Common Disorders

Common Disorders & Descriptions

Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

The main symptoms of this disorder are: hyperactivity, impulsivity, and attention difficulties. These can severely impact on academic performance and on social development. These should be present before the child reaches the age of 7, be persistent for over 6 months, be pervasive, and must be observed in at least 2 different settings. Typical behaviours: easily distracted, disorganised, forgetful, makes careless mistakes, fails to finish tasks, leaves seat inappropriately, acts as if driven by a motor, has trouble turn with turn taking, blurts out answers without thinking, talks excessively, and interrupts others' conversations and activities.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Children with autism spectrum disorder have social deficits, communication deficits, have fixated interests, engage in repetitive play/behaviours, and can have different responses to sensory stimulation. They have difficulties engaging in "pretend play", making and keeping friends, and using language as a social tool. They can lack empathy and be insensitive to the needs of others.

Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD/Dyspraxia)

Children with DCD have difficulty coordinating their motor movements, and as a result, can be poorly coordinated and clumsy. This can be manifested in difficulties using cutlery, sitting up straight, immature and/or untidy handwriting, closing buttons , dressing and undressing, playing sports, jumping, running and climbing. These children can also have difficulties with attention and concentration, and can have difficulties initiating and completing tasks in school and at home.

Dyslexia

• Dyslexia primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent reading and spelling
• Cognitive difficulties include difficulties with phonological awareness, verbal memory, and verbal processing speed
• Children with good and poor language comprehension can have such difficulties.

This definition proposes that 3 aspects should be evaluated in any assessment:

• The pupil is learning/has learnt accurate and fluent word reading and/or spelling very incompletely
• Appropriate learning opportunities have been provided
• Progress has been made only as a result of much additional effort/instruction, and the difficulties have still persisted

Indicators of dyslexia

• Preschool: Delayed or problematic speech, poor expressive language, poor rhyming skills, little interest/difficulty learning letters
• Early school years: Poor letter-sound knowledge, poor phoneme awareness, poor word attack skills, idiosyncratic spelling, problems copying
• Middle school years: Slow reading, poor decoding skills when faced with new words, phonetic and non-phonetic spelling and limited and/or impoverished written expression.
• Adolescence and adulthood: Poor reading fluency, slow writing speed, poorly organised work and limited and /or impoverished written expression.