My Child Has a Diagnosis, Now What?

Receiving a diagnosis can be a positive step in helping a child succeed and improve their overall performance. There is a myriad of diagnosis — ADHD, Dyslexia, Autism, Dysgraphia, Executive Function Disorder, Auditory Processing Disorder, TBI, to name a few.

If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with a learning disability, what are the best strategies to help?

These strategies fall into two main categories – accommodations and/or addressing the root cause.

Accommodations

Accommodations are common and these strategies often show up as IEPs, 504 plans and medication. 

For example, if your child has been diagnosed with ADHD, medication is the most common “treatment”.  In addition, many students with ADHD have an IEP that provides more time to complete tasks (like tests or homework), the ability to sit in a less distracting area of the classroom or even frequent breaks.

For those with dyslexia, they are often provided 1-on-1 reading help and much of the academic content is read to them to help them perform.  

Root Cause

Any diagnosis like ADHD or dyslexia, is a label applied to certain cognitive profiles.  For example, recent research published in the Journal of Mental Health and Clinical Psychology (https://youtu.be/jXICrc9f9Ek?si=hGfV7hwP0zi24cAO) shows that, for those diagnoses with ADHD, the most common low skills are not actually attention, but weaknesses in areas like processing speed and memory. 

What does this mean for those seeking ADHD help?  Accommodations can be helpful, but strategies like ADHD medication or ADHD coaching are addressing the symptoms, not the root cause.  If the focus is solely on ADHD accommodations, a critical component is missing.

For example, for those with ADHD, per the cited research, it is likely processing speed is a low skill.  When an individual is unable to process at the required level, it results in their brain having to work much harder than need be.  The end result is that this individual then struggles to maintain this high level of energy and zones out or gets easily distracted.  The symptom is a lack of attention, but the root cause in this case is low processing speed.  

For those with dyslexia, it is common that core cognitive skills like auditory processing, memory and visual processing are weak.   Auditory processing weaknesses result in an inability to process and blend sounds efficiently.  Therefore, decoding and sounding out words is difficult.  

Memory is critical to reading (and reading comprehension) as the majority of our language consists of non-phonetic words like “said” or “laugh”.  These words cannot be sounded out, only memorized.  Memory weaknesses would also result in struggles with sight words.  

Accommodations can be helpful, but the key to seeing significant improvements in these areas is to address the root cause.

At LearningRx, this is our focus.  Our goal is to find the learner beneath the label. The academic performance of any child with a diagnosis can be improved with cognitive skills training as we are addressing the root cause.  

We have a lot of data and experience!  To date, we have trained over 7,500 students diagnosed with ADHD and over 3,000 students diagnosed with dyslexia.  We have also worked with thousands of students diagnosed with autism, TBI, FASD, dysgraphia, etc. 

Because our training is 1-on-1 with the same trainer, every program is individualized to each student.  After all, not all kids are the same and require individualized attention.

If you are unsure how to help your child if they have been diagnosed with ADHD, dyslexia or a different “label, do not fear.  LearningRx can help.

The first step is to contact the Eagan location to schedule an initial assessment.  The assessment is currently $100 off (only $99) and will identify the root cause as to how your child’s diagnosis is manifesting, and more importantly, how to improve their abilities.