Why Behavior Modification Important for Intellectual disability?

According to AAIDD, Intellectual disability is a disability characterized by significant limitations in both intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior, which covers many everyday social and practical skills. The impairment in adaptive behavior may be either a deficit behavior or as excess behavior.

Persons with intellectual disability may lack adaptive behavior. These may be poor speech development, inability to attend bowel and bladder need without assistance, inability to attend to one activity for a long time, inability to eat by oneself etc. these are called behavior Deficits.  They have to be learnt or the deficit has to be made up for effective functioning. Behavior modification programmes should be implemented to correct the impairment in the adaptive behavior.

Behavior modification programmes follow a self-correcting approach. The problems are clearly defined, the data is gathered before and during the treatment programme, the evaluation of the treatment is made and in cases of failure, the treatment procedures are modified. 

Applying Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom

There are a number of definitions of learning styles. Dr. Ritha Dunn (1988) defines it as "the way in which each learner begins to concentrate on, process, and retain new and difficult information". Learning styles have also been described as how one deals with ideas and day-to-day situations, one's learning preferences and propensities, how one approaches thinking, and how one best perceives and process information.

Gardner (1999a) identifies not two, but nine different intelligences: linguistic, logical mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist, and existential. Gardner defined the first seven intelligences in Frames of Mind (1983). He added the last two in Intelligence Reframed (1999)

Using multiple learning styles and multiple intelligences for learning is relatively new approach. This approach is one that educators have only recently started to recognize. Traditional schooling used (and continues to use) mainly linguistic and logical teaching methods. It also uses a limited range of learning and teaching techniques. Many schools still rely on classroom and book-based teaching, much repetition, and pressured exams for reinforcement and review. A result is that we often label those who use these learning styles and techniques as bright. Those who use less favored learning styles often find themselves in lower classes, with various not-so-complimentary labels and sometimes lower quality teaching. This can create positive and negative spirals that reinforce the belief that one is "smart" or "dumb".

By recognizing and understanding your own learning styles, you can use techniques better suited to you. This improves the speed and quality of your learning.

Learning Disabilities; Parent Help

The first thing we need to understand is that learning disabilities are “life” disabilities. Learning disabilities are not just school problem. The same learning disability that interfere with reading, writing and arithmetic interfere with base ball, basket ball, jump rope, sitting the dinner table, getting depressed, keeping a room neat-in short, with every aspect of life.  You may have thought of a learning disability as “my child can’t read, read backwards or reads upside-down and that’s why he does to landmark. But you need to realize that his or her learning disability also explains why there are so many problems at home or with peers. Parents must broaden their thinking and realize that their son’s or daughter’s brain somehow functions differently, whether he or she is which family, playing with friends or at school.

The second thing to keep in mind is that learning disabilities are a “life time” disability. The child with a learning disability will become the adolescent with the learning disability, and will became the adult with the learning disability. Parents don’t like to hear this they want to think that their child will outgrow it. If they just give the child help for a couple of years, he or she will get better.

            The point is that if we get these students the right help, and if we give them the right skills and strategies for learning they can do as well as anyone else. They might need special help through high school. They might also need to go to a college that can provide help. Today there are graduate schools and profession schools all over the country that accommodate to youngsters with learning disability. So, what is your job as a parent? School will deal with their academic need, parent need to deal with their psychological, social, family and peer needs.