ABSTRACT
Many children experience problems both in learning certain material and skills and in performing or demonstrating that they have mastered the material or skills. Increasingly, children, adolescents, and their teachers, coaches, and parents are turning to hypnotherapy for help, spurred on by encouraging reports in the press and in professional journals. Many reports of hypnotherapy for learning problems contain a measure of optimism that is not really warranted by the data. Hypnotherapy can often be beneficial as either a primary or an adjunct therapy in treating emotional problems such as low selfesteem or anxiety that may impede learning; however, a clinician utilizing hypnotherapy must take care to distinguish these emotional problems from true learning disabilities. Diagnostic evaluation should include psychological, neuropsychological, and psychoeducational evaluation (of child and family); in some cases, a child will also require and benefit from evaluation by a speech pathologist, a neurologist, and an ophthalmologist.
