The process of learning to empower a child with learning differences to succeed at school is often the most exhausting and the most fulfilling of journeys. Child learning difficulties give so much energy to the parents and carers – to see the child struggle at school is hard! It can present in various ways: many children have a learning difficulty: their reading, writing and mathematics, or it can be more general: poor organisation and concentration. The varied nature of learning differences makes the road ahead more difficult but ultimately it still possible; you, the parent or carer can still do a lot to help your child succeed. Below find some solutions to support your child at school.
Understanding Learning Disabilities
I’d like you to take into consideration that, before I talk about strategies, it is vital that you have an understanding of what learning disabilities are. Learning disability is a neurological occurrence that affects the way the child would represent a given information or even store it. This does not talk about the intelligence of the child but more of the mode in which the brain understands certain information. For example: dyslexia, dyscalculia and ADHD are type of learning disabilities.
Early Detection and Assessment
If your child has a learning disability, the earlier it is detected, the better. If your child’s teacher or someone else has suggested that your child might have a learning disability, it is a good idea to talk to teachers and other specialists who can evaluate the child. A diagnosis early in life gives you time to develop and set up the best strategies and services for you and your child’s teacher. Here’s more info on why it’s helpful to catch learning disabilities early.
a. Learning Disabilities: Recognise that while different children struggle in different ways and learning disabilities are not obvious, some children struggle to read. Some to do maths. Some to write. Some with all three. Some will affect your child’s attention or memory. Some will make it harder to get started or organised.
Early intervention involves looking for indicators during clinical encounters: slowness in reading or writing; inability to follow simple directions or to complete learning tasks; inconsistency in learning that is characterised by ‘good days’ followed by confusing ‘bad days’ or even disasters; frustration with homework or classroom work.
b. Prompt early intervention: If you suspect a learning disability, you should also act quickly. Usually this starts with a phone call to your child’s teacher, school counsellor or other specialist who is the learning disability gatekeeper at your child’s school.
Further testing and assessment by a qualified professional can provide a more fine-grained and comprehensive analysis, identifying both the exact nature and the degree of the learning disability, charged with clinical judgments and supplementary information from parents and teachers, based on both accuracy and humanity. This might involve standardised assessments of the skills the child has. Tests could also be administered to the child. Other bits of useful information could be gained from talking with the parents and the teachers and other members of the child’s education system, as well as by looking at the child’s history in school.
c. Development of Individualised Education Plans (IEPs): Following formal screening and full assessment, the result is an IEP, an Individualised Education Plan – a lengthy individualised document that details the child’s learning needs and goals, and how the school will meet them using specified accommodations and modifications.
It can help teachers and specialists create an IEP that is based on the child’s strengths and weaknesses, and ensure that right from the start, the child is receiving the right kinds of teaching methods and related services.
d. Avoiding School and Emotional Problems: Early detection and intervention will help the child avoid falling behind and experiencing school-related emotional problems. A learning disability identified and addressed early will make the child far less likely to experience frustration or a feeling of low self-worth or school failure.
e) Power to the Child: As children did not ‘choose’ their learning disability, as far as possible, children should know as much as possible about their learning disability, and certainly that there are ways of helping them learn to their strengths. Knowing about their learning disability, and its impact, can help students think about it in a more self-evaluative fashion; it can help them to become a self-advocate.
Early intervention for those students could mean that parents and teachers helped them to develop the coping strategies they needed to overcome their learning problems, but also to gain the confidence to stand tall a face their academic challenges.
Individualized Education Plan (IEP)
After a disorder is diagnosed, ask the school to develop an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) – a customised set of goals, accommodations and modifications, such as extended time on exams, technology help, special teaching programmes, and more, that will help your child through the school year.
Multisensory Learning Approaches
Nowadays multisensory learning techniques are much more adequate for the most children difficulty of lerning because these monly involed teaching our students either through sight, hearing, touch, smell, or taste all these sends adapted make easier learning and memorising of the matter.For instance visual aids such as yael models graphs or stand-up pictures or poster illustrates what you are learning in detail.
Assistive Technology
furthermore, assistive technology might open up new opportunities – why not use your child’s stuff to raise money for a local karaokeshow? – and for a child with specific learning disorder, text-to-speech software, speech recognition software and any other appropriate apps can level the access and engagement playing fields. Ensure that your child has access to the technology at home.
Patience and Encouragement
In other words, parenting that is warm and responsive. Praise your child, celebrate their successes, encourage their sense that they’re safe and from which they can scream a string of frustrated obscenities at difficulty and even failure. A sunny disposition, along with a secure base, are both great for self-worth and for effort.
Specialized Tutoring
Either send him to a tutorial programme for special learning needs or hire a tutor for learning-disabled kids, who can provide instructional strategies and techniques that will address your child’s specific problems.
Conclusion
Supporting a learning-disabled child means that it takes a caring instructor who is willing to stick with things and stay involved; it also helps if you’re willing to work the plan and continue to foster the kind of environment your child needs in order to succeed in school and in life. Each student is unique, so you might need to backtrack, rework or self-evaluate in order to better suit your child’s learning needs and current abilities.
In addition, you can be invaluable in ensuring that your child makes the most of her education, particularly if she’s got learning difficulties and will not fit the system as easily. You can help your kids thrive at school, not merely ‘get through it’, provided that they have learning differences.
