Resilience and risk in children with learning disabilities
Pérez-Blasco, J.; Ferri-Benedetti, F.; Melià-De Alba, A.; Miranda-Casas, A.
Revista de Neurologia 44(Suppl 2): S9-12
2007
ISSN/ISBN: 1576-6578 PMID: 17347951 Document Number: 605493
To stress the desirability of considering the resilience approach as a complement to the risk approach in the study and intervention of children with learning disabilities (LD). Most of the research carried out into LD has used the correlational methodology, which has given rise to chance inferences being made and to considering them as being a risk factor for development in their own right. Yet, the findings from more recent longitudinal studies make it necessary to reconsider the inevitability of negative results in the development of children with LD and to identify the processes and the factors underlying successful development, i.e. personal and social skills (self-efficiency, emotional coping, effective use of help, discrete view of difficulty, unconditional acceptance and support, and so on). The resilience approach is not an alternative that excludes the risk approach, but rather they complement each other and are both necessary in order to gain an understanding of LD and intervention. Optimising the development of individuals with LD is a task that can be made easier by assuming that resilience is a capacity that is present in all individuals and can also be improved.