Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)
DLD stands for Developmental Language Disorder, and we think about 2 children in every classroom have it. People with DLD have difficulties with understanding and using language. DLD affects people differently and sometimes difficulties with language can be hidden.
If you want to find out more https://www.dldandme.co.uk/what-is-dld has lots of useful information.
This website is made by Ellen, who has DLD, and also has lots of useful advice and information from her point of view. https://sites.google.com/view/thisisdld/home
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty that mainly causes problems with reading, writing and spelling. It’s a specific learning difficulty, which means it causes problems with certain abilities used for learning, such as reading and writing. Unlike a learning disability, intelligence isn’t affected. It’s estimated up to 1 in every 10 people in the UK has some degree of dyslexia. Dyslexia is a lifelong problem that can present challenges on a daily basis, but support is available to improve reading and writing skills and help those with the problem be successful at school and work. Here is more information on common issues such as: studying in further or higher education, learning to drive, looking for work and the support you should expect in the workplace.
https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/adults
What is dyslexia?
Dyscalculia
Dyscalculia is a specific and persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can lead to a diverse range of difficulties with mathematics. It will be unexpected in relation to age, level of education and experience and occurs across all ages and abilities.
Mathematics difficulties are best thought of as a continuum, not a distinct category, and they have many causal factors. Dyscalculia falls at one end of the spectrum and will be distinguishable from other maths issues due to the severity of difficulties with number sense, including subitising, symbolic and non-symbolic magnitude comparison, and ordering. It can occur singly but often co-occurs with other specific learning difficulties, mathematics anxiety and medical conditions.
https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/dyscalculia
Dyspraxia
Dyspraxia, also known as developmental co-ordination disorder (DCD), is a common disorder that affects movement and co-ordination.
Dyspraxia does not affect your intelligence. It can affect your co-ordination skills – such as tasks requiring balance, playing sports or learning to drive a car. Dyspraxia can also affect your fine motor skills, such as writing or using small objects.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/developmental-coordination-disorder-dyspraxia-in-adults/
“Caged in Chaos” by Victoria Biggs- written when she was 16, so perfectly captures the life of a young person living with dyspraxia.
Dysgraphia
Dysgraphia is a term that refers to trouble with recognising written words, letters and the sounds they make. As a result writing, spelling and forming words is challenging for those with dysgraphia.
What is dysgraphia? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMfl5kqSWmk
Tourette syndrome
Tourette’s syndrome is a condition that causes a person to make involuntary sounds and movements called tics. It usually starts during childhood, but the tics and other symptoms usually improve after several years and sometimes go away completely. There’s no cure for Tourette’s syndrome, but treatment can help manage symptoms.
People with Tourette’s syndrome have a combination of physical and vocal tics. Tics can be worse on some days than others. They may be worse during periods of stress, anxiety and tiredness.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/tourettes-syndrome/
Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder
If you drink alcohol during pregnancy you risk causing harm to your baby. Sometimes this can result in mental and physical problems in the baby, called foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).
FASD can happen when alcohol in the mother’s blood passes to her baby through the placenta.
Your baby cannot process alcohol well, which means it can stay in their body for a long time. Alcohol can damage their brain and body and stop them from developing normally in the womb.
This can result in the loss of the pregnancy. Babies who survive may be left with lifelong problems.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/foetal-alcohol-spectrum-disorder/
Hyperlexia
Hyperlexia is a condition which is defined by a child having a reading ability which is well advanced for their age and a fascination with numbers or letters. Despite their ability to read at such an advance level, individuals with Hyperlexia will have difficulties in their understanding of spoken language.
While little research exits on adults with hyperlexia. Most research indicate that children will outgrow hyperlexia which is not the case for all children self-reporting adults indicate mis-diagnosed with ADHD and often Asperger’s. In adulthood, adults still struggle with the Who? What? Where? Why? and How? questions and continue to have social and sensory issues. As children, they had the ability to read words above what was expected at their age. Socializing is still a challenge as well as thinking in concrete and literal terms. Many also expressed that they are echolalic and will repeat back a question asked of them.
Synaesthesia
Synaesthesia is a rare condition experienced by some autistic people. An experience goes in through one sensory system and out through another. So, a person might hear a sound but experience it as a colour. In other words, they will ‘hear’ the colour blue.
Misophonia
Misophonia is a disorder in which certain sounds trigger emotional or physiological responses that some might perceive as unreasonable given the circumstance. Those who have misophonia might describe it as when a sound “drives you crazy.” Their reactions can range from anger and annoyance to panic and the need to flee.
Slow processing speed
Stammering
Stammering is when you repeat sounds or syllables, you make sounds longer or a word gets stuck or does not come out at all.
There are 2 main types of stammering:
developmental stammering – the most common type of stammering that happens in early childhood when speech and language skills are developing quickly.
acquired or late-onset stammering – is relatively rare and happens in older children and adults as a result of a head injury, stroke or progressive neurological condition. It can also be caused by certain drugs, medicines, or psychological or emotional trauma.
Learning Disability
A learning disability is a disability that affects the acquisition of knowledge and skills, in particular a neurodevelopmental condition affecting intellectual processes, educational attainment, and the acquisition of skills needed for independent living and social functioning.
A person with a learning disability might have some difficulty:
- understanding complicated information
- learning some skills
- looking after themselves or living alone
A learning disability is different for everyone. Lots of people who have a learning disability can work, have relationships, live alone and get qualifications.
We do not always know why a person has a learning disability. Sometimes it is because a person’s brain development is affected, either before they are born, during their birth or in early childhood.
This can be caused by things such as:
- the mother becoming ill in pregnancy
- problems during the birth that stop enough oxygen getting to the brain
- the unborn baby having some genes passed on from its parents that make having a learning disability more likely
- illness, such as meningitis, or injury in early childhood