Delayed Diagnosis of Learning Difficulties: Why Getting Support Early is Key
Learning difficulties in young children can sometimes be tricky to spot, and delayed diagnosis can cause problems later in life. To discover why early diagnosis is key, read on…
Learning difficulties aren’t always easy to diagnose. The sheer number of types, and the scale of their impact, makes it hard to know which one a person might have. What’s more, if they’re misconstrued as just part of that person’s personality, they can be tricky to identify.
Some children are diagnosed with learning difficulties at birth. In other cases, they might not be diagnosed until the child is walking or talking, or even once they’ve become an adult! Late diagnosis of a medical condition, like a learning difficulty, can have a significant impact if the person hasn’t received help at the time when it’s most needed.
Sometimes this is the fault of the parents for not having their child tested, and other times it’s the fault of medical professionals for not recognising the symptoms in time. If you want to discover the different types of learning difficulties, how they’re diagnosed, and what the consequences are of a delayed diagnosis, you came to the right place…
The Basics of Learning Difficulties
Learning difficulties typically affect the way a person absorbs, understands, and communicates information. This means they have difficulty understanding new or complex information, learning new skills and coping independently of outside help.
Around 1.5 million people have learning disabilities in the UK. They can range from mild, to moderate, to severe, with around 350,000 having a severe case:
- Mild learning difficulties symptoms are difficult to diagnose, as sufferers can talk easily and look after themselves, but it takes them a little longer to learn skills than other people.
- Moderate learning difficulties have more of an impact on the person’s ability to talk and take care of themselves.
- People with severe learning difficulties typically require help with everyday tasks, such as washing and dressing themselves, for their whole lives.
Examples of Learning Disabilities
Young people with learning difficulties usually require special needs education (SEN) to help them get through their school years. Some specific examples of learning troubles, which may require this special attention, include:
- Dyscalculia: affects the person’s ability to understand numbers and basic math problems.
- Dysgraphia: affects the individual’s handwriting ability and fine motor skills.
- Dyslexia: affects reading and related language processing skills.
- Dyspraxia: affects movements, coordination, language and speech.
- ADHD: makes it difficult to pay attention, stay focused, and control behaviour, often causing hyperactivity.
Severe cases of these disabilities can lead the person to have little or no speech, find it difficult to learn new skills, need support with everyday activities, have difficulty with social skills, and require life-long support. Some individuals with severe learning difficulties may even have other conditions, such as, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Smith-Magenis Syndrome, or Prader-Willi Syndrome. These additional issues, which also need to be identified, can have an effect on the child’s later development.
Causes of Learning Difficulties
At this stage you might be wondering what the causes are of these learning difficulties, if there are any at all. They tend to happen when something causes a disruption in brain development either before birth, during birth, or in early childhood. A lot of the time there is no known cause, but it can sometimes be caused by:
- The mother being ill during her pregnancy
- Any problems during birth that restrict oxygen flow to the baby
- Inherited genes from the baby’s parents
- Injury or illness during childhood, such as meningitis
Looking at the list of causes above, most of these learning difficulties should be diagnosed at birth or in early childhood, in theory. But this isn’t always the case, so how can they be diagnosed, if at all?
How are Learning Difficulties Diagnosed?
Learning difficulties is a process. You can’t just take a learning difficulties test and expect it to diagnose your child for you. There are certainly tests involved, but they need to be overseen by a trained specialist and considered alongside the specialist’s observations and the child’s history.
One place to start would be asking your child’s school to see if they have, or know of, any specialists you can get a diagnosis from. If your child isn’t of school age yet, you can go to your doctor for a referral to a learning difficulties specialist. There are a number of different specialists who are qualified to diagnose learning difficulties, including:
- School psychologists
- Child psychiatrists
- Clinical psychologists
- Educational psychologists
- Developmental psychologists
- Occupational therapist
- Speech and language therapist
In some cases, several of these professionals work together to achieve an accurate diagnosis. You don’t need to know much more than this as, once you’ve approached your child’s school or doctor, it’s up to them to refer you to specialists who will take you through the whole process.
However, if your doctor doesn’t refer your child to a specialist and this causes problem with your child’s ability to learn and grow, your child can suffer from their delayed diagnosis. In this next section we’ll discuss exactly how a delayed diagnosis can be detrimental to your child’s present and future well-being.
The Consequences of a Delayed Diagnosis of Learning Difficulties
When learning difficulties and learning disabilities are not detected and treated early, it can cause a number of emotional problems for your child, such as sadness, frustration and disappointment. That’s not all, though, and these issues can pervade the rest of the child’s life…
Delayed Diagnosis of Learning Difficulties in Children
If your child receives a delayed diagnosis, they won’t be able to get the help they need from their teachers and parents in time. They will be taught the same way as everyone else, fall behind their peers and be perceived as less intelligent.
Learning difficulties don’t go away; they actually tend to get more problematic as time passes. It might not seem like a problem in Reception, Year 1, or Year 2, but by the time your child is in Year 6 they could be miles behind the other students, and really feel the impact of it.
