MILD INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY – Intellectual disability is a term used when a person has difficulty understanding, concentrating, learning and remembering new things in their everyday life.
These questions are taken from the What is Intellectual Disability.
Can my child learn?
Yes, your child can learn it will be harder and it will take longer for them to master and generalise/transfer the information in day-to-day situations.
What approaches should I use to teach my child?
The best approaches are evidence-based approaches. Treat reading as if it was dyslexia, and math as if it was dyscalculia. Language issues as if it was a Language developmental disorder (DLD) and writing as if it was dysgraphia or it might come under dyspraxia.
Head to www.deb.co.nz for information on dyslexia, dyscalculia, DLD and dysgraphia
For Social skills we recommend you look at evidence-based approaches used with autistic children. The interventions are the same for a child who has a mild intellectual disability.
Will teachers and schools understand what my children’s needs are?
The odds are no teachers are not trained in any of the conditions I have listed in this document. Unless the teacher or the school has personally paid for training themselves. It will be up to work with the school to get the right support, interventions and approaches in place.
Extra Information
A child with mild intellectual disability will normally present with an uneven learning profile and can show mastery in certain skills in class one day but can’t use these skills when they are needed the next day. They can normally learn well in isolation. This can be very confusing for teachers and parents. The biggest challenge for children with ID is adaptive skills, transferring the knowledge they know to all areas of learning which is why this s now considered the main part of the diagnosis.