Learning Disability

Learning disability is a condition wherein an individual’s performance in reading, mathematics or written expression is substantially below the expected age, schooling and level of intelligence.

The term ‘Specific learning disability’ means a condition in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in the process of learning. These processes are

• Attention
• Perception
• Memory
• Language.

It can also be a combination of the above. The term Learning disability does not include children who have learning problems, which are primarily the result of visual, hearing or motor handicaps, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural or economic disadvantages.

The deficits in any of the above-mentioned processes are manifested as difficulty in learning to develop.

(a) Reading Skills – DYSLEXIA
(b) Writing Skills – DYSGRAPHIA
(c) Arithmetic – DYSCALCULIA

These may manifest individually or in combination. LD is manifested despite conventional instruction, adequate intelligence and socio – cultural opportunity.

The fact that Dyslexia tends to cluster in certain families has been known for many years. Familial transmission for Dyslexia has been well documented. Transmission of Dyslexia in these families followed an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance i.e. inheritance of a single copy of a specific allele (a kind of gene) is sufficient to cause Dyslexia. The prevalence of unexpected reading failure in males than in females proposes that the condition may be caused by a recessive allele carried in the x chromosome. Non-genetic factors like focal cortical dysgenesis and disarrays in the layered pattern of the brain’s surface are also known to cause Dyslexia.

Although genetic predispositions, Perinatal injury and various neurological conditions may be associated with the development of LD the presence of such conditions does not invariably lead to genesis of LD and there are many individuals with LD who have no such history. Learning Disabilities are however, frequently found in association with a variety of general medical conditions (eg. lead poisoning, foetal alcohol syndrome or fragile X syndrome)

• A sign of poor intelligence.
• Laziness or lack of caring.
• A vision problem.
• A disease.
• Something you grow out of.

• A marked discrepancy between ability and the standard of work being produced.
• A persistent or severe problem with spelling, even with easy or common words.
• Difficulty with comprehension as a result of slow reading speed.
• Poor short-term memory, especially where information is language based, which results in insufficient processing into long term memory.
• Difficulty with organization and classification of data.

Note taking may present problems due to spelling difficulties, poor short term memory and poor listening skills.

Handwriting may be poor and unformed, especially when writing under pressure.Students often show a lack of fluency in expressing ideas and with vocabulary.

A child with LD :

• Shows clumsiness.
• Becomes rigid and inflexible.
• Is poor at copying from the black board.
• Is restless or a daydreamer.
• Is quiet in class but does not learn.
• Cannot remember the sequence of letters in the alphabet, day, year and /or the season.
• Does not remember what he sees. Can add and multiply but has difficulty subtracting.
• Skips or adds words when reading.

• Reads slowly but hesitantly
• Gives stress on wrong syllables.
• Reads words backward ‘god’ for ‘dog’
• If text is in past tense, reads in present tense.
• Mispronounces the words.
• Makes own stories from illustration rather than read.

Shortens word – ‘rember’ for ‘remember’
Omits prefixes ‘happy’ for ‘unhappy’
Omits suffixes like ‘s’, ‘ed’.
Puts syllables in wrong order ‘ emeny’ for ‘enemy’
Puts letters in wrong orders ‘felt’ for ‘left’
Substitutes another word of similar meaning ‘little’ for ‘small’

Visual Dyslexia is the failure to notice internal detail, the result being that there is confusion between words such as beg and bog or ship and snip. The rate of perception is slow. There are reversal tendencies both in reading and writing. For example, dig and big. There is also a tendency to transpose the letters in a word.

These include problems with auditory discrimination and phonetic analysis. Auditory dyslexics cannot hear similarities in initial and final sounds of words or double consonant sounds, which they tend to write as one consonant. They find it difficult to discriminate between short vowel sounds or recognize rhymes. They cannot break words up into syllables or their constituent sounds. Auditory dyslexics cannot remember the sound of a letter, cannot say a word even if they know its meaning and cannot remember rhythmic pattern. They are inferior in tasks that involve auditory memory sequence and discrimination.

• Demoralization, low self-esteem and deficits in social skills may be associated with LD.
• School drop out rate for children or adolescents with LD is reported at nearly 40%
• Adults with LD may have significant difficulties in employment or social adjustment.

