D.0.9 to 4.9%: SLD, or Specific Learning Disorders, increased fivefold in the school population from 2010 to 2019 (Miur data). Today they are interesting about 300 thousand students.
“Means that fewer and fewer students, children and adolescents, are able to read, write and operate with numbers smoothly and correctly due to dyslexia, dysgraphia, dysorthography and dyscalculia“, explains Tiziana Rossettopresident FLI (Federation of Italian Speech Therapists)on the occasion of the European Day of Speech Therapy of 6 March: “A situation that was previously underestimated and which unfortunately still is: just look at the territorial surveys, significantly lower in the South than in Northern Italy: 7.3% of full-blown SLD certifications issued to pupils in the North West compared to only 2.4% certifications issued in the South ».
Updated guidelines for timely interventions
But what is it about? How and when does one get a DSA certification and how can this change a student’s life? In this regard theItalian dyslexia association promoted a update, ten years after the previous document, of the intervention guidelines: an even more necessary gesture in the era of the pandemic and in an era of migration like this (“Foreign minors are 10% of the school population in the year 2018/2019, a careful assessment of the abilities of the child exposed to two or more languages », says Rossetto).
What is a DSA?
«Specific learning disorders are disorders of neurobiological origin, we can call them neurodiversity, and they have nothing to do with cognitive development“. In other words, a dyslexic child is in no way less intelligent. “In the past, those who had this kind of problem were considered a donkey, they were often rejected,” continues Rossetto. «Their fundamental difficulty is the decoding of the written code: they are slow, terribly slow, and they make errors of accuracy“.
The diagnosis of ASD and possible supports
Tablets and audio books can be very useful in the case of a DSA (Getty Images)
DSA is diagnosed only after the second year of primary school, that is, after the child has been exposed to the experience of reading and calculating for two years, even using specific support software. “Usually this prolonged exposure creates automatism in the student,” explains Rossetto. That is, one learns to read without realizing it, and not, as happens to those with a disorder, by isolating each letter, without being able to have an overview. If the automatism is not created, a DSA certification is required: this allows the family and school to equip themselves, supporting the child with suitable tools, from the computer with spell checker to audio books, from the calculator to other pedagogical aids, such as the use of logic maps to help him in making connections.
Attention to the first linguistic production, between 18 months and 4 years
Children diagnosed with ASD in primary school they often (in 70% of cases) have a primary speech language disorder that is noticeable much earlier. As Rossetto explains, “if around 18 months a child begins to speak and around the age of 24 can compose the first two-word sentences with his lexicon of about 50 little words, perhaps accompanied by gestures, which is an excellent precursor to spoken communication , at 3-4 years old he can answer and speak well ». It is the pediatrician’s task to detect any atypia of neurodevelopment on the occasion of growth budgets and highlight any deficits in language acquisition and production. But parents must also keep their eyes and ears open, also to detect the possible frustration of a child who cannot speak, and would like to do so.
The difficulty of parenting a child with ASD
But it’s not always easy to be the parent of a child with a problem. «There are those», Rossetto explains, «who seem to have accepted, to have understood that their son’s IQ is okay, that he will be able to graduate and have the life he wants. It seems so, and then we discover that at home they suffocate the child with endless and useless repetitions ». Who has a DSA can do everything, with the right support. “Much work still needs to be done on the social stigma these disorders carry.” To children but also to adults.
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