Children may be bothered by a number of conditions that come under the heading of learning disabilities, and they may also be affected by problems that can appear to be learning disabilities. Learning disabilities make life difficult for children in the classroom. They also cause for the child as they grow all of the problems associated with the lack of an education, and they may also shape and distort the child's social abilities and his ability to acquire a variety of concepts we all possess that help us relate to ourselves, other people, and the world itself. Learning disabilities often show themselves in the classroom and emerge as the child is expected to learn and develop at the same pace as others in his or her age group, but instead, he or she shows the inability to learn, inattentiveness, difficulty in judging concepts of time, poor language development, and so forth. The child may also show signs of hyperactivity, poor memory, and distorted perception.
Most learning disabilities emerge in the school setting, but it is also true that schools often miss the signs and fail to cope with the problems raised by learning disabilities. Ungerleider (1985) points this out with reference to her story of one student and how he was failed by schools. Her story also points to the fact that learning disabilities need not be permanent and need not be debilitating if they are diagnosed and treated properly: "Reading, Writing, and Rage shows beyond a doubt that Tony Petri had many problems--perceptual problems, possible neurological problems, visual problems, allergy problems, family problems. However, the extent of each of these, considered in isolation, does not justify the utter totality of his school failure" (Ungerleider, 1985, 205). Ungerleider finds that even as this child was diagnosed and as treatment was created for him, his own rage prevented any possible solution from working: "Tony Petri failed to learn because of rag...