Learning disabilities have nothing to do with intelligence. Children who have learning disabilities but who are gifted need special attention from the school system.
The short and simple answer is, yes, of course! A learning disability does not in any way affect a child's intellectual capacity, although often children who are mentally challenged also have learning disabilities as well.
But just because a learning disability is present doesn't mean your child has any other mental disability. In fact, with certain developmental disorders such as Asperger's Syndrome, children are often uniquely gifted in one or more learning areas.
The challenges you face are to convince the school system that your child is eligible for programs to treat the disability even though his or her IQ scores would seem to rule that out; and to find ways to help your child's intellect continue to grow while compensating for the learning disability and keeping him or her from becoming frustrated.
Battling the School System
If you're having difficulty getting the school system to acknowledge that your child is learning disabled despite his intellect, the U.S. Department of Education is on your side. According to a letter sent to a North Carolina school system in 1995, a child's eligibility for special education is to be based on his or her own measured intellectual ability versus academic achievement. This letter is a powerful weapon in your arsenal; if your child has tested at a much higher intellectual level than his or her grades would seem to suggest, you can and should go to your school and fight for special education.
What does this really mean for you? It means if your bright child is performing at a high level at school with no special assistance like tutoring, extra time, or seeming to work harder than other children in the classroom, there's nothing to worry about. But if you have a child who performs much lower than their IQ would suggest their capabilities are; or if you have a child who has to work much harder than other children at his or her grade level, you are probably eligible for special education.
Special education is not for stupid kids. Instead, it's designed for children who have difficulty learning in traditional classroom environments, or with traditional learning tools. Dyslexia, for instance, is a learning disability, but dyslexic children are as smart as or smarter than their peers, and are often much more creative in many ways. Children who are AD/HD have trouble settling down to learn; whether you choose to use Ritalin to help control their behavior or not, the school system is liable to assist you with his or her educational needs.
Identifying a Learning Disabled/Gifted (LD/G Child
What do you do when a child's learning disability is such that he or she can't take traditional IQ tests? I have this problem. My two youngest children, after many years of struggle, have both recently been diagnosed as mildly autistic. Damage has already been done; as members of a military family moving from school system to school system, they have both been targeted as troublemakers, lazy students, or stupid, and they've been largely sidelined, despite my efforts to get help for them, by overburdened school systems.
Our most recent move was to Connecticut, where the educational system focuses on small classrooms and high investment in individual learning; this has made a real difference But neither of my sons could perform well when given an IQ test; one of them had perfect scores on the math, pattern recognition, and memory sections, but scored zeroes on reading comprehension and other verbal sections because he didn't want to do it. The other scored consistently low because he refused to do the test the way the administrator wanted it done.
Because a gifted child can make up intellectually for learning disabilities enough to appear normal, and because a learning disability can inhibit giftedness from being apparent, identification of a learning disabled/gifted child can be particularly difficult. Most LD/G children show giftedness in one or more of five specific areas: 1) oral language; 2) memory; 3) problem-solving skills; 4) curiosity and drive to know and understand; and 5) creativity. Thinking and reasoning processes are generally not impaired, but there may be communication difficulties (oral or written, and in either direction - understanding you or expressing themselves). Mechanics involved in writing or reading, or in mathematical computation or completing academic tasks such as writing an essay, often prove difficult for LD/G children.
They often show weaknesses such as poor handwriting, poor spelling, a lack of organizational ability, an inability to form normal social relationships, and difficulty in employing systematic strategies for solving problems. Parents and teachers both often describe them as "lacking common sense." The bright child that sits in the corner, socially isolated, may be LD/G; or the child that performs as the witty class clown but consistently flunks tests may be LD/G.
If you suspect a child is LD/G, you can confirm this through a combination of strategies:
1) multi- dimensional approaches to assess strengths and weaknesses,
2) use of the WISC-R, (administered by your child's school)
3) academic testing to determine discrepancies between performance and potential,
4) data obtained from teachers and parents, and
5) interviews with the students.
This identification process should be performed by an academic professional such as a school psychologist, or by your child's therapist.
Have confidence in yourself as a parent. You know your child better than anyone else does, and you know how to fight for him. If you think he needs a special accomodation for testing, trust that you are right, and fight for that accomodation.
Support Groups
It's a lot of work to ensure your child is included in the right educational programs for him or her. I work a full-time job while I'm building my writing career, and my husband is sometimes out to sea, leaving me to care for the house, two active developmentally-challenged children, and two effectively full-time jobs. That's a lot of work!
But there are support groups out there to help you, either locally or online. Support groups aren't there for you to cry on shoulders or complain; instead, they exist to help you locate resources for your child with the assistance and caring of people who've been through what you're going through.
Once you have a diagnosis of your child's learning disability, go online and seek out an answer to your questions. A good place to start is with LD Online, a clearinghouse of resources related to learning disabilities; their website can direct you to general learning disability resources as well as resources directed at specific learning disabilities.
Home Schooling
You can fight in court to have the school provide the services it's legally required to provide, but that takes years - years during which your child is not getting the academic services he or she desperately needs during early academic years. If you live in an area where your school system is underfunded and cannot provide the resources your child needs, home schooling may be your only timely option. Due to the level of time and resources home schooling requires of at least one parent, this is an option you should enter into only after careful consideration.
If you think this is an option for you, you will need to be aware of the legal requirements, of where to acquire curricula to teach from, of how home schooling may affect your child, and how to set benchmarks to make sure your child isn't falling behind in any area. There are some great resources online to help you with home schooling. In some areas, there are organizations, often through churches, that can give you guidance when looking for currucula to homeschool your children.
Home schooling is an immense and challenging job, and not everyone is able to do it; if you can't, you should not feel guilty. If, however, you choose this as your route to your child's education, there are a few things to remember.
First, you'll be responsible for ensuring he or she keeps up with children of their grade level. This includes administration of appropriate tests. Second, you need to ensure that your child doesn't suffer socially. Schools are as much social training grounds as they are educational institutions. Homeschooled children should be involved in social activities through church, Boy or Girl Scouts, play groups, or other organized activities that ensure they have social contact with boys and girls of their age.
You will be responsible for the structure the school could not provide. This is labor-intensive. Your child may need one-on-one help and drilling in specific areas, or he or she may need the freedom to explore, but your help in assimilating what has been learned. A bright child can be a challenge when he or she is free to explore; your challenge may be to keep up with them intellectually.
Lastly, you should be aware that the money allotted to your child's school will not revert to you to help you homeschool. In other words, you are completely on your own financially. Schools are not required to provide you with curricula for home schooling, though they do have an obligation to let you know the benchmarks required by the state for child education.
Your Child's Best Interests
Without some sort of intervention, your LD/G child is likely to suffer from negative self-image. How frustrating must it be to be able to think at a high level, yet not be able to complete specific simple tasks? And how terrible it must be to know the children around them can perform academic and other tasks easily, yet to not be able to perform them oneself. LD/G children often are perfectionists, frustrated easily by small failures that they feel they should not have had.
Academic performance is not always about "trying harder;" you would not expect a child in a wheelchair to participate in most sports, despite good health outside of the lack of ability to walk. Similarly, LD/G children are not capable of all academic tasks without extra help. By intervening, you save your child from that sense of failure, and give him or her the opportunity to grow intellectually that the school system, without intervention, could not or would not give him.
Ultimately, the responsibility for your child's education falls on you. If you don't push the school systems, particularly in areas where they are chronically underfunded such as the South, you will find your child ignored or shunted aside in school. And failing in school has serious consequences on a child's self-esteem, warranted or not.
If you suspect that your learning-disabled child is very bright, or that your child who performs at an average level is capable of much more with special education provided by the school systems, you should take action. Schools have resources to help you, but you must initiate action yourself.
