Oh the fear mongering!!! This "science" should be ashamed. By today's standard if your infants cries when it is in physical pain, it likiely is learning disabled.
I had trouble with letters too. I couldn't write or spell my own name till i was 10. Today, at 27, i read write and speak to varying degrees of fluency (four with fair fluency, 2 passably.) I am a student of egyptology, and i studied music all through my childhood and adulthood. Including for a time vocal performance at a conservatory. I can also read and write music in accordance with western notation. Since going back to school for egyptology, i have taught myself the ancient greek musical notation system. I have been studying and am one of the best in my class at hieroglyph, hieratic script, and ancient coptic reading and writing.
4 year olds... Are supposed to be children. Their development in the vast majority of most kids, is not ready yet to read. If after age 7 there is still alot of difficulty.... If i were you, i would *not* get my kid tested unless there were other super serious symptoms that actually are harmful to your son or to others. Instead, i would read up myself on Orton Guillingham method, (Which is how i learned to read)
(I was labled dyslexic, because the year before i started first grade, the style of teaching was changed, from one based on phonetics to one i do believe still standardly used which is based on memorization of words and what they look like.) Had i been in school before this change, i would never have been labled as i was.
The lable, allowed them to put me in a 'special needs' class. I had a wonderful teacher for 2nd and 3rd grade. By 5th grade i had been "mainstreamed' back into a normal class. At which point my academics were so superior to my uhhh 'normal' counterparts, that i was invited to a special program for gifted kids. Only 50 kids a year, the ones they claimed were smartest were invited.
A stigma, and the scarlet letters of it, last a lifetime. They influence how one thinks and feels about one's self. They influence how one is perceived by others. They even influence how much money one can make as an adult, no matter how great your job performance. People are much too quick to give in to the fear mongering of today's experts. What they don't realize is that in many cases, schools are paid, by the drug companies for each child that is medicated for a learning disability. Also, many shrinks, pull the same stunt receiving money from drug corporations. This has been going on since i was diagnosed at age 4.
The fact is, i am only aware of Dyslexia and ADHD, so it is to only those i speak. Dyslexia seems to me to be very real. It is quite a difference! It *can* cause massive problems. But only if you don't keep yourself informed and educate your child in ways that ,work with your child's mind as opposed to against it. ADHD, one of the common disiorders, is frequently medicated by Riddlin, which affects the dopamine of the brain in a way very much like cocaine. Tests have been done that establish a disturbing similarity between riddlin and cocaine. Riddlin, actually affects the dopamine system more intensely than cocaine. How medications affect the brain is still largely unknown. Weather they somehow interupt or otherwise distort the development of the brain, (Which doesn't stop developing till early mid 20s) is equally unknown. The diagnosis method is excessively subjective to the point that they even add some interesting stuff in small print on most of those surveys they use. The "symptoms," are normal child behaviors that some expert decrees in their 'opinion' to be causing a problem for you and to be below the maturity level of their peers. Half these experts have no children. Most, are limited in experience with children predominantly to books on the subject. Their views are often less than realistic. After all in infants one of the major symptoms for ADHD is for the infant to cry when it is in pain. I have been diagnosed ADHD by one 'expert.' told the diagnosis was wrong by another 3.... Diagnosed by 5 more claiming it was the right diagnosis etc... This is all subjective! The process of diagnosing ADHD, does NOT necesarily have to include even an interview with the child. Ultimately, anything that is bothersome to the parent is a disorder. They do not call it a disease, because they can find in over 25 years of study, NO DIFFERENCE in the brain size or shape or chemistry. There is 0 concrete organic evidence for this 'disability.' Yet it is the one most frequently diagnosed. Also, it is commonly, nearly always medicated with riddlin. Many experts as well as people with common sense are questioning it's existance. No proof exists....
If you do get your child diagnosed or maybe, when you do. Be very careful. Do not do what someone with a PHD says because they have a cool piece of paper. Question everything. Do your own research. This stigma affects your child's life even long after childhood. Demand your doctor show you the evidence he or she may claim they have. If they offer brain scans where the frontal lobe is smaller than in the normal brain. Point out that Riddlin is proven to shrink the brain upto 10% and all the brain scan images are of brains that are on you got it.... riddlin. Usually for some time before the image is taken. Aside from that alleged difference they can offer none. And that hardly defeats the laugh test. This is your child's education. It is ALSO your child's sense of self. As well as other's perception of him should they know which sadly these things are not private matters, can affect the rest of his life. Is this fair to him? Especially if he is labled not only with dyslexia if he is so labled, but with the most common and standard lable of ADHD. Please, don't make such a desicion lightly. It DOES cause damage. It CAN do harm. Just because someone can't read doesn't mean they can't think and they can't feel. Those of us labled, are human beings. Human beings commonly condescended to and mistreated because we are viewed as intellectually inferior. As he grows up he will have access also to books and online articles that describe him as "not normal" and that state in words secveral syllables long that he is marginally retarded intellectually and very behaviorally retarded (Atleast so far as the lable ADHD goes, which he may or may not receive but likely will....)
Be very careful how you proceed. Because just a diagnosis has side affects that last a life time. They can even affect future generations. In that, someone like me is less likely to trust in such lables. Even if something were extremely wrong with my kid.... I would have major reservations letting this subjective science lable my kid, even if it did mean the difference between literacy and illiteracy. Solely based on my own experience of the methods process and cruelty involved. This IS a form of segregation. Making your child other than normal. Can affect later pay your child receives as an adult. Can affect his ability to interact with others in that, they won't see him as their equal. It can cause resentment towards alleged experts. Can potentially do some interesting stuff to the brain though exacftly what no one knows. No one is even sure it does anything to the brain at all that in any way affects development, but it could. Affects your child's parenting later in life.... affects your child's relationship with himself.... Be very careful before you make such a loaded choice for another *human being*
