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Learning Disorder
What To Do About Your Brain-Injured Child Or Your Brain-damaged, Mentally Retarded, Mentally Deficient, Cerebral-palsied, Epileptic, Autistic, Athetoid, Hyperactive, Attention Deficit Learning Disorder ed, Developmentally Delayed, Down's Child.
Treatment of the brain-injured-brings hope to thousands of children, many inoperable, many given up for lost and doomed to live in a frightening, even dangerous world.
Language
Problems often include word-finding difficulty, poor sentence formation, and lengthy and often faulty descriptions or explanations. These are to cover for a lack of understanding or inability to think of a word. For example, when asking for help finding a belt while dressing, an individual may ask for "the circular cow thing that I used yesterday and before." Many have difficulty understanding multiple meanings in jokes, sarcasm, and adages or figurative expressions such as, "A rolling stone gathers no moss" or "Take a flying leap." Individuals with traumatic brain injuries are often unaware of their errors and can become frustrated or angry and place the blame for communication difficulties on the person to whom they are speaking. Reading and writing abilities are often worse than those for speaking and understanding spoken words. Simple and complex mathematical abilities are often affected.
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Speech
Speech produced by a person who has traumatic brain injury may be slow, slurred, and difficult or impossible to understand if the areas of the brain that control the muscles of the speech mechanism are damaged. This type of speech problem is called dysarthria. These individuals may also experience problems swallowing. This is called dysphagia. Others may have what is called apraxia of speech, a condition in which strength and coordination of the speech muscles are unimpaired but the individual experiences difficulty saying words correctly in a consistent way. For example, someone may repeatedly stumble on the word "tomorrow" when asked to repeat it, but then be able to say it in a statement such as, "I'll try to say it again tomorrow."
Focal
Focal damage, may result in long-term, permanent difficulties. Improvements can occur as other areas of the brain learn to take over the function of the damaged areas. Children's brains are much more capable of this flexibility than are the brains of adults. For this reason, children who suffer brain trauma might progress better than adults with similar damage.
Concentrating
For varying periods of time, having trouble organizing thoughts, and becoming easily confused or forgetful. Some individuals will experience difficulty learning new information. Still others will be unable to interpret the actions of others and therefore have great problems in social situations. For these individuals, what they say or what they do is often inappropriate for the situation. Many will experience difficulty solving problems, making decisions, and planning. Judgment is often affected. |
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