and in 2007, an estimated 2.7 million children aged 6 to 11 years were affected. Learning disabilities often prevent children from reaching their full potential. They can have difficulty learning to listen, speak, read, spell, write, reason, concentrate, solve mathematical problems, and organize information. They may also experience difficulty mastering social skills or motor coordination.
Learning difficulties are frequently associated with and complicated by attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). For affected children, learning difficulties are not merely a source of frustration. Left untreated, these children may develop low self-confidence, poor self-esteem, and have increased risk of developing psychological and emotional problems.
Learning disabilities are complex problems with complex etiologies that are not yet fully understood. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and learning disabilities, including reading disabilities and dyslexia, frequently go undetected, misdiagnosed, or mistreated in children. Sadly, even in cases where learning disabilities are recognized, most children have already been experiencing years of academic difficulty in elementary school.
However research in brain function and learning has shown that learning and attention challenges can be permanently corrected. The American Academy of Pediatrics policy states that “early recognition and referral to qualified professionals for evidence-based evaluations and treatments are necessary to achieve the best possible outcome.”
The role of the child’s physician in identifying and managing a learning disability is one of vigilance and support. The child’s parents and educators may not fully recognize the symptoms of a learning disability in their children and it may be the child’s pediatrician that is first to suspect and inform parents of available resources for assistance. Some parents may already suspect that their child may harbor a learning disability and turn to the child’s physician for guidance. In any case, the child’s physician is an important partner with the family and educators in the diagnosis, evaluation and treatment for the child.
It is not the role of the pediatrician to diagnose learning disabilities but instead to inquire about the child’s educational progress and be vigilant for early signs of learning disabilities. Even if there is no apparent delay in speech or language development, a family history of learning difficulties should alert parents and physicians to this possibility in the child. With enhanced awareness of the pediatric community on early detection and referral we can do away with the traditional scenario in which the child must show persistent poor academic achievement for years before referral, assessment, and remediation. Early recognition and referral to qualified professionals means more effective treatment for more children.
Therapeutic Literacy Center:
Current neuroscience shows that learning “disabilities” do not have to be permanent. The brain exhibits enormous plasticity so the cognitive skills involved in reading and writing can be improved. (More about Plasticity) At the Therapeutic Literacy Center we specialize in the cognitive processes behind learning to read, write and spell. Auditory and language processing, phonological awareness, visual memory and critical thinking can be strengthened, often significantly, in a relatively short time given intensive targeted instruction. Our network of clinicians, psychologists, and neuropsychologists have studied how children learn, and applied that research to Therapeutic Literacy Center programs and instruction. Through carefully researched and consistently effective methods, we help clients to develop control over their thinking processes to make sense out of reading, spelling, written language and math.
For someone with Dyslexia, reading a simple paragraph or even a couple lines of instructions is a tedious and frustrating process. This makes everyday activities difficult and learning from textbooks or other dense, voluminous material is nearly impossible. Spelling and written expression can also be very difficult.

 Dyslexia does not impact intellectual ability but it will prevent these bright people from acquiring information as others do in the typical learning environment.

 So what do people who have dyslexia do when they encounter printed text? Sadly enough, some simply avoid it or give up. Others find or create methods to help them succeed.
Every time my kids get a check-up, it strikes me that pediatricians are checking eyes and ears in the same way they’ve been checking for at least the last 50 years (yep, I just turned 50). True, a general practitioner will typically only screen for evidence of deeper issues and then refer onward if something suspicious or ‘outside the normal range’ is found. But in light of my 11 year old son being diagnosed with APD (Auditory Processing Disorder), it occurs to me that the current hearing testing conducted by schools and pediatricians is woefully inadequate because it is incapable of discovering the range of hearing disabilities we know to be present in the population today. Instead, we end up waiting until these hearing disabilities manifest in children as inability to read, write, and learn at grade level, and often failing or borderline performance by older students who are unable to learn in a typical classroom environment and are likely suffering emotional and psychological harm.
So why are we still simply asking kids to discern mere audiometric thresholds when we know that other attributes of sound such as rhythm, pitch, timbre, and localization are just as important to function well in our current environment? The unfortunate truth is that the professional community cannot come to an agreed-upon set of cues that reflect appropriate hearing ability and fidelity. Part of the frustration is that neurobiologists and neuropsychologists don’t really fully understand the mechanisms of how people hear and what the brain does with what the ear detects. But the research is ongoing and our understanding continues to develop and deepen. Findings in the last couple of years that I’ll share are truly exciting because they bring us closer to a time when some simple, early diagnostics will reveal a more detailed picture of a person’s hearing ability and alert parents and professionals of issues to be addressed early on in the child’s life.
For example did you know that that many people with dyslexia have sharper peripheral vision than others?  The brain processes separately the information from the central versus the peripheral areas of the visual field.  And the brain seems to trade off on these capacities. The key to reading is being adept focusing on details located in the center of the visual field while being less proficient at recognizing features and patterns in the periphery.  As it turns out, people with dyslexia have a bias in favor of the periphery and so can quickly take in a scene as a whole; they get the “visual gist†more readily.
Because they are obviously intelligent and generally do some kinds of tasks very easily, parents and teachers may, at first, see the learning disabled student as lazy or unmotivated. With very few exceptions, learners of any age want to be successful and would if they could.