Well-being in children with and without DSA - Focus on school well-being and adaptation

“The work was born from the curiosity to delve into specific learning disorders not from a clinical but psychological point of view, investigating the scholastic well-being of children with DSA compared to a control group: analyzing the global and scholastic well-being and psychological/behavioural aspects of the children of school age both with typical development and with a diagnosis of DSA.

The following were used for the research:

• tests on reading and comprehension skills to exclude DSA,
• tests relating to logical reasoning skills to exclude an IQ below 85.
• structured questionnaires and standardized tests to mainly detect the psychological and psychopathological aspects, the academic and global well-being of the child.

With these tools we have focused attention on three main aspects such as:

1. School well-being and child adaptation
2. Quality of life and psychological aspects in children
3. Psycho-pathological aspects in the parent"

“These topics were investigated taking into consideration not only the child's point of view but also the parent's, to have a broader general picture, in order to understand how much the presence of DSA or not can create problems even for children. parents of these children. Being a study carried out in collaboration with two other colleagues from Emilia-Romagna (Arianna Valentini and Lenisa Biondini), each decided to focus attention on one of these three aspects in a transversal manner across the entire sample.
In particular, my work has tried to identify the main problems that a child with DSA may encounter in school, how school is experienced, the relationship with one's classmates and above all with one's family; identify whether there are differences with the control group from the point of view of academic well-being and adaptation."