Accessible Holidays Cyprus - Making Cyprus Accessible

© 2011 Sanford Shapiro

Imagine this: You’re six years old, and for the next 10 years or so, a sizable portion of your mental and emotional fuel tank will be used up from avoiding humiliation, developing feelings of not being good enough, being behind in assignments, getting teased, being misunderstood, and struggling way more in basic skills like reading writing than some kids who don’t seem to work as hard or care as much. You begin to dislike or hate reading and want to avoid the whole issue of school and homework altogether.

What are the chances you’d be at risk for some pretty significant emotional turmoil, upset or more? Six hours a day in a school setting that only marginally addresses your needs is a LONG TIME.

I’m not saying that having learning disabilities causes mental health struggles. But struggling with basic skills can marginalize you in school, and combined with other factors, significantly increases the chances of developing them.

According to the NICHD/Hazelton Foundation, 60% of adolescents in treatment facilities for substance abuse are learning disabled.

From the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, “Research indicates at least twice as many young adults in the criminal justice system show signs of dyslexia as those in the general population.”

Want more? From the Journal of Affective Disorders: “Presence of learning disabilities among clinically depressed, hospitalized children was 7 times higher than in the general population.”

My own experience in working in residential treatment centers and emotional growth/therapeutic boarding schools bears this out.

We have many schools and tutorial centers across the country, who provide excellent services for these kids, but too often, way too often, they are not enough. They are not enough to stem the tide that began early in elementary school. The waves of misdirected instruction, of poorly formed or late understandings and diagnoses come crashing down, and the rubble looks like anger, shame, self-doubt and mistrust, along with a really unhealthy dose of feeling like a victim in life.

Is it really a stretch to connect the dots from some of these kids and adults with such childhood beginnings, to self-medication and self-destructive thoughts and behaviors?

It turns out that there are hundreds of schools that have sprung up in the US and abroad, which are designed to address the emotional development of teens and to a lesser extent, younger kids. These schools, some with a more medical or clinical approach, some with less, have been around for a while now. It’s only recently that they’ve begun to wake up to the specific needs of kids with specific learning disabilities.

In addition, there are scores of “therapeutic wilderness programs” that are relatively short-term and high impact, that strive to, and purport to, having a knowledge base and sensitivity to kids with LD.

My own perception is that a few handful of these programs and schools are superior and that the gap between who they say the serve, what they say they deliver and what they actually deliver, is pretty small. Others are only talking that talk.

Recovery and lives are at stake. Due diligence is in order.

Next month I’m going to go out and visit a handful.