How to Help Your Child with Language Based Learning Disabilities

I’m not new to parenting or teaching kids with language-based learning disabilities, but the term itself is relatively new. When my first child to get diagnosed got his form evaluation many years ago the clinical term was NSLD or nonspecific learning disability. It was an umbrella term. It could mean lots of things. How do you help your child when learning isn’t easy?

Support for our child with dyslexia

We were given a list of possible interventions that were unhelpful at best and hurtful at worst. Sent on our way. At that time we were dealing with the public school system, who refused services and their only intervention was to have him repeat a grade.

The most helpful thing from the educational psychologist was that repeating a grade wouldn’t address his problems or help him.

He needed additional support. We came back to homeschooling.

We (as in everyone) are learning so much about this bundle of learning and thinking differences known as language-based learning disabilities that service providers are struggling to keep up. This term includes dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, executive function disorders, and more.

What that means is the places we are going for support might not be helping you with evidence-based methods because we are still learning. That has been our experience on this path. Many of the attempts to help our son read with professionals were a waste of time and money and just added to his own frustration.

Looking for new information on language-based learning disabilities

Now we know more, but that doesn’t change the past. I’ve been looking for ways to change the path we’ve been on. This spring we worried if we were failing our kids and considered putting them back into public school, but it just didn’t feel right. The school to prison pipeline screaming in the back of my head.

We decided to spend some time reading and thinking about what is best for them. Being a trained teacher, I decided a little professional development was in order and started looking for books and blogs to help me help them.

I recently got the chance to read a book, Helping Your Child with Language-Based Learning Disabilities, that I’m excited to share with you. I was given this book for free and compensated for my time to review it. The opinions shared are honest and I was not required to provide a positive review.

This book helped me understand more of what it was like to have these learning differences and how to create a supportive environment for my kids to learn in.

Relationships first approach

The author, Daniel Franklin, Ph.D. wrote the book in a very readable format that focuses on relationship-based instruction and a supportive teaching environment. These ideas are not thrown around as buzz words for educators.

He writes from personal experience as both a person that grew up dealing with the impact language-based learning disabilities had on his own childhood and academic progress and a person that is well educated and has 30 years of personal experience working with kids as an intervention specialist to help provide the support these kids needs in order to reach their full potential.

Impactful is not a strong enough word to describe my experience with this book.

I have to be honest and say that parenting kids that are wired differently than you are can be quite the challenge. Helping Your Child with Language-Based Learning Disabilities helped me step out of my frustration and view the “quirks” of my differently wired kids as just part of who they are rather than something to be fixed.

I had to read slowly because I had moments of guilt and tears reading this book. Then I would regroup knowing that we can only do better when we know better. In one particularly moving portion, Dr. Franklin writes, “Your child’s capacities are developing on a timeline that is unique to him or her. Forcing children to do something they are not ready to do diminishes their self-worth”.

Check out this video to learn more about Dr. Franklin and his approach.

My new “first reading” for parents searching for how to help their kids with learning disabilities

I would suggest this book as the first book to reading following a diagnosis. I wish this book, Helping Your Child with Language-Based Learning Disabilities, had been available when we first started.

He has a companion site with printables to help you use the book to the most advantage for you and your kids. It is written for parents with kids in school, but can easily be adapted for homeschoolers. This can be the first step in not only helping your child succeed academically but healing wounds in your relationship that might have resulted based on a misunderstanding.

This book was like someone pulling me out of the water. Dr Franklin wrote, “Receiving assistance is the basis of a strong, healthy, collaborative relationship between parent and child.” I think that is true for any relationship.

Asking for help can be incredibly vulnerable, but it also the place where we can make a connection. This book has helped me change my viewpoint on how to help my kids and I’m seeing the differences in our relationship and academics already. We are focusing on strengths and relationships first.