Learning Disabilities and Life Stories

What is dyslexia and how is it assessed in adults? What is the most appropriate training for those who work with dyslexic people? This comprehensive guide is for professionals working with adults with dyslexia in the learning and working environment. It uses practical definitions and offers advice that can be understood by professionals and employers with little or no previous understanding of dyslexia.

Cutting edge scientific research has shown that exposure to the right kind of environment during the first years of life actually affects the physical structure of a child’s brain, vastly increasing the number of neuron branches—the “magic trees of the mind”—that help us to learn, think, and remember.

This book was written by a leading expert in the field for people of all backgrounds and abilities and will help readers to master complex organisational skills, deal with a large workload and cope with the demands of deadlines. It also shows how to improve confidence, deal with stress, and build on the creative talent that many dyslexics possess.

Currently, only about 50% of American youths live in traditional two-parent, first-marriage families. This fact, combined with often bleak economic and social realities, creates the backdrop of interactions between families, children, and schools are examined in this probing volume. Answering a need for evaluative research in this area of increasing public interest, the contributors build a model for evaluation, focusing on the dynamics of family-school connections. How is school achievement influenced by parent-child interactions and the family environment? How do school, family, community, and peer-group connections affect early adolescents? What is the family’s role in the success of learning-disabled youth or in school truancy? What effect does parental discord and divorce have on a child’s learning?

These questions, as well as proposals for intervention and prevention, create the crux of this book designed to inform and motivate readers to respond to one of our country’s most fundamental social concerns. Vital reading for everyone who wants to better understand child-school-community interaction, this book especially warrants reading by students, researchers, and other professionals in developmental psychology, family studies, psychology, and social work.

Samantha Abeel couldn’t tell time, remember her locker combination, or count out change at a checkout counter — and she was in seventh grade. For a straight-A student like Samantha, problems like these made no sense. She dreaded school, and began having anxiety attacks. In her thirteenth winter, she found the courage to confront her problems — and was diagnosed with a learning disability. Slowly, Samantha’s life began to change again. She discovered that she was stronger than she’d ever thought possible — and that sometimes, when things look bleakest, hope is closer than you think.

This book is designed to help recreation leaders better understand individuals with learning disabilities in order that they may better implement quality leisure experiences. The book describes in detail characteristics of various learning disabilities; the instruments used to diagnose learning disabilities; self-awareness of a learning disabled in regard to learning, living, and leisure; the benefits of leisure to a learning disabled individual; and possible modifications needed in the delivery of recreation and leisure services to these individuals. Packed with helpful appendices and suggestions, it sheds new light on helping create quality leisure experiences for all individuals.