LD and behavior

[notellin]

I have heard that a LD can look like ADHD, but can someone give me some details? I am referring to a LD without ADHD. Does this mean that a child finds certain material mentally challenging/frustrating to the point that the child exhibits avoidance behavior/habits that are very similar to ADHD behaviors?

This emoticon looks like my son doing math .

[misty]

My daughter has 2 LD's. Of course, she has ADD as well, but I know the LDs have caused much more grief over the years than the ADD.

One of hers is a math LD & yes, basically she came to dread math so much that she'd do ANYTHING to avoid it. Math homework was a nightmare! Tears, fighting to keep her on task & eventually tantrums became the norm.

In school during math class she felt so lost that she stopped even trying & would draw, fidget, look out the window, play with her pencils, etc. I'd say that mimicked ADD inattentive behavior, sometimes she would even look Hyperactive from all the moving around. I remember her teacher telling me she'd make excuses to get up constantly.

Once we finally had her tested & found the math & language arts Ld's , got her an IEP & in the learning support center where they know different ways to teach the subjects, I saw her slowly, steadily change. She's finally learning & its a huge relief for all concerned!


Attention Deficit Disorder and learning disabilities are not synonyms. Students with ADD or ADHD have a hard time paying attention and concentrating (inattention), sitting still (hyperactivity), and controlling impulsive behavior (impulsivity). Though some students with learning disabilities exhibit impulsive or inattentive behaviors, these behaviors are often not exhibited to the same extent as by students with ADD. Some students who have learning disabilities also have ADD, but many students who have learning disabilities do not. In the US, students whose primary problems are with attention may receive special education services without being formally identified as having LD.

I found the above (in blue) statement at the bottom of this page:

www.teachingld.org/understanding/default.htm

The entire site is great & very informative.

[lillian]

Notellin,

My answer to your question is, "Absolutely!" My son has had some fantastic teachers, so I don't want to dwell on the incompetent ones, but man, oh, man, his third grade teacher . I went to have lunch with him one day, and she walked up to the lunchroom table and said in front of me and all of my son's friends, whom he was having lunch with, "You did better in class today, BUT you could read, if you didn't play with your feet." I don't think two wrongs make a right, and I was desperately trying to get my son to stay in school (he was having school refusal, at that point), but I really wanted to say to her, in front of my son and all of his friends, "Or if he could read, he wouldn't play with his feet." She got teacher of the year that year, and she was a ... Oh, totally imcompetent, and the principal loved her. Why? I DO NOT KNOW. She was awful!

Notellin, if you go back and read one of my first posts on ADHDNews, it dealt with this subject. Professionals kept telling me over and over that my son's issues were because of ADHD. In my heart, I believed it was an LD. Now, after years of research and after years of living with my son, I will say that I agree with the ADHD dx, but I think his predominant disability is dyslexia, and his secondary disability is ADHD.

Children with LD's often will do avoidance behaviors, which include behaviors that look like ADHD, when given academic work that gives away their LD. I believe that this is very common behavior for adolescents with writing disabilities. Writing disabilites, unless extremely severe, often are not dxed until later years, so they are diagnosed when peer pressure and hormones are at their hilt. These kids will act up in class or do nothing, in order to hide their disability. I think it is so common with this disability that when I hear of a teenager not doing his/her work and/or continually disrupting the class, the first thing I usually ask a parent is, "How is his writing?" I commonly hear responses like, "It's not great, but he could do it, if he tried," or, "He hates to write, but he can." Recently, I read that students dxed with a Disorder of Written Expression had one of the highest dropout rates of any LD. I'm not surprised because I believe that by the time we catch this disorder, poor behavior being used as avoidance is so engrained in the child that it takes a parent or a professional to intervene and say, "Do you know why you behave this way at school?" in order to treat the behavior from an LD perspective.

[notellin]

Thank you for this input. My neuropsyche seemed to say my child has functional ADHD and that the primary problem is slow cognitive processing. He even mentioned that a LD may show later. (I shared the actual testing numbers with you at some point lillian, and you said it looked like an undiagnosed LD.) Things seem to be settling now, and his behavior problems are mainly during structured learning, which seems like a red flag to me (?). Also there's a pretty big difference between home behavior and school behavior, with the latter being much worse. I guess there's not much I can do at this point except wait and have him re-evaluated at a later date, and watch the academics like a hawk.