Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

Yes. His thinking may cause him to quit, or rebel, or ignore what’s taught. This undermines learning and the growth of self-regulation, so important for independent functioning.

Because emotions and actions are often driven by conscious thoughts, we’ll emphasize some of the thought processes involved with self-regulation. But first we’ll define self-regulation, a concept that schools often ignore at the peril of children with reading disabilities. Then we’ll discuss the consequences of two common thinking patterns. Finally we’ll recommend three books to help you help your child.

Self-Regulation

Ormrod (2003, p. G-6) defines self-regulation as the child’s ability to set standards and goals and engage in the thinking and behaviors needed to achieve them. In other words, if your child wants to write what he considers a “really good paragraph,” he has to think about and engage in the behaviors needed to produce this kind of paragraph. These include reading and learning enough about the topic, figuring out what he wants to say, organizing his information, setting aside adequate time to write it, writing his first draft, reading it aloud, revising and editing it until it meets his standards, formatting it, and in some cases, sharing it with his peers. Without the ability to self-regulate, he could not independently write a good paragraph. Clearly, the self-regulation of complex tasks is critical for independent functioning and personal success.

Typical Patterns of Thinking

To learn to self-regulate—to establish goals, plan how to achieve them, execute the plan, and overcome unexpected problems—children need to believe they have the ability to succeed. Generally, they need to believe that if they make a moderate effort, they will succeed.

Typically, this pattern of thinking is true of good readers. Good readers think they’re effective readers. They’re confident in their ability to read. This strengthens their motivation to read, which helps make them better readers.

Importantly, they can usually handle disappointment. Why? When they face disappointment, they attribute it to controllable factors, such as insufficient effort or the poor choice of strategies They don’t question their abilities! By attributing disappointment to low effort or a poor choice of strategies, they know how to improve things: Try harder, change strategies, or do both.

In contrast, many struggling readers attribute disappointment to a permanent lack of ability, an uncontrollable factor. When they’re disappointed, they see no alternatives. To them, trying harder makes no sense as they lack the ability. Changing strategies makes no sense, as they don’t know any other strategies and even if they did, so what? They think they have no ability. So, trying another strategy makes no sense; they’re sure they’ll just strike out.

Because they view themselves as lacking the needed ability, they think of themselves and their situation as hopeless. They can’t change the situation. They expect failure. Trying makes no sense. So they don’t. Or they passively go through the motions. Or they quit.

These thoughts and behaviors radically shrink their chances of mastering the self-regulatory abilities needed to become competent readers and writers. Moreover, their expectations of failure fuel destructive emotions. Thus, it’s common for teachers and parents to describe many of these children as anxious, fearful, gloomy, demoralized, depressed, or angry about reading, learning, and school. To paraphrase one child with reading disabilities, “All I can do is get old and fat and eat and watch TV all day. I’ll never have a good job or a life.”

Solutions

You’ve heard the bad news: It’s depressing. In future columns, we’ll give you good news about how to prevent and handle these destructive thoughts and emotions. For a head start, you may want to read Dr. Richard Selznick’s The Shut-down Learner or Dr. Robert Brooks and Dr. Sam Goldstein’s Raising Resilient Children or chapters 6 and 13 in our book, Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds.

References

Brooks, R., & Goldstein, S. (2001). Raising Resilient Children. NY; McGraw-Hill.

Margolis, H., & Brannigan, G.G. (2009). Reading Disabilities: Beating the Odds. Voorhees, NJ: Reading2008 & Beyond: www.reading2008.com.

Ormrod, J. E. (2003). Educational Psychology: Developing Learners (4^th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Selznick, R. (2009). The Shut-down Learner. Boulder, CO: Sentient Publications.