Rick Lavoie delivered a speech on kids with learning disabilities and approaches to them by adults. He highlighted many issues, including kids with learning disabilities being unable to structure themselves and adults providing no external structure. Lack of understanding of performance inconsistency as a part of learning disabled kids profile and therefore improper treatment and attitude takes place. In addition, sarcasm is used wrong, causing respective actions.
Lack of understanding that children learn from what they see as an example, not what others tell them to do, results in improper treatment. Moreover, teachers give the wrong impression to children at first, asking what happened while knowing this and, therefore, unintentionally pushing kids to lie. The use of school tasks as a punishment is delivering a wrong impression, and kids involved in the argument for power and control are another two issues highlighted by Lavoie.
The successful interventions mentioned during the speech are based on teaching people about kids with learning disabilities. Therefore, the philosophy and belief system about how children with disabilities should be handled and taught should be delivered. It is required to explain the right attitude of positivity and appreciation to kids being less wrong, reinforcing the preferable behavior. According to Lavoie, no physical contact should be used as it is unpredictable. The explanation should be done that the timeout should be used to isolate kids and not perform the punishment function. Furthermore, the importance of trying not to change a child but changing the environment should be delivered.
The outcomes mentioned by Rick Lavoie include teachers using their voice effectively, causing calm and effective responses from children. Moreover, being proactive, not reactive, and descriptive, not evaluative behavior for adults is promoted. Furthermore, the interventions explain the difference between negative and positive feedback from adults, creating an environment where a child can succeed and consistently decreasing kids’ anxiety.
