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.

Our clients are often pleasantly surprised by how quickly their children begin to experience the sweet taste of success once we begin working with them. Our secret? We take an “uncluttered” approach to our work and we keep things simple and direct. And that can only be done if one truly knows what he or she is doing!

I like to tell clients that we prefer not to have them spend unnecessary time and money if we can help it. For example, most psycho-educational assessments take six to eight hours and that is very stressful for the children, especially for the younger ones. With us, we can have a high quality psycho-educational assessment done by an experienced and respected psychologist for much less time and cost. And here, I am talking about an assessment that can stand up to the scrutiny of scientists working in the forefront of research in our field.

How do we do that? Well, we make it a priority to establish a professional network of excellence. We have a good working relationship with professionals in related fields who share our philosophy of simplicity and directness. These professionals will not sell unnecessary services. They are happy to help you when you need them, but only if you really need them. Why? Because they have better things to do with their lives than trying to waste your time and theirs!

Working with quality individuals is our secret to success.

Before the Christmas holidays, our organization ⎯ Dr. Winnifred Tang & Associates Learning Management Inc. ⎯ was invited to be included in the Community Healthcare and Resource Directory (CHARD) in 2010.

The creation of CHARD is indeed a step forward by the British Columbia Medical Association, the Ministry of Health Services and HealthLink BC. For the longest time, one of the major challenges facing GPs and other health providers in the province has been a lack of information when it comes to referring patients to the right professionals to get timely and appropriate intervention for children with learning disabilities. Learning disabilities are learning problems related to academic learning; the most common ones are reading disability (dyslexia) and arithmetic disability (dyscalculia).

Many times, I have sighed and shaken my head at the fragmented service delivery for those with learning disabilities. For example, we have clients coming into our office with assessments from medical professionals such as pediatricians or psychiatrists; when we look at the date of these reports, we cannot help wondering why there is such a big time lapse from the time the client was suspected to have learning issues to the time they finally found their way to our office on their own. There is no intermediary service linking the diagnosis to appropriate special educational services. Medical professionals and special education professionals must work more closely to bridge the gaps in service delivery so client’s interests are best served.

Hopefully, with CHARD, gone are the days of parents having to rely on the “grapevine” for information when it comes to finding appropriate special education services for their children with learning disabilities! Sometimes it just takes too long for clients to find their way to our office and precious time is lost.

And so I say, “Bravo to BCMA, Ministry of Health Services and HealthLink BC!!!” It is high time medical professionals and special education professionals join together to serve patients more effectively. There has to be a way for parents to access evidence-based interventions for their children that are founded on sound scientific research.

Let’s drink to the CHARD initiative which is enabling the formation of this very desirable and productive union between the medical profession and the special education profession!

Happy New Year!!!

I have an unsettling feeling that more and more of these “maxed-out” kids with “gung-ho” moms will show up in our Vancouver school system. With the influx of Asian immigration in Greater Vancouver, it is not uncommon to find Asian parents with exceedingly high expectations for their children.

A few months ago, one of these “gung-ho” moms came to my office for help. Over the years, she has channeled a great deal of financial resources and time investment into her only son, a grade 6 boy who speaks Mandarin as his first language. The problem: the investment does not match the return.

Apparently, this boy has a language-based learning disability and is already “maxed-out” in terms of his efforts. He is already doing his best and is getting a “C” grade in school. This, unfortunately, is not good enough for his “gung-ho” mom. To her credit, she suspected something was wrong with her son and she came to us. We told her the truth: her son has a language-based learning disability and unless he has appropriate intervention, he will continue to stay up until 1a.m. each day to do his homework and still get a “C”.

Then guess what? The “gung-ho” mom exhibited a classic denial response. “No, my son is only lazy. “ was the defensive remark made. Now don’t forget this mother came to us suspecting something was amiss, and she wanted us to find her the answer!

Both my associate and I shook our heads as we said a little silent prayer for the “gung-ho” mom and son duo as they left our office. The boy will have a difficult time ahead of him. He is already showing signs of rebellion and emotional distress.

To our dear colleagues in the school system, we support you and empathize with you. Remember to take a deep breath and put on a smile as you hear out these “gung-ho” moms at your next Teacher-Parent Meeting.

September and October are my favorite months of the year. The intense summer heat is gone and the air is nice and crisp in the mornings. Everyday when I go to work, I drive through the University of British Columbia and see all those young and eager smiling faces. It sure brings back memories of my UBC days as an eager undergrad there.

I spent a great deal of time in the library when I was studying Art history at UBC for my B.A. degree. Reading was and is still one of my favorite past times. It is hard to imagine what life would be like without books and reading. Yet, as one who specializes in dyslexia and language-based learning disabilities, I am very much aware that there are some students who cannot read and each day in school is like torture to them.

Young children with reading difficulties are known to have tummy aches and all kinds of “ailments” when confronted by reading tasks. I can sympathize with these children because I also have similar problems when feeling overly stressed. For children who cannot read, much of their frustration comes from the fact that they are unable to articulate their reading problem to adults. Frankly speaking, many adults don’t even know what dyslexia is!

