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Home › Articles › General › For the Children

For the Children

Advocating for Your Child with Learning Disabilities

By Kelly Burgess

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(Turnkey Press, November 2002), gets almost choked up when told Bobby's story. In second grade, the grade Bobby is in now, Langston scored an 84 on his IQ test. When he graduated from college, his written language skills were still no better than a third grader's. In spite of that, he is now a successful CEO and businessman and founder of the For the Children Foundation. He also serves on the Georgia Board of Education's Advisory Panel for Special Education. Like Bobby, he's not dumb; he's just dyslexic.

"Once, when I was in 8th grade, I misspelled my middle name. I wrote "Willaim" instead of "William." My 8th grade teacher ridiculed me in front of the class saying, 'I don't know how any student can get to the 8th grade without knowing how to spell his own name.' I was humiliated," Langston says. "There have been many other instances since then when I've run into people often teachers who don't 'believe' in learning disabilities. The trick to succeeding is to see these moments as a challenge and don't allow them to destroy your self-confidence."

Becoming the Advocate for Your Child
Unfortunately, most kids don't naturally have the confidence to advocate for themselves, and Langston didn't either. What he did have was his mother, who wasn't afraid to take on the school system. Although she had no formal training in learning disabilities, she understood instinctively that her son was very intelligent but the reading- and writing-oriented intelligence tests simply couldn't register his type of intelligence. She passed that attitude on to her son as well, always making sure he never felt stupid. She used that approach with the schools he went to as well, researching teachers for each upcoming year, meeting with them and making sure they understood her son's limitations and abilities.

Langston wants to turn that individualized attention into the rule, rather than the exception. He has become an advocate not just for children with learning disabilities, but also for the idea of a radical change in the education system. This would keep kids like Bobby out of classes where the teacher is unwilling to work with the child.

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