What Learning Disabilities Look Like

• Problems with reading accuracy, speed or comprehension

• Linguistic skills: understanding or naming math terms
• Perceptual skills: recognizing or reading numerical symbols and clustering objects into groups
• Attention skills: correctly copying numbers, adding carried numbers, and observing operational signs
• Math skills: following sequences of math steps, counting objects, and learning multiplication tables

• Younger children may display clumsiness and delays in achieving developmental motor milestones such as walking, crawling, and sitting
• Older children may display difficulties with the motor aspects of assembling puzzles, playing ball and printing

Expressive Language Disorder

(Developmental type is usually recognized by age 3 and approximately half of the children outgrow it. Acquired type is due to brain lesions, head trauma or stroke)

Limited amount of speech and range of vocabulary, difficulty acquiring new words, omissions of critical parts of sentences, use of unusual word order, and slow rate of language development

• Younger children may speak rapidly with erratic rhythm of speech
• Older children may have problems with taking down dictation, copying sentences and spelling

Mixed Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder

(Detectable before age 4. May occur in up to 3% of school-age children. Two types: Developmental in which speech may begin late and Acquired due to encephalitis or head trauma)

• Receptive: difficulty understanding words or sentences
• Expressive: limited vocabulary, errors in tense, difficulty expressing ideas
• Mild: difficulty understanding types of words (i.e., spatial terms) or statements (i.e., complex if-then sentences)
• Severe: inability to understand basic vocabulary or simple sentences

Phonological Disorder

(2-3% of 6-7 year-olds present with moderate to severe cases)

Stuttering

(Affects 1% of pre-pubescent children. Boys outnumber girls 3:1. Onset is typically between 2-7 years-old)