In my next blog, I will share an interesting case that I had encountered just before school was out for the summer. Let me just call it “The Story of a Maxed-Out Kid with a Gung-Ho Mom.”

Until next time…

“So, you are not an Educational Psychologist?” Many times, I have been confronted with this question and found myself at a loss for words. After all, when I was at UBC as a Ph.D. student, everybody seemed to understand what I was doing.  Who cared as long as the research question was interesting and I was OK with the statistical analyses!

Out here in the “real” world, “end users” such as parents and educators are concerned about “funding” and “labeling.” If there is a name for the problem, there is the possibility for accessing “funding” and getting additional educational support for the child. I can’t blame them for being practical and so, I’ve decided to try and make myself useful by doing a little “Adult Education” here.

Here is a simple “memory aid” for all you confused folks: ☺

1. Educational Psychologists are supposed to be “experts” in testing. They know what tests screen what. They test everything from “depression” to “dyslexia”.
2. Dr. Winnifred Tang, yours truly, has a Ph.D. from UBC in Special Education dealing with learning disabilities. Her doctoral research examined the cognitive profiles of learning disabled children from an ESL (English as a Second Language) background. These are the children with reading disability (dyslexia) and arithmetic disability (dyscalculia).

(more…)

Summer went by quickly like a fast-forward movie. We barely had time to catch our breath and before you know it, the children are back to school and everything is all of a sudden happening in full swing!

Here, I think it is the right time to do a little refresher on what “reading disability” is. The following was written for the benefit of our readers who are teachers or parents of dyslexic children:

Medical Name: Dyslexia (reading disability)

Clinical Features
Cases usually present themselves as seemingly normal children whose reading ability lag behind that of their peers. Characteristics include:

• Poor spelling
• Early word recognition
• Poor grammar (e.g. syntax)
• Poor recall of content read
• Speed of reading extremely low
• Inaccurate reading (e.g. skip lines and words)
• Hesitant reader
• Nervous during reading
• Avoids and dislike reading
• Poor recall of verbally given information/instructions
• Uncomfortable in noisy environment where reception of audio information may be more difficult

(more…)

I have been invited by S.U.C.C.E.S.S. to give a talk on dyslexia in Cantonese in early April. The details are available on the dyslexia-talk. For a long time, parents who do not speak English struggle to make sense of dyslexia without the benefit of having literature that explains this medical condition adequately. As a result, there is a great deal of misunderstanding and unnecessary fear.

My hope is that through this free workshop sponsored by S.U.C.C.E.S.S., non-English speaking Chinese parents can now breathe a sigh of relief and come to realize that they are not alone. Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities plaguing school-age children who are learning to read. Help is just around the corner. Dyslexia can be managed successfully and it is possible for dyslexic children to learn to read with proper instruction.

See you at the workshop! And don’t forget to register.

I was very sad to find out from an email sent to me that my former academic supervisor, Professor Mary Ashworth, had passed away on January 20, 2009.

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Professor Mary Ashworth taught in the Department of Language Education between 1967- 1988. I was fortunate enough to have been under her supervision when I was working on my M.Ed. degree in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). I will always remember Professor Ashworth for her frequent allusion to a saying from the Book of Proverbs in the Bible – “There is nothing new under the sun.” I actually put this verse on the front page of my M.Ed. graduating paper! I guess, this was the observation from a “seasoned” veteran who had fought the “system” time and again for the sake of ESL children in British Columbia.

I am particularly grateful to Professor Mary Ashworth for the sage advice she gave when I was her student at UBC. She was always helpful and practical. I still remember how she used to tell us not to treat our master’s thesis or M.Ed. major paper as “the writing that will change the world.” Her admonition was: be sensible, do what you need to do, graduate, and then you can change the world!

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Professor Ashworth is probably smiling down at all her former students now from heaven above. I hope I am one of these students!

We love you, Mary! And we are so proud to have been you students.

Recently, in Janet Steffenhagen’s blog, she shared with the readers an email sent to her by a mother whose child is learning disabled. What followed was a great deal of heated discussion and even I submitted a post to support this “long suffering” mom, Teresa Corsie. To make a long story short, basically, Teresa’s son had a terrible time in public school and was not getting appropriate help. Finally, the parents took him to James Cameron, a school specializing in teaching children with learning disabilities. Now the child is doing well.

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As I sat in my office thinking over the details for my office dedication ceremony tomorrow, I couldn’t help thinking about the words of St. Augustine…

“Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.”

It was back in 1998 that I had a direct confrontation with some school administrators because of my friend’s son. The vice principal of the school basically told me that “even if the boy had dyslexia – whatever that was – there was nothing they could do about it.” I was angry about the attitude displayed by this vice principle. In fact, I was so angry that, years later, I ended up with a Ph.D. from UBC specializing in learning disabilities.

I honestly hope that mis-diagnosed cases of ESL children with a language-based learning disability such as dyslexia will be more and more rare in future. There is a lot of work ahead of us. My friend, Dr. Susan Kwan, a board member at SUCCESS, is a supporter for educating the public about dyslexia. This April, I will be speaking at the Dyslexia Conference organized by Dr. Kwan for the Chinese speaking public. I will share more details here at my blog as the information becomes available.