How Does Misdiagnosing LD Adversely Affect A Gifted Child?
Misdiagnosed learning disability is one of the crucial backdrops of society where parents and teachers are unable to identify the problem a child is facing concerning his/her academic performance. Misdiagnosed gifted kids deal with lots of hardships as their gifts remain unknown or unidentified initially, owing to which, the treatment or therapy procedures begin later.
Many parents and teachers have often been seen saying about the inconsistency in a child's academic credibility. Little do they know that the reason behind such a scenario is learning disabilities (LD). Students with learning disabilities are unable to identify similar-looking letters or digits, hence, they cannot spell a word or write it accurately.
It's not just teachers or parents but many doctors, unfortunately, fail to diagnose a kid having special abilities like LD, autism, ADHD, OCD, and so on. A certificate in special education programs enables teachers as well as parents to identify giftedness and learning disabilities in children. Also known as gifted programs, this certification has special teachings strategies and teacher training methodologies and on executing those, gifted students with learning disabilities can be spotted clearly.
In an inclusive classroom, there may be gifted children and special education teachers can categorize these specially-abled children having LD into 3 parts.
- ● Identified as gifted students who have subtle learning disabilities do know how to get a job done and they remain clueless. The expectation is high from them because of their intelligence level and sharp brain.
- ● The second category is unidentified students whose gifts and disabilities are covered by average achievement. These students try extremely hard to deliver consistent performance, whereas their capabilities and intellect constantly work overtime to compensate for undiagnosed learning difficulties.
- ● Students who are being identified as LD kids and are also gifted are most at risk because of the implicit message that often accompanies an LD diagnosis: something is wrong that must be fixed before anything else can happen. Consequently, their talents are put on hold but nurturing their gifts is the best key that can help them to fight against their challenges.
Gifted children and adults are always having their mental state at stake due to both internal characteristics and situational factors. These internal and situational factors can lead to interpersonal and psychological difficulties for gifted children, and subsequently to misdiagnoses and not an optimum level of treatment.
Internal factors: Just like the name suggests an internal factor is what resides in a gifted child's mind. Kids who are affected by these internal factors are quite strong in terms of sentiment and their emotions are too intense to be controlled by either parents or teachers. It can be sibling rivalry, jealousy with someone who's at a powerful status, impatience, high physical restlessness, etc.
Recently, gifted education has also stated that personality is also an internal factor that affects an LD child if not treated timely. Some can be excessively sensitive to taste, smell, listening ability, touch, etc. Besides, these children may cry hysterically while watching a sad event on the evening news, keenly hear fluorescent lights, react vigorously to smells, be extremely stubborn on having the tags removed from their shirts, must touch everything, or are overly reactive to touch in a tactile-defensive manner.
All these traits eventually give rise to anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and things like these.
Situational factors: Intensity, sensitivity, idealism, impatience, questioning the tradition, none of these seem problematic. However, these characteristics and behaviors are being valued unless they happen to occur in a tightly structured classroom, or a highly organized business setting. Sometimes they happen to challenge some cherished tradition, and specially-abled children are the very ones who challenge traditions or the status quo.
It has been observed that many gifted children spend quite a good amount of time of the regular classroom time waiting for others to catch up. Boredom is rampant because of the age tracking in our public schools. Peer relations for gifted children are tedious because of the asynchronous development shown by so many LD kids where their development is not up to the mark concerning various academic, social, and developmental areas, and where their judgment often lags behind their intellect.
Having mentioned these two factors, there is another case that is often overlooked by adults and as a result of which LD is misunderstood and misdiagnosed as well. Poor handwriting is a possible outcome of LD that is not being judged in the initial days. Apart from this, teachers and parents often scold a kid when his/her performance has drastically dropped from 1st semester to the 2nd one. In this case, there is a high chance that the kid is gifted and has LD.
Such misunderstandings and misdiagnosis prevail everywhere but with this special education program, special education teachers can come up with innovative techniques to cater to the needs of these gifted children.
This course is flexible and teachers can learn at their own pace by being at home since it is available in online mode. Teachers who want to associate themselves with special children and provide education services to them can opt for this course. On successful completion, they shall be awarded a globally recognized certificate that is recognized across the globe.
