Educational Disabilities: a Brief Overview

Mentally Impaired (MI): We used to say "retarded." Like SLD at the moment, IQ plays an obvious role in being MI - obvious, but not definitive. I say that because regardless of how low a child's IQ may be, they are not considered MI unless they are also having difficulty adapting to life in two or more areas like communication, the ability to care for themselves, social skills, academics, etc. Generally, to be considered MI, a student must have an IQ of about 70 or lower. While there are a number of genetic conditions like Downs Syndrome that usually lead to a student being classified as MI, most mentally impaired children do not have such obvious symptoms.

While well over half of all children deemed to have some educational disabilities fall into one of these two categories, a number of small disabilities categories exist. Among them:

• Autism: a developmental disability that significantly affects both verbal and nonverbal communication skills and social interactions.

• Emotionally Disturbed: sometimes also called "Behavior Disorder." While this includes psychological conditions like schizophrenia, it is usually characterized by an inability to build relationships, profound mood problems, physical symptoms associated with normal life anxieties, and/or inappropriate behaviors. These characteristics must be present for a prolonged period of time.

• Hearing Impaired: a child's difficulty (or inability) with hearing may be classified as a disability.

• Visually Impaired: blindness or profound limitations of sight constitute a disability.

• Hearing and Vision Impaired: when a child has both problems, the implications are more profound.

• Orthopedically Impaired: severe physical conditions that have a negative impact on participation in school. These include congenital problems like spina bifida. But they also include conditions like severe arthritis, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, and amputation.

• Other Health Impairments: medical conditions that limit strength, vitality, or alertness to the point that it impacts the learning process. Everybody's favorite? Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - or "ADHD." Does having ADHD mean that a child has a disability? The answer is a big fat maybe - it depends on exactly how the child's learning is affected. This category is used, however, for everything from severe asthma and bee sting allergies to diabetes, sickle cell anemia, and cancer. It is also the category that would have caught me - for my epilepsy.

• Speech and/or Language: disorders that require the services of a speech pathologist.

• Traumatic Brain Injury: covers children who have
  The copyright of the article Educational Disabilities: a Brief Overview in Special Education is owned by Greg Cruey. Permission to republish Educational Disabilities: a Brief Overview in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

  Go To Page: 1 2 3

  Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic