Lazy or Learning Disabled? You Decide.

Parents often tell me that their child is lazy, and I always have a problem with this description.  Now research proves that children labeled lazy may in fact have a learning problem.

An Educational Psychologist studied a group of children who were regarded as being lazy by their teachers and their parents. (www.ed.qut.edu.au/users/index.jsp?name=~gilmore#profile)

She found that three-quarters of the children had difficulties with understanding the sounds that make up words and that they also had ‘significant issues’ with attention.  It is no wonder that they had problems of attention when they probably did not understand what was being said to them.

If you have ever tried to listen to someone speaking a foreign language you know how quickly you ‘tune out’ because you have no idea what the person is saying.

The researcher found that half the children had clinical signs of inattention and hyperactivity and others had anxiety, visual perception and fine motor issues.  Eight children had clear signs of dyslexia.

Only three of the 20 children she looked at showed no particular learning problems – but perhaps they had emotional issues, the research did not study that.

So, although this was a small sample, this research goes a long way to justifying my belief that there is no such thing as a lazy child, there are only children with learning difficulties.

If you think that your child is lazy you need to think again.  You need to discover the learning difficulty that is preventing them participating in classroom learning.  And the earlier you do this the better, because……

Lack of identifying learning difficulties leads to problems later in life, even suicide.

If parents (and teachers) don’t identify learning problems early enough children experience multiple failures that undermine their feelings of competence and self esteem.

And a child is unable to learn without self confidence and self esteem.

If you think that your child is lazy, or unmotivated, you need to check out why, what are the learning difficulties that are stopping your child being the eager, happy learner that ll children should be.

And please do it before it is too late!