Ideas to redirect children when they go wrong in school
The course has been underway for a couple of months now and we may have received the first warning signs: the results in the initial evaluation leave us somewhat worried; certain attitude of rejection towards school it warns us that something is not going well or, directly, a call from the teacher is what makes us react. Something is wrong in the studies.
How should we act as parents? First of all, keeping calm and transmitting a lot of peace to our children. They are very sensitive to what they perceive to be worrying us, and this can exacerbate the problem, generating insecurity in the face of studies.
Direct communication with the teaching staff
The fluid communication with the teaching staff is the key element in these cases. Each school establishes its communication channels and all are important:
- Group meetings of all parents of the class with the tutor. These meetings are important to know what is expected of our children in that specific course, both at the academic level and at the behavioral level. They can always serve as a reference for what is expected of a child of our child's age and give us clues to detect when something is not right.
- Individual meetings with the tutor. In them, it is especially important for parents to attend, since it always enriches the interview more by having the point of view of the two. It is essential to assist with an open attitude to know the reality about our children; The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it exists. If something worries us about the performance of our son we should not wait for the teacher to quote us, we can go ahead asking for an interview with the teacher.
- Interview with the center counselor. In most schools, collective test batteries are usually applied, which are of great help to detect possible difficulties, areas for group improvement and also strengths of each student, an important fact to be able to help them with their specific difficulty. If from the school they request a meeting with the parents to clarify some point or to advise us an external evaluation, let's get to it without delay. In many cases it is a question of discarding a visual or auditory type of difficulty that can mask a learning problem or diagnose a difficulty that, the sooner it is tackled, the less impact it will have on the schooling of our child. In any case, it is important to send the results of any assessment to the school. The faculty needs the clear guidelines of the specialist in order to adjust their methodology to the way of learning of each child.
Know the cause: why is it going wrong in the studies?
We already have clear what hinders the learning of our son. It may be a problem in the area of language or something more related to attention, perhaps what fails is the work habits or a specific difficulty in the mathematical logical area.
The causes can be very varied and we can not stop at each of them, but as a starting point it seems important to accept as parents that child is the way it is, knowing that academic results are not everything, trying to discover the areas in which that child stands out and also assumes that he will need our support in a more continuous way in the unavoidable school tasks.
As parents and as teachers, we realize that in the classroom or in the family we have children who roll alone and others who need small or large pushes to make them roll. Knowing that this is so and having it will help us to assume that, perhaps, we will need to take it into account to reorganize the afternoons at home and to predict who will be more aware of supervising the school tasks of that child who needs us the most.
The balance between supporting them in studies and letting them grow to gain autonomy
Given this, another question may arise. Where is the limit between supporting them in studies and, at the same time, making them gain autonomy? Can you turn this aid into a crutch without which you would not be able to study on your own? Do we have to sit down with them every afternoon to do homework? At what time is it good to have the help of a private teacher?
There are no general recipes because each child and each family circumstance are unique. The guideline to get it right in each case will be given by the teacher. He will be the one who can recommend us with more success if he needs us to support from home supervising the reading aloud of our son, looking for a suitable place of work, without noise or distractions, making sure that he gets to work with all the prepared material, helping him to distribute the time for each task, teaching him to review a lesson in front of an exam, review the presentation or assimilation of the work ...
And also sThe teacher will suggest us at what time we should let him work alone, even at the risk that you may stumble.There are moments of the course or parts of the syllabus in which we can allow small academic slips without them supposing to generate a knowledge gap and we need to verify what it is capable of doing by itself in order to continue helping it with success. Let's then trust the teacher who knows how to give us the proper guidelines on our performance as parents.
There may also be cases in which from school we are recommended to be a different person to parents who help with homework. Sometimes, this work involves such wear and tear that what should always be favored is the affective relationship between parents and children. In addition, the fact that it is a person outside the family who authoritatively marks the study schedule, the content, or the way of focusing activities makes the children respond better to what they want to transmit.
The role of the private teacher
What would then be the role of the private teacher? This can vary from reinforcing the contents seen in class; anticipate the agenda for the child to gain security during the teacher's explanation in the classroom; or, regardless of what has been done in class, stop to put the bases well and detect possible previous gaps that are the ones that hinder the learning of that child.
The fundamental thing is that There is good coordination with the school. In these cases it is very helpful to call a meeting at the beginning of the course in which the parents can be present, the counselor, if the situation requires it, the teachers of the core subjects (Language and Mathematics) and the person of the cabinet or teacher particular, to be able to determine the specific help that student needs. It is true that this requires a great effort of coordination but it multiplies the results and the progress with each child, which is what it is ultimately about.
The emotional level of children with learning difficulties
It is also essential to attend to the emotional part of these children with learning difficulties. We are talking about students who study a Primary course and therefore the age range we are talking about is very broad, but from 9 to 10 years old they need to know, at a level they can understand, why they have to invest more time in studying than other colleagues. If they do not know the reason, it will be easy for them to conclude that they are less intelligent than the rest.
exist adapted stories for these ages that explain what is dyslexia or hyperactivity or attention deficit. Know that these difficulties have nothing to do with the lack of intelligence, but that they are a different way of learning It constitutes an oxygen cylinder for your self-esteem. Knowing other children or even adults (characters, teachers, relatives ...) that have the same difficulty that they are of great help because it makes them feel understood, see that tomorrow can perform important jobs, that other people they have gone through their same difficulties
Clara Sordo. Orientadora and professor of the Orvalle School (Madrid)
