My Child is Struggling: The First Steps
The moment you know that your child is struggling in school your heart sinks and your mind begins to race with questions. Is he just not trying hard enough? Is this just a phase she will outgrow as she gets older? What will the school do to help me? How do I help my child?
While there are no right answers to most of these questions, here is a roadmap to direct you on starting the process of helping your child.
1. Contact your pediatrician. As a starting point, parents should always inform their child’s pediatrician of any school struggles. Eye exams and hearing screening tests are always an important first step and usually a pediatrician can easily perform these tests. The school nurse may also be able to do quick screenings. Upon being informed that a patient is struggling in school, a pediatrician should also have parents and teachers complete standard medical questionnaires regarding the student’s behavior, anxiety level and attention.
2. Conference with the classroom teacher. At the same time as you are working with your pediatrician, you should conference with your child’s teacher to address your concerns about your child’s struggles. A parent need not wait until conference time to confer with the classroom teacher. Teachers will often, upon request, schedule conferences to address concerns about a student’s progress during the school year. At the conference raise your specific concerns and bring support such as homework that your child did incorrectly, assignments he could not complete and papers showing below level grade work.
3. Determine the best intervention and set goals. Once the concern is raise and demonstrated, ask your teacher what sort of interventions are available for your child at their school. These could include working with reading specialists in small groups within the classroom, “pull-out” support groups outside of the classroom, and built-in “intervention blocks.” Work with your child’s teacher to determine which intervention best suits your child. During this conversation ask who will deliver this intervention, how often will intervention be provided and what are the qualifications of the person working with your child. Sometimes the individual providing the intervention is very highly educated, but other times there is less training than parent would expect. Try to tactfully discover whether the person providing the intervention is qualified. In rare cases, no help is better than help offered by an unqualified individual.
4. Follow up on progress. Parents must be even more vigilant during this intervention period. They should investigate the grade level expectations for their child and make sure that their child is on track to meet them or is at least closing their performance gap. Parents should also work with the school to determine appropriate goals to ensure the intervention is working (ex. John will improve two reading levels in two months). Additionally, the parents and teachers should determine a mutually agreeable time and method of follow up. If little progress has been made after 3 to 6 months of interventions, it is time to consider performing comprehensive evaluations of your child.
5. Reinforce at home. Finally, ask the school to let you know what and how they are teaching your child so that you can reinforce it at home. Struggling learners learn best with a consistent approach and reinforcement at home. When there is a true home-school partnership, the student benefits.
Finally, a word of caution to parents: in my experience, elementary students usually give their best efforts and if they could do better, they would do better. In some instances a parent would rather believe their child is just not trying than face the possibility of a learning challenge. This mindset may lead to harmful delays in obtaining the help the student needs to progress meaningfully in the curriculum.
