You must throw out everything negative you've been told
about your child and start anew.
You must be your child's #1 advocate!
Skills Lessons
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| A Word to Concerned Parents... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| First things first. . . | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Congratulations: You have shown yourself to be a caring, concerned parent! You must throw out everything negative you've been told about your child and start anew. You must be your child's #1 advocate! |
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| Let me tell you a story. I once tutored a boy -- let's call him Charlie since I want to keep his identity private. Charlie's mom told me he was lazy. She said his teacher identified Charlie as lazy, too. She said Charlie didn't like to do his homework, that he fared poorly on tests, and that he didn't like to study. When I met Charlie, he could barely look me in the eyes. His mom showed me some of his papers, and he did indeed have bad grades. She spoke disparagingly of him while he sat there staring at the tabletop. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Charlie's Test Results | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The first thing I did for this fourth grader was give him a simple reading test. To my surprise, Charlie couldn't read even at a second grade level. Suddenly, the poor test scores were not so mysterious. Next, I tested his simple addition skills. Amazingly, Charlie couldn't add some simple numbers, like 9 plus 8, or 7 plus 6. He had to use his fingers. Now the poor math scores made sense. In third grade, before multiplication, Charlie could pull C's. Even at the beginning of fourth grade when multiplication was all single digit, he squeaked by. But when double digit multiplication came in, and Charlie had to ADD, which he couldn't do, he suddenly got everything wrong! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Truth About Charlie... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Well, the first thing we did was stop calling Charlie lazy. In truth, Charlie was just being smart; afterall, no matter how hard he tried to do fourth grade work he failed. He reasoned, why bother when I will fail anyway? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The next thing we did was start to teach Charlie those basic skills he had missed. It took a lot of work. Charlie didn't learn exactly like everyone else. I used some methods that work for dyslexic children, and he began to succeed. Charlie's parents asked his teacher to allow him to catch up slowly. Unfortunately, though she conceded Charlie had problems, she felt he should try to keep up with the normal class lessons. This was, of course, impossible for Charlie. The constant F's he received also undermined the pride he should have felt at remediating all his skills. Thankfully, the parents put Charlie in another school. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Moral of the Story | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The moral of my story is two fold. First, never label your child with some negative name that he or she may learn to live up (or down) to. Second, when trying to figure out what is going on, start with the basics. Check basic reading skills, even letter identification (can you believe Charlie didn't even know the entire alphabet, yet he'd made it to the fourth grade!), simple addition, and multiplication. Then, work on study skills (use my site). Always try to get the teacher on board. Despite the above story, most teachers care for your child and want him or her to succeed. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Back to Mini Study Skills Lessons |
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| Email: gidi2@yahoo.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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