Observe your child or ask your child’s teacher or in-home tutor how well your child is doing with school and homework. Professional tutors and teachers usually sense when the child has a learning problem. To help you in determining your child’s learning abilities, read the following symptoms of sensory integration problems, which Optimum Learning from Australia has provided in its free booklet for parents and educators.

• Short term memory problems
• Information goes in one ear and out the other
• Your child may not be able to remember more than one or two items from a list of four verbal instructions.
• Your child may have learned and understood tables one day, but totally forget them the next day.
• Poor reading comprehension
• Messy writing: while the attention is on what to write (auditory channel), there is no attention on how it looks (visual channel).
• Phonetic spelling: the attention is only on what it sounds like and not on what it looks like.
• A student may learn easier with the teacher whose teaching method matches the child’s learning style, such as visual or auditory. The child does not have to shift from one sensory channel to another to translate the lessons.

When the child has problems with left and right brain integration, the following behavioral signs are present:

• Poor reading skills: comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and speed may be all affected
• Reversals of “b” and “d,” numbers or “was” for “saw”
• Visual problems, as the left eye and the right eye do not communicate efficiently
• Poor eye-hand coordination
• Poor handwriting skills, i.e. capitals where they do not belong, letter size and spacing are irregular, and lines are often ignored, although these may have been pointed out to the child many times.
• Poor story writing skills, as creative ideas are processed in the right brain and grammar and punctuation are processed in the left brain
• Poor spelling: there may be reversals of letters in words, there is an extra letter, or a letter is missing (often an “n”, “r” or “l”). The child does not say the word while looking at a picture of a word. This is an example of a survival strategy used by children who can only use one side of the brain at a time.
• Exam blanks

If you or your child’s tutor or teacher observed many of these symptoms, then it is possible your child has a learning problem. Immediately consult a learning and child development specialist for correct diagnosis. Many special education schools can be trusted to help your child learn and develop the necessary skills for a healthy adult life.

Children with learning disabilities benefit more from in-home tutoring than ordinary students can. A trained in-home tutor can address the needs of a child with a learning disability on the educational and emotional level. Specialists and learning therapists can address the medical and practical needs of the child.

Some learning disabilities include:

• Dyslexia: This learning disorder affects the ability to read or perceive printed words. Children with dyslexia usually see words and letters printed backwards. For example, they see the letter “b” as “d” or read words like “on” as “no.” The reason points to left eye dominance, which reads from right to left.

• Dyscalculia: As the name implies, this learning disability results to difficulty in grasping mathematical concepts and impairs problem-solving skills. Most children and adults have difficulty with and anxiety in solving Math problems. Dyscalculia, however, reveals extreme difficulty in understanding the relationship between numbers, the value of money in coins and paper, sequences and instructions, and even spatial information, such as the difference between left and right.

• Dysgraphia: This learning disability involves difficulty in writing. Aside from widespread computer use, lack of awareness of this learning disability makes it difficult to diagnose. Some children just have bad handwriting, but when they tire easily when writing and they often omit certain words in their written sentences, then they likely have dysgraphia.

Children with learning disabilities are just as able bodied as the rest of their peers. They eat the same food and can play sports if they want to. However, they need special methods in teaching to grasp even the simplest concepts and develop the basic reading and writing skills.

These children need more attention, patience and understanding from both their parents and the educators. Some parents prefer to enroll their children in special education classes that require students either to spend the whole day at school or to spend a few hours in class. These parents often prefer to hire a learning specialist or an in-home tutor trained in special education to help their children after school.

An individualized, skill-based approach often succeeds in helping children with learning disabilities where regular classroom instruction fails. By cooperating with special education tutors, parents can help formulate an individualized education program for their child. They identify the tasks a child can or cannot do, and the child’s strengths and weaknesses. By employing the stronger senses and bypassing the disabilities, many children can develop needed skills.