Learning disabilities (LD) such as dyslexia and dyscalculia often have an accompanying comorbidity such as ADHD or ADD. These complications will make intervention delivery more challenging.

Our experience has been that given we have a competent tutor with the right personal qualities — for example, a vibrant sense of humor with ample of patience — even the most difficult students will often settle down to learn out of a respect for the tutor and a genuine liking of him or her. The learning will increase and the annoying behaviors from the student will decrease. That is why I always say that an effective tutor has to be many steps ahead of the student at all times or else he or she will not be able to inspire the student and to motivate change for the better.

Of course, not all cases are that simple. I am a special education expert and, generally, I prefer to solve learning problems through adapting instructional content and teaching strategies. However, in the extreme ADD cases, medication prescribed by a psychiatrist is necessary to control the situation so that a child can focus his/her attention and be able to learn. While I do not get involve in the medical side of things, I do work together with the medical professionals such as psychiatrist and family doctors to ensure there is continuity and coherence in the intervention delivery. The idea here is that, as professionals, we cooperate together to complement the work of one another. The team at our office will try to enhance the effectiveness of the intervention by cooperating with related professionals.

For example, we also work extremely well with the schools by collaborating with the classroom teachers and special education teachers. We try to create a “seamless” service delivery system to increase effectiveness; saving resources for the school and the parents who pay us privately for our services is our primary goal.

The answer to the question of whether we take ADHD or ADD cases is this: we have had a great deal of success with LD cases with a comorbidity; but we do reserve the rights to decide on each case on an individual basis. Considerations such as client-specialist compatibility and the severity of the ADHD or ADD will be the deciding factors.

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