LD Blog

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) is a highly regarded organization, but its Web site has a weak treatment of Learning Disabilities. In addition to publishing the very influential Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, it provides Facts for Families^© as a public service to promote understanding and treatment of various disorders. One of the documents in that series for families addresses Learning Disabilities. Sadly, it contains uneven and inaccurate, information. Here are two examples:

• “Learning disabilities affect at least 1 in 10 schoolchildren.” I guess the AACAP is using different diagnostic criteria than those used by the US public schools. A little more than 5% of students in US public schools have been identified as having Learning Disabilities. (Some of my colleagues in special education consider that percentage to be too high.) I know of no reputable epidemiologic study showing a 10% prevalence.
• The page lists signs of Learning Disablities, one of which occurs when a child “has difficulty distinguishing right from left; difficulty identifying words or a tendency to reverse letters, words, or numbers; (for example, confusing 25 with 52, ‘b’ with ‘d,’ or ‘on’ with ‘no’).” As we’ve noted repeatedly, reversals are not an indicator of Learning Disabilities.

Link to the AACAP page.