Despite the compelling and alarming statistics on the impact Learning Disabilities (LD) has on the mental health of our youth, there remains a great need to better understand the relationships between language-based LDs, Autism Spectrum, and depression, substance abuse, and defiance, and low self-esteem. While some in the therapeutic community know that upwards of 60% of adolescents in treatment centers have learning disabilities (Hazelton and NICHD), they need to have a deeper understanding of why that is, and how clinicians and counselors can better respond. Similarly, knowing the presence of learning disabilities among clinically depressed, hospitalized children is 7 times higher than in the general population (Journal of Affective Disorders), compels us to learn more about specific experiences and mechanisms at play.

Conscious linking between information processing styles and therapeutic intervention will significantly increase effectiveness and speed up results.

By better understanding the experience of having neurological variance and differences, therapeutic attunement follows. The time is ripe for moving beyond and beneath surface understanding of how self-esteem is negatively impacted from school failure. Experiences and research is beginning to help us see how differences in information processing impact everything therapeutically.

Accepting the fact that many states use literacy and special education statistics from 3rd and 4th grades to accurately predict future prison beds is no longer acceptable. Combining best practices from both Learning Disabilities and Therapeutic disciplines is a key to solving this dilemma and national challenge. Therapeutic education is poised to play the leadership role.

I’ve felt for years that teenagers and young adults with Asperger’s Syndrome or with High Functioning Autism really need help understanding and negotiating romantic and sexual relationships. Moving from Social Skills or even Social Thinking curriculums (there’s a difference) to dating, sex, love and adult relationships is no easy task when your primary difficulties are recognizing and understanding non verbal communication, emotional fluency and regulating sensory experiences.

This is a wonderfully written piece in the NYTimes.com called Navigating Love and Autism. Compelling in it’s depth, this article captures many of the challenges particular to couples struggling with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The first night they slept entwined on his futon, Jack Robison, 19, who had since childhood thought of himself as “not like the other humans,” regarded Kirsten Lindsmith with undisguised tenderness.

This is an honest account of their struggles and one that provides glimpses into what it must be like for a young man with ASD, who, despite feeling love and romance for his sweetheart, has to tell her (and I assume because of some sensory overload issues), after she smiled at him one morning, as she leans in for a kiss, seeking his lips, he turned away, “I don’t really like kissing,” he said.

It’s a touching piece and although having ASD adds a particular burden to relationship, I want to tell the young man in the article, that many of their struggles are generic to the confusion we all feel at times in relationships.  You want to put your arm around his shoulder and smilingly tell him you know just how he feels when he’s not sure what his girlfriend wants from him.  Here’s an example:

One might start over Kirsten’s request that Jack hug her when she came home from school, or his perception that she was already angry at him when she came through the door.

“The more we argue, the worse it gets,” Jack said once, close to despair.

One night as Kirsten cooked dinner, he peered into the pan where she was sautéing vegetables to comment on the way she had cut the cauliflower.

“It’s too big,” he explained. “It won’t cook through.”

“It’s better when it’s not all mushy,” she insisted.

“No,” he said. “You’re just doing it wrong.”

Eventually, Kirsten, unable to contain her tears, fled to the living room.

“What I want,” she told him when they analyzed their clashes in less-fraught moments, “is to be held and rocked and comforted.”

Too often we as educators and parents, get hyper-focused on the things our/your kids can’t do or struggle with. Even with the best of intentions, adults lose perspective. We run the risk of trying so hard, too hard, to squeeze children with learning disabilities into the mold of what we want for our kids in the future. And in the meantime, you miss moments of opportunity.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in the business of educating and problem-solving for kids and families with learning and behavioral struggles. I believe very much in early identification of risks and struggle and for planning for the future.

But when we’re too future-focused, we lose sight of the forest for the trees. In the case of kids, that means missing the beauty of their wondrous perfection, imperfections and all. In case you think I’m being too sappy and sentimental, read this article in the NY Times called “Notes from a Dragon Mom”. The author, a professor of writing at a Sante Fe university, has an 18 month old child who will die for sure, because of a rare genetic disorder. It’s powerful piece, and she reminds us all of the importance of loving your child in the present moment. In her case there is no future to hold onto so there isn’t the usual focus on parenting “in the right way.”

If you watch the video of the new iPhone personal assistant Siri, you may barely notice that the woman listening to her message (instead of reading it) and then replying (and Siri putting and sending her spoken words into text) via text message, is blind (she’s reading braille).

Steve and Apple have done so much for me, and for my students who learn differently. We wish the family well.

There’s been a recent study released that should lead to more kids getting more resources and services and hope. Unfortunately there are some headlines that insinuate the opposite, that dyslexia isn’t real.

Here’s the reality. In a recent study from Stanford University, scientists have zeroed in on the brain activation patterns of poor readers. They have found that such brain activation maps are similar in those with higher and lower IQs.

In other words, dyslexia doesn’t mean your dumb. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that just because you’re dyslexic, you’re automatically brilliant. The article’s title is even,”Brain imaging study shows physiological basis of dyslexia.”

