Basically, parents and preschool teachers are the front line of a child’s academic life. Understanding what learning disabilities are will help that child who may need extra help in school. Although no one knows exactly why, experts do have some theories that can help early identification. Three main factors are genetic influences, brain development and environmental impacts. Sometimes learning disabilities can be traced in families, which could be genetically or environmentally traced. Brain development is directly effected by low birth weight, lack of oxygen, premature birth or head injuries. Lastly, poisons or toxics strongly effect development of the brain in the early years.

The best situation would be to have the earliest identification possible of learning disabilities. There are programs that can identify risk factors with systematic observations of the individual child as an infant, toddler or preschooler. Parents and early childhood teachers will be the first to note any discrepancies in the pattern of development of the child. Parents should help provide the richest environment for the children and not be afraid of having learning disabilities identified. Delays in speech, language development and even motor control in young children can be foreshadowing the problems in academic years ahead.

Some learning disability concepts parents should be aware of involve information processing. All of us learn in various ways, but a child identified with a learning disability is affected negatively in one or more areas of information processing. This has been called an input problem. Sometimes an auditory perception or visual perception disorder will interfere with information that the brain receives. Memory can also be effected in tandem with these disorders or it may exist alone as a short-term memory disorder. This will keep a child from getting the information into the long-term memory.