Barb
I am also looking for hard info on what exactly constitutes a diagnosis of mild mental retardation over learning disability -- the two terms seem to overlap & be used almost interchangeably. If one wants professional help, it seems more advantageous to accentuate the "retarded" aspect of the condition. This is what I'm running into. My daughter has been identified by a school team as having some kind of learning disability or "unspecified cognitive deficit." They have recommended I take her to see a pediatric neurologist to get an "official" diagnosis. Without an official diagnosis, the school's opinion is moot. I'm just wondering. I can't get hard data on this subject & it is frustrating. My daughter, who is almost 5, is borderline in her abilities & does not look blatantly "retarded" but she is significantly delayed to the point (cognitively, mostly) where I really think it's splitting hairs NOT to call her mildly retarded -- as bad as that label as come to be in our society. It was explained to me once by someone that learning disability meant that one's I.Q. was not necessarily limited, but rather that a "wiring" problem was causing some kind of scrambling/dysfunction in the brain to the extent that the person's behaviors often mimicked those retarded people to a "t." Conversely, mild mental retardation was supposed to mean that one's intellectual capacity was definitely limited in a concrete way & palliative rather than "rewiring" measures were often sought. Help! Anyone with any hard scientific data on this?