How This Delayed Diagnosis Affects Adults
You can see the long-term result of this by looking at learning difficulties in adults who never received a diagnosis for their condition, or received a delayed diagnosis. For adults, having undiagnosed learning difficulties can affect their career choices, limit their job advancement, and lead to some severe psychological issues, such as depression and feelings of low self-worth.
These issues are amplified by the fact that the adult defines their past educational failures as personal faults. This view can make them feel embarrassed or intellectually deficient, adding to their depressive state.
Can I Claim Compensation for Delayed Diagnosis of Learning Difficulties?
All it takes to avoid a lifetime of struggle is to get that early diagnosis. If your child has a learning difficulty, and their treatment was delayed because of the opinion of a medical professional, it’s a good idea to claim compensation for the time you’ve lost.
You’ll be able to use the money to pay for private tutoring, or send your child to a specialist school. This way, they can catch up to the other students in the class and get them back on track before they fall too far behind.
You can also claim compensation if you’re an adult who received a delayed diagnosis due to the opinion of a medical professional at some stage in your life. You can then use this money to educate yourself on the side of your job, or receive training that will help you advance in your career.
You can also claim for the emotional damage it has caused you or your child. After all, the compensation could pay for counselling and other related services to help ease your mind and understand that your intellectual shortfalls were never your fault.
If your child is struggling currently, and you need extra help, you can speak to a charity like bibic who aim to help every learning disabled child reach their full potential.
Think You Need to Get an Early Diagnosis for a Learning Difficulty?
So that concludes our post on why getting an early diagnosis for a learning difficulty is important. We managed to cover the different types of learning difficulties, how they’re assessed, and give you reasons why you should get a diagnosis as early as possible.
It’s never easy having a child with one of these conditions or having suffered with one yourself. The best thing you can do is get your early diagnosis and do everything within your power to make sure that child has everything it needs to succeed.
If you’ve already suffered from a delayed diagnosis, make sure you get compensation to help you make up for lost time. If you’ve been a victim in this regard, let us know, in the comments below, if you have any more to add! From this, we hope you have now learnt a little more about learning disabilities, and are now clearer on your rights as a learning disabled individual who was failed by the system.
Pin it!
I must first apologize for the long message which you are about to read.
In my mid50s (I’m now 61), I was finally and formally diagnosed with a learning disability (primarily involving working memory) in April 2016 and ADD (of the “inattentive presentation”, as described in my assessment report) in June 2018, respectively. Prior to these diagnoses, I had long suspected that there was something different about me, but, at that time, I could not define exactly what it was.
When I, as an only and quiet child with few friends, was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I recall experiencing increasing difficulties in and with school. Sadly, since these conditions were not recognized for what they were at the time, there were no interventions from either my parents or my teachers. Consequently, these conditions had, have had, and continue to have profoundly negative impacts on my life. One such casualty was academics, which, after years of pressure, led me to drop out of high school.
In late 2016, which was the last time I was gainfully employed, I was terminated from my position because of declining performance. From that last job to the time of this writing, I have been out of the world of work. Moreover, work has long been another problematic area of my life.
Over the next couple of years, several major life events unfolded, two of which propelled me into the role of caregiver. In January 2017, my longtime friend and roommate, who is like family to me, suffered a major heart attack. Eight months later, he suffered a more devastating heart attack, from which I, along with his family, had initially thought that he might not survive. Fortunately, he did.
Between these two events, the physical and mental health of my father, a fiercely independent soul, then 90, began to decline rapidly. Later that year, unable to care for himself, I was forced to place my father in long-term care. In early 2018, as my father’s condition continued its downward spiral, he passed away at 91.
In February 2019, in need of a change of scenery, I returned to Laos, a small country in the heart of Southeast Asia, where I volunteered with a Canadian charity with which I had volunteered eight years earlier.
In early 2020, I returned to my beloved Southeast Asia to explore more of Laos, and to a lesser extent, Thailand. During my stay in Laos, I volunteered with a local charity that provides water filters, washing stations, and soap to villages.
In mid-2022, I slipped into the role of caregiver again when my longtime friend and roommate had to have his right leg below the knee amputated.
Around that same time, decades after I dropped out of school, I pursued my GED. Several months after entering the program, I successfully completed it. Afterwards, my counselor put me in touch with an employment agency with which their program works.
At first, I was uneasy about approaching the agency. Then I got in touch with them. But working with the agency has been a slow process, particularly with respect to them acknowledging my communications. When I finally did coordinate with the employment counselor, I was presented with some entry level options. While I do realize that it has been years since I have worked and that I have to start somewhere, the prospects presented did not inspire me with confidence. In fact, I felt disillusioned and depressed.
Now, at this stage in my life, what path, or perhaps paths, can I take to move forward?
Any insights, suggestions, recommendations, and so on would be greatly and sincerely appreciated.
Hi!
My child is going into year six she has recently been diagnosed with a learning difficulty, march this year. I have been in and out of school since she was in year three with concerns of her struggles I took her to the doctors but they did nothing, my child had school anxiety leading to bad attendance as it was hard for me to know how to deal with it, once I put my foot down with the school I got a reaction an essasment although I asked for this two years ago, my child has been failed.
Thankyou!
Tina!
I am so sorry you are having difficulties like this it isn’t fair on children to fail them in such a way and it makes me sad that even now it is still happening.