School-age children
Learning disorders.
-
«His teachers keep telling me my son makes so many spelling mistakes. I've tried helping him with dictation at home, but nothing's changed at school.»
-
«My little boy hates books. He reads slowly but understands perfectly well what he reads, yet faced with a wall of words he'll come up with anything to avoid it: sometimes he gets a tummy ache, sometimes he cries, other times he starts playing in the hope that I'll forget about the homework. How can I help him?»
-
«Times tables are our nightmare. We go over them again and again, but she just can't memorise them, and mental maths is a huge struggle too. Can you help us?»
More often than not, the first contact begins like this.
Why it happens
What I work on.
Specific learning disorders, known in Italy as DSA, affect reading, writing and arithmetic in a child whose intelligence is within the normal range. They have nothing to do with laziness.
-
Dyslexia
Reading is slow, effortful or inaccurate. It takes far more out of the child than is visible from the outside.
-
Dysorthography
The same mistakes keep cropping up in writing, even after a great deal of practice.
-
Dysgraphia
The physical act of handwriting stays laborious and the writing hard to read, even with plenty of effort.
-
Dyscalculia
Numbers, arithmetic and a sense of quantity remain difficult to handle.
-
Study skills
Beyond the assessment, we work on how to study: assistive tools, strategies, independence.
How the assessment works.
A learning assessment is about understanding how your child learns, not just where they struggle.
-
First contact
You tell me what's worrying you, your child's age, what the school or the paediatrician has noticed. Together we work out whether an assessment makes sense, with no obligation.
-
Shared assessment
I observe closely, over one or more appointments, without rushing. I look at how your child communicates, how they play, how they're doing. You're part of the process, not a bystander.
-
Feedback
I explain what I've seen in plain language, with no jargon. No labels thrown about: just an honest picture and what we can do with it.
-
Tailored therapy path
If a course of therapy is needed, we build it around the person, with shared goals that we review as we go. Never a package decided in advance.
The assessment usually takes around three appointments. When needed, I draw on the psychologist in my network for cognitive evaluations.
An image I often use
A short-sighted person's glasses.
Think of someone who is short-sighted. Without glasses they struggle to read, to drive, to get through the day. With glasses on they don't become any less short-sighted, but they can do everything everyone else does. Glasses don't cure, they make things simpler.
For a child with a learning disorder it's the same: the multiplication grid, the letter chart, the audiobook, the mind map are their glasses. Compensatory tools that let them study independently, without always having to rely on someone to re-read or dictate to them.
The aim isn't to erase the difficulty, but to move it out of the spotlight. The child learns, and learns with their own mind. From there, their self-esteem grows too.
When an assessment makes sense.
Often it's school that notices first. If some of these signs ring true for you, it's worth taking a calm, careful look.
- Reads very slowly, skips lines or mixes up words
- Writes with the same recurring mistakes, despite plenty of practice
- Numbers and arithmetic remain a constant stumbling block
- Gets through homework with disproportionate effort and time
- School has mentioned a possible learning disorder or recommended an assessment
What we mean, exactly
Specific, or part of a broader picture.
SLDs are called specific when they appear in the absence of any cognitive, sensory or motor deficit, and despite adequate schooling. These are bright children who learn differently, and who find reading, writing or arithmetic a disproportionate struggle.
The first assessment falls to a multidisciplinary team, which builds up the child's cognitive profile, pinpoints where academic skills break down and indicates whether it makes sense to set up speech and language training or support from an SLD tutor.
An important step is understanding the level of severity. If we're dealing with a vulnerability, targeted strengthening is usually enough to reach automaticity. If we're dealing with a genuine disorder, compensatory tools are needed, and sometimes exemption measures: a lighter workload, longer time in tests, the use of a single typeface, less reading to get through.
Not all learning difficulties are specific. Sometimes the child's cognitive profile and communicative aspects need looking at too, because the picture can be broader than it first appears.
The part that often gets forgotten
What the child feels, inside.
A child with a learning disorder is as bright as their classmates, and they know it. But at school they go slower, struggle more, and get things wrong where others don't. From the outside they can seem unwilling or inattentive. On the inside, that isn't what's going on.
Often the children who come to me have started to hate books, to invent a tummy ache before homework, to shut down in front of a page of maths. It's the shape their frustration takes: better not to try than to try and feel they're getting it wrong.
When the child gets the right tools, that frustration gradually melts away. Curiosity comes back, and with curiosity, self-esteem too.
How long a course of therapy lasts.
I don't work with fixed packages of sessions decided in advance, and you won't find a price list on this site. How long it takes depends on the person and on the goals we set together: an assessment may be wrapped up in a single appointment, while a course of therapy might last a few months or support a child's development over a longer period. No two journeys are alike, and we recalibrate ours as we go.
What we can do, as adults.
Learning disorders aren't cured: they're compensated for, worked around, accepted. We adults can give the child the tools to study independently, lighten the load where needed and protect their self-esteem. From there on, it's the child who surprises us, in their own way.