Awareness of Learning Disabilities among Mothers of School Going Children

Introduction: Learning disability refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by difficulty in reading, writing, reasoning and mathematical abilities. According to current literature, 10-14% of 416 million children in India have learning disabilities making it the most widespread disability. If children with learning disabilities are not provided with appropriate interventions, they are at a risk of developing low self-esteem, depression, aggressive behavior and delinquency. A mother knows her child better than anyone else and is the first person to recognize any difficulty faced by the child. Thus, determining the awareness of learning disabilities among mothers of school going children becomes imperative which will help mothers to recognize early signs of it in order to provide appropriate treatment to the child and prevent further complications.

Methodology: Mothers of children belonging to the age group of 7 -12 years and with minimum qualification of tenth class participated in this study. Self-made validated questionnaire was sent to the subjects meeting the inclusion criteria. Collected data was analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Results: The findings of this study revealed that only 51.66 % (93 subjects) were aware about learning disabilities. Out of those 93 subjects, 52.69% were aware about dyslexia, 55.91% about dyscalculia and only 36.56 % about dysgraphia.

Conclusion: There is less awareness of learning disabilities among mothers of school going children. Since mother is the first caregiver of a child and she is the one who plays an important role during child’s developmental years, awareness of learning disabilities among mothers is of outmost importance. Lack of awareness among mothers can prevent the child from early intervention leading to deterioration of child’s condition.