Disabilities and How to Work With Them

Through no fault of their own, students with disabilities may have learned behaviors that discourage them from maximizing their capabilities. Students with disabilities may experience challenges in the following areas:

• Creating hope for the future
• Taking responsibility for doing all they can for themselves
• Standing up for their own needs

This does not have to be the case.

To help youth take charge of their lives and develop a positive self-image, strive to:

• Emotionally accept youth where they are at as a starting point for growth (this is where the friendship of a mentor can be very helpful).
• Challenge them in a caring way to move beyond their current skill level by seeing their greater potential and by encouraging pursuit of that potential.
• Help youth build on strengths, including academic, personal, creative, and social skills and talents.
• Teach youth to ask for what they need in a specific, concrete way, including asking for disability-related accommodations.
• Teach youth to expect the best from themselves through your friendship, support, and high expectations for them.

Learning More About Disabilities

Everyone has strengths and talents. Everyone has limitations. Learning about strengths and limitations can help your mentee solve problems and achieve goals. Understanding the challenges your mentee faces can help build trust and mentoring effectiveness. If you are interested in learning more about a disability, here are some suggestions:

• Look up the disability in the Getting to Know Disabilities section of this page (see below).
• Visit the Web site titled Special Education Resources on the Internet at <http://seriweb.com/serihome.htm>.
• Search for information about the disability on other Web sites listed in the Related Links section of this Web site. Pay particular attention to Web sites under the Disability-Related category.
• Attend your mentee's Individual Education Plan (IEP) meeting at school.
• Encourage your mentee to take an active role in developing his or her IEP. For further information see A Student's Guide to the IEP, published by the National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities (NICHCY) at http://www.nichcy.org/pubs/stuguide/st1book.htm.

Getting to Know Disabilities

The following is a brief overview of some common disabilities. Yet it should be noted that each person's case is different, and the information offered here is only a brief outline. For further information about disabilities, please see the suggestions under Learning More About Disabilities section of this page (see above).

1. Learning disabilities

What is a learning disability?

A learning disability is a disorder that affects people's ability to either interpret what they see or hear or to link information from different parts of the brain. These limitations can show up in many ways: as specific difficulties with spoken and written language, coordination, self-control, or attention. Such difficulties extend to school work and can impede learning to read, write, or do math.

[National Institutes of Health, 1993]

Contrary to popular misconception, learning disabilities are not a sign of low intelligence. Some extremely intelligent persons have learning disabilities.

What are the types of learning disabilities?

"Learning disabilities" is a broad term that covers a pool of possible causes, symptoms, treatments, and outcomes. Because of this it is difficult to diagnose or to pinpoint the causes. Learning disabilities can be divided up into three broad categories:

• Developmental speech and language disorders
• Academic skills disorders
• "Other," a catch-all that includes certain coordination disorders and learning difficulties not covered by the other terms

Each one of these categories includes a number of more specific disorders.

[National Institutes of Health, 1993]

What causes learning disabilities?

No one knows what causes learning disabilities. There are too many possibilities to pin down the cause of the disability with certainty. A leading theory among scientists is that learning disabilities stem from subtle disturbances in brain structures and functions. It is more important, however, that families of students with learning disabilities not dwell on the causes but rather move forward in finding ways to get the right help.

Developmental Speech and Language Disorders

Speech and language problems are often the earliest indicators of a learning disability. People with developmental speech and language disorders have difficulty producing speech sounds, using spoken language to communicate, or understanding what other people say. Depending on the problems, the specific diagnosis may be:

• Developmental articulation disorder
• Developmental expressive language disorder
• Developmental receptive language disorder

1. Developmental Articulation Disorder
Children with this disorder may have trouble controlling their rate of speech. Or they may lag behind playmates in learning to make speech sounds. Developmental articulation disorders are common. They appear in at least 10% of children younger than age 8. Fortunately, articulation disorders are often outgrown or successfully treated with speech therapy.

2. Developmental Expressive Language Disorder
Some children with language impairments have problems expressing themselves in speech. Their disorder is called, therefore, a developmental expressive language disorder. This disorder can take many forms. For example, a 4-year-old who speaks only in two-word phrases and a 6-year-old who can't answer simple questions both have an expressive language disorder.

3. Developmental Receptive Language Disorder
Some people have trouble understanding certain aspects of speech. There's a toddler who doesn't respond to his name, a preschooler who hands you a bell when you asked for a ball, or a worker who consistently can't follow simple directions. Their hearing is fine, but they can't make sense of certain sounds, words, or sentences they hear. They may even seem inattentive. These people have a receptive language disorder. Because using and understanding speech are strongly related, many people with receptive language disorders also have an expressive language disability. [Of course, in preschoolers, some misuse of sounds, words, or grammar is a normal part of learning to speak. It's only when these problems persist that there is any cause for concern.]

