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When is it a learning disability?

Here's a rough guide to what constitutes an LD, and how to get kids the help they need

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Originally published in Today's Parent April 2009

Whenever the teacher asked a question, Kyra Hope was always the first in her grade-one class to shoot her hand up with the right answer. But her reading was laboured and her writing virtually non-existent; she started falling behind. Her private school recommended a $2,500 assessment for learning disabilities (LDs). The psychologist’s verdict: Kyra was a bright, sociable and engaging child with no LDs. Yet Kyra continued to struggle. Her parents transferred her to a public school, but the problems persisted.

Kyra’s mother, Belinda, wasn’t willing to wait up to two years for a publicly funded assessment. She paid another $2,500 for a second assessment, by another private psychologist. This brought a radically different diagnosis: LDs severe enough to warrant special accommodation. Now in a tiny class of seven with two teachers (one with an LD herself) in a public school in Richmond Hill, Ont., eight-year-old Kyra is happier than she’s been in some time. The third-grader says proudly, “Today at school, I read a book and only made one mistake.” Her mom, meanwhile, is keeping her fingers crossed.

Learning disabilities affect how kids perceive, think, remember, understand or use verbal or non-verbal information. They are caused by genetic or neurobiological factors, including injury and exposure to toxic heavy metals, such as lead. (The Learning Disabilities Association of Canada, or LDAC, considers attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to be a distinct disorder and not an LD, although the two conditions can coexist: About one-third of kids with LDs also have ADHD.)

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