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Mental Health

Life Success Attributes for Children with Learning Disabilities: Self-Awareness

Introduction

The Frostig Center in Pasadena, California conducted a twenty-year longitudinal study into attributes that might predict life success for children with learning disabilities. Their fundamental question was “What factors contribute to success for individuals with learning disabilities?” Success was broadly defined to include quality friendships, healthy family relations, positive self-esteem, job satisfaction, physical and mental health, financial independence, spiritual fulfillment, and an overall sense of meaning in life. Their research revealed six life success attributes: 1) self-awareness, 2) proactivity, 3) perseverance, 4) goal-setting, 5) presence and use of support systems, and 6) emotional coping strategies. The research also indicated these six attributes might have a greater influence on life success than even such factors as academic achievement, socio-economic status, gender, and even intelligence quotient (IQ). This “information sheet” explores the first of these attributes and suggests strategies for development.

What is Self-Awareness?

Individuals with self-awareness understand and accept who they are. They understand and accept their learning disability and are realistic about the difficulties and limitations they face on a daily basis. They speak of these challenges openly and honestly. They have learned to “compartmentalize” the difficulties and view their learning disability as only one part of their life. Most important, they do not allow their learning challenges to define who they are. Instead, they come to view themselves in terms of their talents and strengths. Successful adults find careers that are a “best fit” for their strengths and abilities.

What are Some Strategies for Developing Self-Awareness?

1. Assist your child in developing a “Victory List” of talents, strengths, and abilities. Start with a goal of twenty characteristics and allow the list to grow with your child. Post this list in one or more prominent places in the house including the refrigerator and below the light switch in their room. Update often!

2. Go beyond the “learning disability” label and ensure your child understands the specific challenges of their learning disability. There are scores of learning challenges that fall under the term “learning disability” including processing, integration, and motor problems of numerous types. Your opportunity is to explain or have someone else explain to your child the specifics related to their learning issues. Once the “mystery” is removed from these challenges, begin linking specific strategies to each that allow for remediation, compensation, or accommodation.

3. Help your child move from a “What is wrong with me?” mindset to a “Who am I?” mindset by exploring the many aspects of their personality. Use the C.I.T.E. Learning Styles Inventory to identify primary and secondary learning styles. Use Gardner and Armstrong’s work on multiple intelligences to assist your child in identifying their unique intelligence profile. Use Gallup’s Strengthsquest to identify their top five signature strengths. Use Cynthia Tobias’ work in Every Child Can Succeed to understand the characteristics of a “concrete-random” learner. These tools and others like them allow your child to understand and focus on their wide array of strengths and abilities.

4. Allow your child to identify and develop their talents and gifts. Realize these talents might be similar to your own or incredibly dissimilar. They might include talent in the musical, art, dramatic, or “build-it and fix-it” realms. They might include the gifts of intuition, imagination, creativity, and divergent thinking. Bob Brooks, the noted authority on self-esteem, encourages parents to view these talents and gifts as “Islands of Competence” that help children view themselves in terms of competence instead of incompetence. One note of caution regarding the exploring of talents and gifts - expect waxing and waning of interests. It seems to be often associated with the LD profile.

5. Involve your child in IEP meetings or conferences discussing their challenges. No one likes being “talked about” behind closed doors. Make these meetings “child-centered” by utilizing paraphrasing and answering their questions. The key question is “What is the best age to begin this participation?” Introduce the idea of participation to your child sometime during the mid-elementary years and ask them to let you know when they are ready to participate.

6. Use strengths when creating compensation strategies. One example of this strategy is the pairing of modalities. If your child is a kinesthetic or experiential learner, then ensure there is touch or movement as part of a reading task or verbal recitation. If your child is an auditory learner, then pair the reading of a history chapter with the listening of the same material by securing a auditory copy of their text from Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (www.rfbd.org) or a similar resource.

7. Involve your child when designing any strategy. Rick Lavoie, a noted authority on learning disabilities, offers this counsel, “A child is either an architect or a demolition expert.” Either they are involved with creating and personalizing a strategy or they look for ways to ensure its failure. Ownership is one key to the success of any strategy.

8. Develop patience - in yourself and in your child. Individuals with learning disabilities are often delayed in one or more major life area (cognitive, social, emotional, etc) by as much as one-third of their chronological age. For example, a fifteen-year old might be exhibiting the social behaviors of a child between the ages of ten or fourteen. The challenges related to such “immaturity” are obvious. A key to dealing with such situations is your reaction. In the end, patience is the only helpful response to this developmental issue. Maturation will come with time. All of the pushing, prodding, yelling, and anxiety in the world will not speed the process. Your willingness to demonstrate patience might even help your child to develop the same. They are embarrassed and frustrated by this developmental lag more often is than you realize.

LDA of America Mental Health Committee 2009