We have recently started publishing a newsletter for educators in our area and in this issue, we shared one of our success stories with a Chinese girl who is from an ESL-speaking background.  This girl is quite severely learning disabled and yet within a year, she has made some tremendous progress. Most encouraging of all is the fact that her attitude towards learning has improved as did her social-emotional well being!

The message we want to get across is simply this: LD children do not necessarily have to be in a special school where all the students have LD. With proper support, they can do very well in a regular school setting. The school-based team, working together with an intermediary special education service such as us, can produce some very encouraging results.

Summer is a good time to jump-start LD intervention. Teachers should encourage parents to take advantage of this time to help their children move ahead!

We are having Tea & Talk @ Hycroft for Chinese-speaking parents on May 26^th, 2010. Chinese-speaking parents who find it hard to access special education services due to language barriers should make it a priority to attend this event!

Email us @: events@Learn2ManageLD.com to RSVP.

Over the years, I have come across many cases where Chinese-speaking parents do not know how to access special educations for their learning disabled children. As a result, precious time for learning is lost and the children often suffer from all kinds of emotional issues, and amongst them is low self-esteem. This really saddens me. In fact, this bothers me so much that I will do something about it!

Dr. Winnifred Tang & Associates Learning Management Inc. is organizing a talk for Chinese-speaking parents which will take place on Wednesday, May 26^th, 2010, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Hycroft, home of The University Womens’ Club of Vancouver. There will be a tea reception afterwards so parents will have a chance to chat with all of us from the office of Dr. Winnifred Tang.

Tea & Talk @ Hycroft for Chinese-Speaking parents is intended to be a cozy and leisurely event. We want parents to feel comfortable talking to us about their children’s learning problems. The beautiful setting at Hycroft, hopefully, will help us to achieve this purpose!

Interested parents should contact us as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. All the information is on the flyer.

We have opened an account at HSBC specifically for Tea & Talk @ Hycroft. Parents can go to HSBC directly and make a payment for their tickets. Before they do so, they should email us at events@Learn2ManageLD.com to ensure that the seats are still available. We will send out the HSBC account information upon confirming seat availability.

The registration procedures were designed to reduce unnecessary paper work and communication. We hope you will find this method of registering simple and convenient.

See you at Tea & Talk @ Hycroft on May 26^th at 7:00 p.m.!

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!!!

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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.

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許多父母不知道他們的孩子是否有閱讀障礙（誦讀困難症）。 這篇剪報是我在2000年時接受世界日報(一份中文報紙)採訪時的內容, 裏面的資料到今天依然有效。 我留下這個剪報是為了方便華裔父母能夠有機會得到有關誦讀困難症的中文信息。我希望本文能夠為您提供幫助。 (more…)

A successful example of how people overcome their learning disabilities.

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