Children with Learning Difficulties

Causes of Learning Problems in Children

Some children are unable to learn as much as others due to a number of factors including the following:

1. Physical Handicaps

When a child is physically handicapped, he would find it difficult to apply himself fully to the learning situation. Physical handicaps take many forms including hearing and sight difficulties.

If a child does not hear properly, or does not hear at all, your message will not reach him. As a result, he cannot respond or make a feedback to show that he has had some experiences. Sometimes, you will observe that a pupil is always restless or looking very straight into your face in an attempt to hear what you are saying. There could be others whose parents would be courageous enough to come to tell you that their child is hard at learning. Another sign could be for the child to always turn his ear to the direction where the sound or message is coming from. If they are unfortunate not to have heard you, learning will fail to take place as expected. Another aspect of this is sight difficulty. A child may find it difficult to see what is too near to him. Under this condition, if such a child is seated in front of the class, he is less likely to see what is written on the chalkboard of white board. You remember that the purpose boards is to communicate. If the child cannot see what is written, communication will break down and learning cannot be effective. The same holds for a child who can only see things which are near but cannot see those at a distance. Thus, if he is seated at the back of the class, he will find it difficult to receive your message.

2. Dependence

As a result of the way a child has been brought up in the home, he may grow up to remain dependant on others in whatever he does. If he has been too petted pampered at home, there is tendency that he would always want someone to do a number of things for him. In the classroom situation, he may find learning difficult because he has never learnt to apply himself or use his personal effort to solve problems. This is rather common in the African tradition whereby if one happens to be the only child of the parents, last born of the family or health wisely challenged, he is over-pampered and hardly allowed to do a number of things on his own. In the classroom, such a child would not put in efforts to learn. In fact, trying to learn means a new life to him which he has to adapt to since he does not possess the needed capabilities, desires and attitudes to be initiative, he would normally find learning difficult. At this stage, he does not have confidence in his ability to achieve. Parents need to be careful here and teachers should also define best approaches to encounter this.

3. Lack of Attention and Concentration

If a child is not comfortable and well-fed at home, he may not be able to give the need attention and concentration for classroom learning. A hungry pupil is likely to be ill-looking and restless in the class. While you are teaching, he is more concerned with other problems and needs than the need to learn.

Similarly, if the child does not like you as the teacher because you fail to show love or fairness to him, that hatred may be extended to your lessons. He is in the class so as to avoid being punished and not for purpose of learning. In this case, your message would not get to him and learning would not occur as expected.

Inattention may be caused by emotional problems such as insecurity at home due to broken home or harsh treatment at home. The later brings about anxiety and depression which are hindrances to mind settlement in the classroom. Parents play a great role in creating enabling environment at home which contributes a lot to learning.

4. Absenteeism and Lateness

A child that is constantly absent from class work is likely to have some learning problems. It has been pointed out that learning proceeds in predetermined sequence and in stages. If one stage is jumped, a problem will be created. A child that is absent always misses the trend of the lesson sequence and finds it difficult to learn. For example, if a child was absent when “Conjugation of verbs” was taught, he would find it difficult to cope when sentences construction is taught. This is because he does not possess the basic ideas for sentence constructions.

A child's absenteeism may be due to a number of factors including illness, accidental death of relations, domestic work, parent willingness to retain him at home unnecessarily, lack of school materials like books, and failure of parents to pay schools fees. Lateness has the same effect as absenteeism.

5. Mental Retardation

Learning becomes a problem for a child when he is mentally retarded, that is, if his brain is naturally not developed to facilitate learning. Brain needs to reach full development stage before learning could be appreciated. Mental retardation can be shown in many ways. A child may find it difficult to recognize objects, letters of the alphabets, or numbers or associate object or even remember what he has early learnt. These arise because the parts of the brain which co-ordinate learning and memory are different. Mental retardation may be due to early childhood events such a prolonged convulsion, epilepsy, accidental falls and even dangerous drugs taken by the mother during pregnancy. It could also be due to natural malformation of the appropriate organs of the body, that is, where they are not well formed just as some people are born with twisted limbs.

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