Your Child Has A Learning Disability. So What's Next?

From my Factoidz page: Learning Disabilities was included in the 1975 authorization of the federal law Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) after an organization of parents formed the first Association of Children with Learning Disabilities (Heward, 2009). In the text, Exceptional Children: An Introduction to Special Education, 9th ed., Heward claims since that time the number of children identified as learning disabled has tripled leading to an unending debate regarding the nature of what constitutes true a learning disability. Finding the answers to what is a learning disability is can be a daunting task for the professional and parent. What should be done to insure the student receives the best education possible when a parent suspects a child to have a learning disability?

A common scenario might be the student is struggling in school, maybe refusing to do assigned work, perhaps does the work and constantly forgets to turn it in, or maybe the student is so disruptive in class the teacher is constantly calling home with ill reports. As a parent you wonder what is happening. How did your child go from a happy enthusiastic first grader to a disruptive, school skipping ninth grader? Larry Silver, M.D. and Ruth Spodak, Ph.D. answer these and other questions regarding what options are available for the student and what parents can legally ask for and obtain from public schools in an article found on LDonline. For more see: Your Child Has A Learning Disability. So What's Next?