The emotional, intellectual, social and physical growth of the child is dependent on various factors. Inputs that a child receives during the early formative years are crucial. The integration of sensory processes is crucial for the healthy development of the process of learning. Faulty integration gives rise to a number of anomalies contributing to the development of the process of learning disorders. Thus it is essential to restore the correct sensation to deal with these disorders. Management demands HOLISTIC APPROACH taking a child —– environmental as a unit.

M.B.Barvalia foundation’s Spandan holistic institute has set up Holistic child care centre where we skillfully utilize remedial education, occupational therapy, Homoeopathy, Counselling and yoga for this purpose. This approach has resulted in great acceleration in the process of learning.

• Explain to the pupil what his problems are.
• Attempt to restore the pupil’s confidence in himself. 
• Be aware of the possibility that the student may be using avoidance techniques.Be constructively critical.

Learning disability should not be viewed as a disease but a condition. All therapeutic efforts are directed towards ameliorating the difficulties. It may be noted that several famous people with this invisible handicap ‘include Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Leonardo de Vinci, Abraham Lincoln, Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg. They have moved on to lead brilliant careers.

Homoeopathy is a 200 years old system of medicine discovered by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann a German Physician and is based on the Natural Holistic Form of medicine based on laws nature. Homeopathy takes consideration the person as a whole and the prescription is based on INDIVIDUAL FEATURES. So each child though having the same diagnosis of Autism will need INDIVIDUAL Homeopathic Medicine. And that is how it helps in holistic way improvement is seen at both the levels of physical as well as mental level.

Homoeopathy is a HOLISTIC SCIENCE, which considers the person as a whole. It treats the ‘entire person’ and not merely the external symptoms.
Homoeopathic medicines do not act merely on any one particular organ of an individual but it has much more deeper and central action on psycho neuro endocrinological and psycho immunological axis. It promotes the growth gradient and hence facilitates the process of development.

A homoeopathic physician spends a lot of time with each patient and takes a detailed history. He makes attempt to understand all dimensions of the personality. He not only studies the data pertaining to the main difficulties of the patient but also other significant aspects of body and mind like emotions, temperament sleep patterns, eating habits, dreams etc. this study enables him to find a correct homoeopathic medicine which acts on the entire person and brings about correction in the disturbance within the person.

These children often present with difficulties at various levels: Perceptual problems, sensorymotor coordination, emotional disturbances.

We witness various patterns of presentation at all these level – like awkwardness, clumsiness, confusion in directions, hyperactivity, sadness, withdrawal, low self-esteem etc.

Homoeopathic literature provides a rich material describing graphically various characteristic features, which we relate to learning disorder. e.g.

Omits final letter when writing (Lac. Can – Herring page 515)
Uses wrong syllables, mixes up letters and syllables or omits parts of words (Herring page 91)
While writing transposing letters: China, Lyco, (Kent Rep. Page 67)
Mistakes reading (Kent Rep. Page 66)
Mistakes writing (Kent Rep. Page 67) A systematic study of such characteristic individualistic patterns of LD allows us to select an appropriate homoeopathic remedy. Problems of LD cannot be cured but rational homoeopathic therapeutics can definitely bring about amelioration in perceptual errors, behavioural problems and emotional disturbances.

Homeopathic medicines help in correcting the faulty motor patterns and help in improving the coordination thus reducing difficulties of perception.

This helps in reduction of difficulty in reading & writing.
Spelling mistakes reduce
Correction in the altered state of sensitivity. Children appear calmer. It helps in reducing emotional disturbances.
Improvement in behavioural problems like hyperactivity, fidgetiness, impulsiveness etc.
Attention span improves. A child who was earlier very inattentive starts to focus on the task given.
Homoeopathic medicines act as immuno-modulators. They help to build up the general resistance power of the patients. This significantly improves their tendency to develop recurrent infections.
At physical level – child starts showing improved sleep pattern, improves digestion.
They do not have any adverse or depressing neurophysiological side effects.

Homeopathic medicines are not substitute for all other essential therapies or teaching techniques like Remedial education, occupational therapy, counselling, speech therapy etc. Homoeopathy works in perfect synergy with above techniques and therefore we promote holistic integrated care.

In fact, the positive influence of correct homoeopathic remedy makes the child more receptive to other therapeutic inputs like Remediation, occupational therapy etc. This entire process speeds up the process of management.