Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In education, designation for a child who cannot be well served by regular school programs and requires special education or adapted education to develop his or her fullest potential. Children with special needs include gifted children, who have unusual and superior talents, and children with various handicaps, including those with learning disabilities, mental retardation, and…

Alternate term for high-risk babies or for children With special needs.  

The ability to judge the relationship of objects to each other and oneself; closely linked to both MOTOR skills and visual skills. Children with learning disabilities or other developmental disorders may have difficulty in judging when they need to duck or crawl under a rope or table, for example, or may consistently try to put…

A highly structured phonics approach to teaching reading at the elementary school level, sometimes called the unified phonics method.  

Nutritious substances other than fluids (such as breast milk or formula), generally introduced as supplements to infants after four to six months. By this time babies usually have matured enough to be able to sit up with some help and have some control over the head and neck, including tongue and lips. They can also…

Observations less clearly indicative of central nervous system malfunctions than are hard signs; a term neurologists sometimes use when talking about a child with learning disabilities or other developmental disorders. Any of a number of signs that, when considered collectively, are felt to indicate the presence of damage to the central nervous system. These signs…

Alternate term for automatic promotion.  

A kind of converted age-equivalent score that results from the Vineland Social Maturity Scale.  

Widely used test of distance vision, using a wall chart starting with a “big E,” normal vision being 20/20.  

The state of lessened consciousness, reduced metabolism, and limited activity of the skeletal muscles that we call sleep and the problems and disruptions associated with it. Not a single, uniform state, sleep goes through stages, which can be recognized on electroencephalographs (EEGs). The two main, alternating stages are named for their primary characteristics: NREM (nonrapid…