I am in a hurry. We are having a party in just a bit but I JUST saw this link to a "Self Advocacy" online book about learning disabilities that appears to explain Learning Disabilities to children...

http://www.ldpride.net/selfadvocacy.htm

I wanted to share here ASAP. I've only skimmed so please read carefully before sharing with kids but I am looking forward to reading more. I think my kiddo will eat it up. He wants to understand and explain his challenges to others and I have struggled to provide good tools for that.

Thank you SO much HappilyMom - this looks *great*!!!!

polarbear

Polar I am thrilled to post something helpful for you. You are such a resource here for all of us following behind.

I finally got to sit down and read through this and it seems like an amazing resource to help a child process his or her differences and see them in a healthy way.

I really like how it empowers children to take ownership in evaluating themselves in both strengths and weaknesses as well as how it emphasizes the importance of working as a team with your teacher. It seems helpful to me how it goes in to detail about what is happening in the brain and what kinds of effects this has on specific types of functions/activities.

It seems a bit old for my child but I think I might read a few chunks with him. I think it's a good inoculation against some of the negative thoughts about themselves that LD kids think and/or hear about how they perform at school.

My favorite analogy which my son (or likely any 2e kiddo) will relate to is that having a LD is "like a very fast sports car that gets bogged down in heavy traffic".

Happilymom there is a paed here who I've heard speak on gifted+ADHD, he describes it as "Ferrari brain, with a couple of Holden parts." (You might say Ford parts).

My ds went through the first half of this book with me yesterday and he really identified with this analogy too

I wanted to bump this back up in case others have missed it - it is really really a great resource for a wide age range of kids. With a younger child you can pick and choose what you'd like to out of it, for my teen -we read it together and it was a great springboard for more in-depth conversations, as well a great example for him re how to explain his challenges to others. We also found the self-evaluations really helpful to talk through

Thanks again for posting this Happily!

polarbear