The Impact on the Individual and the Family Members

Learning disabilities affect not only the individual, but people surrounding him like family and friends.

The main impact on the individual is when they try to isolate themselves from society as they may feel ashamed of themselves for their difficulties with poor literacy skills, attention or memory difficulties. They may fear failure, criticism, ridicule or/and rejection. Another main reason they try to be isolated is fear of discrimination and that others may think they are stupid or incapable. Being ashamed of their reading and writing skills and being left out of every day discussions due to lack of understanding makes them feel isolated.

The individuals with learning disabilities are impacted by feelings of depression, loneliness, and helplessness.

Parents are largely affected by their children having learning difficulties. Parents go through a large number of emotions before and after acknowledging that their children are having learning disabilities. Usually they will first deny it when they get to know of it from teachers or community. This period of initial impact will take a long time to get over for some parents. Sometimes they may be overwhelmed with feelings of anger with everyone including the teachers and neighborhood.

When they get over this stage, they will start blaming each other and there may be disagreement between spouses. They will  develop feelings of fear as to whether the child will ever get over it, pass exams, marry, get employed and lead a normal life.

Parents will start feeling jealous of their friends and relations with normal children envying why their child can’t be like their friends and relations children. They will be taken over by mourning and sorrow and thinking negatively. They could start bargaining as to maybe the child will do better if they move, or will improve next year.

The parents could go through phases of guilt as to maybe its my fault, maybe I worked too long during pregnancy, or maybe I didn’t give him enough love, maybe my diet was wrong, maybe this is a punishment for my wrong doings.

The parents also will isolate themselves with their children feeling like ‘no one knows or cares about the child’ and ‘no one understands them.. Also they will try going from clinic to clinic without sticking to one place with the hope of hearing something positive from somewhere.

These patterns of reactions are totally unpredictable, the situation is worsened within the family because each family member may be involved in different and conflicting stages of emotions at the same time, making communication difficult within the family. These feelings and impacts could affect the parents and families social life..