Academic Skills Disorders

Students with academic skills disorders are often years behind their classmates in developing reading, writing, or arithmetic skills. Diagnoses in this category include:

• Developmental reading disorder
• Developmental writing disorder
• Developmental arithmetic disorder

1. Developmental Reading Disorder
This type of disorder, also know as dyslexia, is quite widespread. In fact, reading disabilities affect 2 - 8% of elementary school children. When you think of what is involved in the "three R's" - reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic - it's astounding that most of us do learn them, considering that to read, you must simultaneously:

• Focus attention on the printed marks and control eye movements across the page
• Recognize the sounds associated with letters
• Understand words and grammar
• Build ideas and images
• Compare new ideas to what you already know
• Store ideas in memory

A person can have problems in any of the tasks involved in reading. However, scientists found that a significant number of people with dyslexia share an inability to distinguish or separate the sounds in spoken words. Some children have problems sounding out words, while others have trouble with rhyming games, such as rhyming "cat" with "bat." Yet, scientists have found these skills fundamental to learning to read. Fortunately, remedial reading specialists have developed techniques that can help many children with dyslexia acquire these skills.

However, there is more to reading than recognizing words. If the brain is unable to form images or relate new ideas to those stored in memory, the reader can't understand or remember the new concepts. So other types of reading disabilities can appear in the upper grades when the focus of reading shifts from word identification to comprehension.

2. Developmental Writing Disorder
Writing, too, involves several brain areas and functions. The brain networks for vocabulary, grammar, hand movement, and memory must all be in good working order. So, a developmental writing disorder may result from problems in any of these areas. For example, a child with a writing disability, particularly an expressive language disorder, might be unable to compose complete, grammatical sentences.

3. Developmental Arithmetic Disorder
Arithmetic involves recognizing numbers and symbols, memorizing facts, aligning numbers, and understanding abstract concepts like place value and fractions. Any of these may be difficult for children with developmental arithmetic disorders, also called dyscalculia. Problems with numbers or basic concepts are likely to show up early. Disabilities that appear in the later grades are more often tied to problems in reasoning.

Many aspects of speaking, listening, reading, writing, and arithmetic overlap and build on the same brain capabilities. So, it's not surprising that people can be diagnosed as having more than one area of learning disability. For example, the ability to understand language underlies learning to speak. Therefore, any disorder than hinders the ability to understand language will also interfere with the development of speech, which in turn hinders learning to read and write. A single gap in the brain's operation can disrupt many types of activity.

Other Learning Differences

There are also other categories, such as "motor skills disorders" and "specific developmental disorders not otherwise specified." These diagnoses include delays in acquiring language, academic, and motor skills that can affect the ability to learn, but do not meet the criteria for a specific learning disability. Also included are coordination disorders that can lead to poor penmanship, as well as certain spelling and memory disorders.

[National Institutes of Health, 1993]

2. Mental health disorders

Mental health disorders can interfere in students' abilities to make friends, to relate to adults, and to succeed academically. Some examples of mental health disorders include:

Depressive Disorders

Students with depression often have multiple symptoms including a depressed mood or irritability, difficulty with enjoyment of normally pleasurable activities, lack of appetite or overeating, difficulty sleeping at night or wanting to sleep during the day time, tiredness and low energy, physical slowness or agitation , low self-esteem, difficulty concentrating, and recurrent thoughts of death or suicide. An individual with five of these symptoms lasting for over two weeks has a significant likelihood of having major depression.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Children and adolescents with this problem have a long-standing history (beginning before age seven and generally in very early childhood) of excessive fidgeting, difficulty remaining seated, being easily distracted, having difficulty awaiting their turn in games or group situations, blurting out answers to questions before the questions have been completed, difficulty following instructions, difficulty sustaining their attention, shifting from one uncompleted activity to another, difficulty playing quietly, talking excessively, often interrupting or intruding on others, often not seeming to be listening, often losing things necessary for tasks or activities at school or at home, and being impulsive (thinking without acting, and engaging in potentially dangerous activities without considering possible consequences). If an individual has eight or more of these symptoms, this would strongly suggest Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Anxiety Disorder

There are a number of anxiety disorders that can affect children and adolescents and interfere with their school work, as well as lead to school refusal or truancy. Students with anxiety may have significant social anxiety including significant anxiety about speaking in front of the class. Students who have been traumatized may have post-traumatic anxiety symptoms which interfere with their ability to function in school. Some children and adolescents are extremely avoidant and shy. Some children and adolescents are extremely perfectionistic and compulsive and may also have compulsive behaviors. Some children and adolescents have significant separation anxiety, frequently worrying about harm befalling themselves or caregivers when they are not together with their parents. Some children and adolescents have significant phobias. Some are frequently overanxious, worrying about their competence, future events, etc.

Conduct Disorders

Examples of these behaviors would include stealing, running away from home, verbal threats, challenges to teachers' authority, fire setting, breaking and entering, deliberate destruction of property, cruelty to animals, forcing others into sexual activity, using weapons, initiating physical fights, physical cruelty to others, and truancy.

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