Smart school solutions for NLD students

Yesterday, we shared the first part of an article from the Smart Kids with LD website on helping teachers understand non-verbal learning disabilities.  Today, here's the rest of the article, with information on solutions that can be implemented in the classroom.

Rhonda & the Bridgeway team


By Marcia Eckerd, Ph.D.

Guidelines for Smart Solutions

What kinds of solutions are helpful? Step-by-step directions (clear, explicit, and verbal), academic support as needed, social coaching, strategies for addressing inflexibility and frustration, and ensuring a safe environment for learning are all important. More specifically:

If a child is focused on details, he may miss the main idea, so his work can be “in left field.”
- Break assignments down so the student knows where to start
- Provide a study guide to help prioritize information

Often children with NLD have slow processing speed, they’re exhausted from the day at school, or they don‘t “get” what to do without prompting.
- Adjust the amount and pace of homework to make it achievable

Very bright children with NLD who can talk for hours might be unable to produce several written paragraphs.
- Provide verbal and visual supports for both writing and inferential connections

These children don’t know what they miss, so they can’t ask about it.
- Establish regular, structured teacher-student meetings

Children who are inflexible are unlikely to learn flexibility from rigid consequences.
- Deal with behavioral issues in ways that don’t escalate the problems

Children with NLD face many social challenges, which makes them vulnerable to teasing, provocation, and other forms of bullying. Bullying usually takes place in “no man’s land,” the unstructured places such as halls, lunchrooms, bathrooms, and playgrounds.
- Communicate with teachers, parents and students about the social challenges
- Help students process situations with peers
- Provide clear explanations or rules
- Give sensitive feedback about behavior of which they’re unaware
- Employ strategies such as allowing a student to take breaks, pass in the hall early, and have a “safe place” to go for support
- Zero tolerance for bullying must be implemented

Although it may seem as if students with NLD need a great deal of special support at school, providing a supportive social climate and being clear, direct, and flexible are also hallmarks of good teaching, from which all students can benefit.

The author is an evaluator, consultant, and therapist who specializes in working with children with NLD.