According to Stanford’s School of Medicine, “…in the wake of recent behavioral studies showing that phonological deficits — that is, difficulties in processing the sound system of language, which often leads to difficulties in connecting the sounds of language to letters — are similar in poor readers regardless of IQ.”

This is further evidence that, as Sally Shaywitz has argued previously, IQ and reading skills are not as coupled as many previously thought. While on the one hand this means that if you struggle with reading and spelling due to core phonological deficits in decoding and recoding of phonemics, it doesn’t reflect your capacity to be smart and successful, it also means that people who test out in the below average range of IQ can also be dyslexic. As some responsible folks have noted (including those from MIT and Stanford), these findings should lead to the opening up of resources for a broader range of students.

Instead, and here’s where I get angry, there are articles with the following headlines, “Doubts raised over dyslexia diagnoses” with the subheading: “Dyslexia could be just a label, according to scientists, after a study of brain scans found there is little difference between the way children with the condition think while trying to read and those who simply have a low IQ.”

Again, direct from Stanford (who did the study):

“Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have used an imaging technique to show that the brain activation patterns in children with poor reading skills and a low IQ are similar to those in poor readers with a typical IQ. The work provides more definitive evidence about poor readers having similar kinds of difficulties regardless of their general cognitive ability.”

Is it just me, or does this upset anyone else?

Here, the Learning Ally writes about a sneak preview of the film.

Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for the release of this movie.

[via Learning Ally]

From the Cass Business School in London, the study draws a link between having dyslexia and business success. I met the author of the study a couple of years ago at a conference. To be fair, she was primarily just reporting what they’d found; namely that upwards of 35% of the successful serial entrepreneurs surveyed in the US identified themselves as dyslexic.

It’s a relatively small sample that responded. From what she said, a few thousand business leaders were queried but only between one and two hundred responded.

There are those that are quite certain that the “dyslexic brain” is embedded by nature with certain attributes that can lead to success in certain areas, visual spatial and 3-D thinking for example. It’s intriguing though unproven. Just as intriguing is some of the other commentary by other folks who are successful and dyslexic. They speak of learning to work extra hard, and discovering the importance of focusing on only the most important tasks in a project (if you’re behind in your schoolwork and basic tasks take longer, this is a necessary skill to learn), as in, “Which assignments this week are the most important to complete?”

Learning to delegate is another.

Seeing the big picture and not getting lost in the details.

All of these may get more attention and thus get more developed by students who are dyslexic.

Many of the same attributes can lead to success in business or any field.

Then again, if you get too buried and marginalized and unsupported, success can become elusive.

What’s the percentage of inmates with learning disabilities?

Can’t wait to see the documentary.

Apparently, one of the themes of the new HBO documentary, “Journey into Dyslexia” is the reported link between dyslexia and successful entrepreneurship.

This opens up so many cans of worms to discuss. I’ll weigh in more later.

It has been recognized that many successful people have ADHD. In many cases, it is a critical ingredient to their success. A lesser known fact is that it can also be a cause of stress, self-loathing, embarrassment, and lack of productivity. Like many things, ADHD takes many forms. It can be mild to crippling. It can be a great source of energy, or a great source of grief. I asked Ms. Snell what questions business owners should ask themselves to determine whether they have some form of ADHD. Here are her five questions:

1. Do you struggle with day-to-day planning, project management, and follow-up?
2. Do you lack the systems, discipline and focus to manage your workload?
3. Do you procrastinate too much and fail to accomplish things that need to get done?
4. Do you feel you’re not as effective and productive as you would like to be?
5. Are you easily distracted?

Maybe my own brain is faltering in a Web wasteland, but I don’t get it. Whether the Web is making us smarter or dumber, isn’t there something just unconvincing about the idea that an occult “span” in the brain makes certain cultural objects more compelling than others? So a kid loves the drums but can hardly get through a chapter of “The Sun Also Rises”; and another aces algebra tests but can’t even understand how Call of Duty is played. The actions of these children may dismay or please adults, but anyone who has ever been bored by one practice and absorbed by another can explain the kids’ choices more persuasively than does the dominant model, which ignores the content of activities in favor of a wonky span thought vaguely to be in the brain.

And speaking of sitting silently without fidgeting: that’s essentially what we want of children with bum attention spans, isn’t it? The first sign that a distractible child is doing “better” — with age or Adderall, say — is that he sits still. This is why the A.D.H.D. diagnosis, which popularized the idea of an “attention span” that can be pathologically short, grew out of the old “hyperactive” diagnosis. The hyperactive child squirmed at church and at the dinner table, embarrassing his mother.

Brilliant.

On with my distractions.

This entire show is great but act three is particularly fascinating: The Squeaky Wheelchair Gets the Grease.

In California, a kind of crybaby cottage industry has popped up around, of all things, the Americans with Disabilities Act—the federal law that requires all public places to meet a minimum level of accessibility. Some people make a living by suing business owners for not being up to code.

Listen to the show later today when it gets posted or through their podcast in iTunes: This American Life.