School isn’t always ‘the best days’ of a child’s life. Sometimes, every day can be a hurdle, a battle. Sometimes a child is labelled as ‘naughty’ whereas in fact there could be an explanation behind his/her behaviour. Sometimes bright children do badly in tests and exams too.

Before jumping to conclusions, it’s essential to do something proactive so the situation doesn’t continue to slide:

1. First contact the school to rule out whether problems are caused by bullying, being in the wrong set, friendship issues. Pastoral issues can hugely affect a child’s performance at school. If not, is there an undetected learning difficulty.
2. Ask for an assessment; book an appointment with the school’s SENCO. (Special Educational Needs Coordinator) What tests could the school conduct to rule out SLDs? (Specific Learning Difficulties) The obvious ones spring to mind: ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and Dyscalculia.
3. Arrange a test undertaken by a speech and language processing specialist to check auditory processing and memory issues. While the symptom might be Dyslexia, the cause behind it might not be.
4. Support your child at home. One to one attention is critical. Children who already feel lost in the system struggle terribly with homework. Can you sit with them every night? Can you arrange a tutor to give them the support they need? At this stage, it’s important to raise your child’s confidence.

Remember: children develop at different ages. So even though a ‘problem’ presents itself now, it might disappear as time goes on.

If you are concerned, and feel that some one to one support would help your child cope, you can book a tutor through 121 Home Tutors. If you’re in Manchester or Cheshire, we’re here for you.

Tags: Dyslexia, learning difficulties, SEN, SLD

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2015 at 11:10 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.