Non – Verbal Leaning Disability

Introduction

Non – verbal learning disability or disorder is a developmental disability which at many times goes undiagnosed and as a result the individuals suffering from the disorder suffer in silence even though the individuals may often be bright or for the children who may actually be targeted as bright and gifted because of their mature vocabulary, rote memory skills and apparent reading ability although parents can realize early that something is missing in the child.

For the young children in preschools they normally have difficulty in interacting with other children, acquiring self – help skills, they are not physically adept, they are not adaptable and a host of other troublesome problems of little concern, which are not alarming. In their childhood, they bump along through their early elementary school years struggling with their academic demands fairly well, except when their fine motor difficulties gets them underway or when they fail to do simple math symbols and problems like additions and subtractions (Byron, (1993).

As the children gets to upper elementary from lower elementary and begin middle school they are left to handle more tasks on their own and it is at this time that things begin to deteriorate when they get lost, forget to do their home work; they are normally unprepared for class, they cant follow directions easily, struggle with math problems, they are not able to read social studies text book, cannot write an essay, but they continue to be misunderstood both by their teachers and peers when they are normally anxious or angry at most time when they are at home or in school.

The parents and teachers accuse them of being lazy, unruly, rude, and uncooperative any even worse. However, the truth is they are hard working, persistent, goal – oriented and incredibly honest, then, one may ask, what is the problem? Wonderfully they have Non- Verbal Learning Disorder (NLVD) (Edward, 1996).

This is a critical time and it therefore means that if the child is not diagnosed and gets an intervened plan at the time, the cognitive, social and emotional demands of years a head of the child like high school years and beyond can be very overwhelming, however in the recent past, great steps have been made in understanding and treating this disorder. Individuals with this syndrome have emotional and behavioral, physical, and cognitive and academic characteristics which exhibit the disorders.

Cognitive academic

As regards to cognitive and academic, there is an excellent vocabulary and more than typical verbal expression which normally starts at a younger age, exceptional vote memory skills are very common, and they normally mask the disability during early years of education, the individuals miss the bigger picture even though there is excellent close attention to detail individuals might be an early reader or have early reading difficulties but in each case there is generally difficulty with reading comprehension which begins at upper elementary grade in specific the novel material difficulties in math are common, most likely in the area of computation word problems and abstract applications, at the same time concept formation and abstract reasoning might be impaired, lastly there is the likely to be great difficulty n generalizing information and applying learned information to new situations (Edward, (1996).

Physical

The individual has physical awkwardness, which is very common, they generally appears lack coordination and young individual rather has difficulty in learning to ride a bicycle, catch or skit a ball, hop and skip for young children, physical difficulties are more pronounced on the left side of an individuals body the fine motor skills is likely to be impaired there is poor handwriting and laborious and lastly there is spatial perception which are quite very common.

Language and communication

Individuals are very concrete and interpret information quite literally they normally do not progress or benefit from nonverbal communication, body language, facial expressions and tone or voice may be lost on them, individuals are unable to in faith or read between the line and this impacts on both conversation and reading comprehension, individuals generally have poor social skills and they will most likely have trouble of making or keeping friends

Emotional and behavioral

Like in all other likelihoods, individuals have tremendous difficulty adjusting to new situations or they normally change their outline, individuals normally appear to lack common at the same time they appear to be incredibly naïve they have a lot of anxiety or depression which are very common especially at adolescent stage, this problem is very severe at times the individuals have low self – esteem they are normally wit drawn and they may actually become agoraphobic, the incident of suicidal cases is higher than normal with the non – verbal learning disorder population (Foss, 1991).

It is however, important to note that some of those symptoms identified with non- verbal learning disabilities (NVLD) are sometimes similar to those described for other disorders for instance individuals with right hemisphere, dysfunctions, asperser’s syndrome, and sensory-motor deficiencies each of these possesses a number of characteristics which overlap with those of non – verbal learning disability evaluation by the use of neurophysiologist can at many tines assist in differential diagnosis.

For an individual to be refereed a detailed evaluation by a pediatric neurophysiologists to rule in favor of or not or a non – verbal learning disability requires a parent to report symptoms in the three mentioned areas in the development screening and referral inventory (DSRI) deficiencies in other skills, visual – spatial skills and interpersonal skills the parent should refer to the child if at least 3 or 4 items are noticed (Goldstein, 1999).

Intervention

The success or failure of many children with non – verbal learning disability depends on the environment where they are required to function, since it is difficult for them to it is difficult for them to understand the requirements at a given situation, as well as adapting to it, however parents respond is only instinctive, they don’t give it a conscious thought and as such a parent of non – learning disability child may adapt t the home environment to suit the unique needs of the child.

At the same time coping in multiple setting is quite difficult for children leave alone the child’s incapability in managing her home environment, his therefore means the more settings the child is forced to cope up with the less the child is able to manage many of them. Therefore a child has two setting of environment to cope with, home and school.

It necessary it is important to have someone care for him or her after school at home. Therefore proving the right environment both at school and at home is the main task for a parent with a disabled child. But first it is important to understand the disorder and its implications in order for the parent to provide the right environment for the child, the parent should not be fooled by the well developed vocabulary of the child or even the apparent giftedness because we normally make a mistake of equality intelligence with language skill (Harold, 1996).

In education settings the disabled youngster requires a tremendous amount of consistently a highly structural day that is predictable. In preschool and kindergarten the maximum size of children in class should at a maximum of eight children, the idea is to have fewer children in class in addition a teacher should be available all the time and an aid, this will enable them to help the child when she or he is struggling with class work.

As the child progresses through her elementary years it is important to have a relatively small class size and this should continue and as does to need for a classroom aid to be able to assist them when need arises but unfortunately the option sometimes is not available. The disable child is placed in a regular education class. At the sixth and seventh grade in middle school, the traditional educational environment becomes totally overwhelming for a disable child. It is therefore absolutely imperative that the student continues to have the same type of consistent, predictable highly supportive environment that was most required for his or here education.

Because of the child’s social and communication impairment, the child should be supervised during unstructured time, whether he or she is at recess, on the streets before and after school, or eating lunch or super in the cafeteria an aid should be assigned to observe her. If the child is having problems with social interactions an aid should step in and assist him or her. Normally disabled children are targets for bullies and unkind youngsters and therefore the child should be protected from harmful situations at all times (Rourke, 1994).

References
Brumback, R. A., Harper, C. R., & Weinberg, W. A. (1996), Nonverbal learning disabilities, Asperger’s syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder Journal of Child Neurology
Byron, P.R. (1993), Treatment Programme for the Child with NLD, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Edward, H. (1996), When You Worry About the Child You Love: Emotional and Learning Problems in Children, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Foss, J. M. (1991), Nonverbal learning disabilities and remedial interventions, Annals of Dyslexia 41.
Goldstein, D. B. PhD, (1999).The Children’s Nonverbal Learning Disabilities Scale was excerpted from the Developmental Screening and Referral Inventory (DSRI)
Harold, S. K. (1996), It’s Nobody’s Fault, NY: Times Books division of Random House.
Rourke, B. P. (1994). Neuropsychological Assessment of Children with Learning Disabilities: Measurement Issues. In G. Reid Lyons (ed.), Frames of Reference for the Assessment of Learning Disabilities: New Views on Measurement Issues. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brooks.