by Kathy Kuhl, author, speaker, teacher, advisor
Sometimes a child’s giftedness is obvious. Other times it’s harder to see. Sam’s son may strike you as brilliant, but Sam is going crazy replacing lost jackets, shoes, textbooks, and backpacks. Jen’s daughter may be the star of the robotics team, but getting her to write anything is torture for parent and child alike.
What’s going on? A child can be both gifted and face other learning challenges. Attention problems—distractibility, inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity or a combination—can sidetrack a great mind. A learning disability doesn’t refer to intelligence; in fact a gap between intelligence and achievement may suggest a learning disability. Learning disabilities affect how you input, use, store, and/or output information. It can affect the visual, auditory, and/or kinesthetic areas.
For example, a student can have trouble learning visually, say from diagrams, but follow a complex lecture with ease. Or it can be the other way around. Pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson recounts in his memoir, Gifted Hands, how he nearly dropped out of medical school. A visual learner, he couldn’t learn by attending lectures all day as expected. He took the radical step of cutting all lectures and using that time to study textbooks and notes purchased from a campus service. He thrived.
If your child begins to struggle academically as they mature, consider whether a learning problem could be surfacing. Often learning disabilities are diagnosed when a student reaches middle school, high school, or college. Their giftedness helped them compensate until the academic or organizational challenges became too great.
After a diagnosis, help is available. Schools can help, but homeschooling allows you to spend extra time remediating (strengthening areas of weakness), without cutting into instructional time. Homeschoolers can arrange accommodations as they see fit, taking advantage of the fast-growing field of assistive technology without needing school approval. You can customize education to a child’s gifts, interests, strengths, and weaknesses.
Once you understand the problem, be sure to keep these invisible disabilities in mind. One mother recently told me that though she knows her child’s challenges well, sometimes she thinks, “If you are smart, why don’t you get it?”
I find it helpful to remember how much courage it takes our children to keep trying when learning is hard. When we realize our kids’ heroic efforts, it deepens our desire to encourage them, to cheer for them, to help them aim high.
At LearnDifferently.com, I offer resources, book reviews, a newsletter, and articles to help families help their children succeed. Whether you are considering homeschooling, trying to understand a diagnosis’ implications, transitioning to high school, struggling with math, English, or motivation (yours or your child’s!), I’m happy to talk with you, sharing insights, research, and encouragement. I give free initial phone consultations, and longer ones at a moderate price.
Thinking about homeschooling? At my website, read “Is School Working for Your Child?”, the first chapter of my book, Homeschooling Your Struggling Learner.
