School & Learning Problems

Many kids with learning disabilities run into trouble with organizational skills. They may forget to bring home their homework or bring it home, complete it then fail to turn it in the very next day. Changing classes, multiple teachers with conflicting rules, locker combinations and different materials required for different classes presents unique challenges for learning disabled children. Parents can best aid their kids by providing a plan and a structure. To start with, an organized work space will help your child settle into the work of learning more quickly. When a work area is arranged strategically, it minimizes distractions that inherently trip up a learning disabled child such as looking for paper or pens as well as blocking out extraneous noise.

Who hasn’t heard that adolescence for all kids is a challenging developmental journey fraught with threats to one’s intellectual and social self-esteem?

Add a learning disability to what is already considered a time of “normal” teen insanity and you have what can feel like a hopeless situation. Hopeless is exactly what many learning disabled kids feel during this stage of their lives. Adolescence is a time of individuation, a time when teens want to restructure the playing field in which they interact with their parents. The journey to create a new relationship with parents as well as solidifying a firm self image has distinct developmental hurdles along the way that must be navigated successfully in order to progress to the next step.

Children refuse to go to school for many reasons. Parents need to understand why a child does not do what other children do, that is, leave home on time, five days a week and go to school. School phobia is a persistent refusal by the child to go to school, and may need to be dealt with by a professional psychologist or counselor.

Children refuse to go to school for reasons that they themselves often do not understand. Some of these reasons have to do with the child’s feelings about leaving home and others with special problems at school.

A child may be anxious about separating from his/her mother. Separation anxiety is one of the conditions that may require professional help, but not before parents try to help the child themselves. Sometimes instead of putting the child on a bus, driving the child to school and waiting for a few minutes will help solve the problem. Sometimes the issues have to do with school clothes. Other problems may be social in nature such as having to deal with a school bully, or rejection by a group of children at school. A child feels these events as very disturbing, even though a parent may make little of them. Other children may have learning problems and feel dumb, or fear being laughed at. A child may not only react with anxiety about having to go to school, but also with depression or sadness. Having to bring home poor grades and face the criticism of parents, or a lessening of self esteem may be a problem.

Your child is upset because of an upcoming test at school. He is feeling overwhelmed, anxious and is unsure about how and what to study. What can you do as a parent to help your child? Unfortunately, the solution to this problem starts at the beginning of a child’s education. We need to help our child develop good study skills from kindergarten on. Every child should have a study period at home in which homework is completed and the child reads. With this background three factors including knowledge of the material, good organizational skills and test anxiety are already partially or wholly resolved.

Knowledge of the material, while essential to passing any test, may be accomplished as the child reviews his work on a regular basis. This includes preparation for taking the test as well as understanding what is going to be tested. This is true for a simple subject matter test such as history, or a much more complex test such as the SAT. for getting into college. Students often feel they can take any test, only to find out they were unprepared for the type of test being given, such as essay, true-false questions or multiple-choice questions. Knowledge of the material leads to knowledge of the answers to the questions being asked. Unless a child has enough time to prepare in advance there is little chance of doing well on a test. This preparation is done in several ways including review of the material, review of previous tests and learning new material that has not been learned previously.

Parents who want to help their children sometimes harm them rather than help them, by doing their homework for them.

Your child learns a great deal by doing homework. Other than the subject matter involved, children learn how to go about solving a problem. Success in doing their homework builds self-esteem and a feeling of competence and pride. For young children who have had everything done for them, homework gives them a chance to spread their wings and show both the teacher and their parents what they can do.

Should parents help their child with homework? Of course parents should be there to guide their child, answer questions and point them in the right direction, but not to do the homework for them. Most teachers will only give children work to do at home that they expect the child to be able to do. If the child cannot do the work it means either the teacher is in error, or more likely that the child either did not understand the directions given by the teacher, or wasn’t paying attention. In this case parents may need to explain what needs to be done and allow the child to then do it correctly.

The sad news is that despite all the advertising you cannot raise a child genius if your child does not have the innate ability to learn. The good news is that you can stimulate your child by relaxing and playing with him/her. Talking and reading with your child are also excellent ways of stimulating a child’s brain. Age appropriate toys are stimulating to a child’s sensory-motor abilities. As soon as a child is born there is a rapid development of the child’s senses. Seeing, hearing, touch and tasting all are developing avenues for your child to learn. The child begins to put everything in his/her mouth as a way of learning about it. As a child gets teeth everything is tasted or bitten as a way of learning more about it. This is a way a child learns. As a child’s senses develop there is not much use in trying to teach a child to read or calculate, because there are other tasks to complete first.

Children can benefit from being read to at any age. For those of us who work with learning disabled children it is clear that a major weakness is in reading and reading comprehension. If parents wish to stimulate their children at an early age the best task of all is to instill a love of reading. Read to your child daily until they are able to enjoy reading by themselves and even longer. We all love stories. For generations before books knowledge was transmitted primarily through stories and the wandering storytellers were much admired and listened to. A child learns to love reading by emulating parents. As you sit and read daily so will your child model their behavior after you. In some families reading out loud is carried on longer than childhood as something that the family does together. It is this love for reading and listening to reading that stimulates a child intellectually.

A common complaint that parents have is that their child does not listen to them. The reverse is often true as well. Children grow up with many problems, but their parents often don’t listen to them.

If the problem is a physical one parents are more likely to listen to the problem, but not always. There are other important problems that children will talk to their parents about that may not get listened to.

Learning problems are often ignored. Parents tend to downplay learning problems and say to the child, “If you work harder you will understand it better,” or “Study harder” or some equivalent. About 15% of children have learning problems, some simple and some complex. Research has shown that many children who do not receive help with their problems tend to fall further behind. What is a simple problem may over time become a major problem where a child is no longer able to keep up with the class. Yet the problem initially is simple to resolve. If your child, as an example, is behind in arithmetic, it may be easily resolved with a little help but after the child is six months or more behind the problem becomes much more serious. Arithmetic is one of the academic subjects that are built in a step-by-step manner where the child has to resolve the basic steps before moving onto the following steps. It is important to listen to your child and get suitable help when your child is asking for help. If you are one of those rare parents who can comfortably help your child solve the problem then do it. If you cannot, then seek suitable professional help.