No I CAN'T -- Yes, You CAN - Building Your Learning Disabled Child's Self Esteem

Reading has always been a struggle for Madison.  It has taken a long time, has been challenging to figure out words, and she just plain has not liked it.  This is all related to her Visual Processing Disorder.  In order to help her with this she has endured Vision Therapy for 2 years--the problem is, she does not recognize the progress she has made.  She has programmed herself to believe that reading is difficult, and will be difficult, regardless of the gains she has made over the past couple of years.  So the question is, how do we reprogram our children to believe that they CAN do something that has been forever difficult and challenging to them?  How do we encourage them to take the risk to forge ahead?  How do we get them to ignore that "bully" in their mind telling them "this has always been difficult, therefor I still can't do it and I don't want to try...I'm just going to fail".

Children with learning disabilities often have low self esteem, self doubt, and experience frustration and failure.  Some tend to believe that they are not in control of their own successes--that luck or fate is the reason for the outcome, not their own hard work.  Or they believe that because it has always been difficult, it will always be difficult, even if testing has shown they have made tremendous growth.  There are many things we can do as parents to help foster self esteem in our children.  Following are some suggestions from the article Building Self Esteem with LD Children:

•        Be empathetic. See the world through your children's eyes.
•        Communicate with respect. Don't interrupt or put them down; answer their questions.
•        Give undivided attention. Children feel loved when we spend one-on-one time with them.
•        Accept and love children for who they are. This will allow them to feel more    secure    in                 reaching out to others and learning how to solve problems.
•        Give children a chance to contribute. This communicates your faith in their abilities and gives         them a  sense of responsibility.
•        Treat mistakes as learning experiences. Children whose parents overreact to mistakes tend              to avoid taking risks, then end up blaming others for their problems.
•        Emphasize their strengths. A sense of accomplishment and pride give children  the confidence to persevere when they face challenges.
•        Let them solve problems and make decisions. Avoid telling children what to do; encourage   them to come up with solutions to problems.
•        Discipline to teach. Do not discipline in a way that intimidates or humiliates your child.

 
However, there are times, even when you have practiced these suggestions since your child's first breath, that their confidence in themselves still falters, even when they have overcome some of their challenges and now have skills to perform tasks that were previously more difficult.  For example, as I mentioned before, reading has always been difficult for my daughter, however, through vision therapy, tutoring, and long hours of help from home (I am a former elementary school teacher) she has made tremendous progress, but still looks at books that she is more than capable of reading and truly feels that it will be too difficult.  She refuses to even give them a chance.  That little voice in her head, that "bully", is telling her, "I know this is hard, I CAN'T do this."  No one can convince her that she can except herself.  She has to reprogram her brain.  There are steps that we can take to help her do this, which we have begun.  Here are some ideas:

• Have your child "talk back" to the "bully" voice in their mind, telling it  "STOP, yes I can do this!"
• Have your child remember a time in the past they thought they couldn't do something, but when they tried, they were successful.
• When your child gets worked up, have them take a step away from the situation, clear their mind, then return to it a few minutes later.
• Have your child recall an activity that they do well, but had to work hard to achieve.  Relate this to the challenge at hand.

Each child  is different and requires different methods of encouragement or intervention.  A parent (and/or teacher) needs to find what works best for the individual child.  What's important is that we listen to our children and help them build their self esteem and realize their full capabilities.