With the education system stepping itself up in the difficulty scale, parents are now more concerned about their children and are keen to proactively do everything they can to the best of their ability to put their children on the “fast track”. Almost every parent has become the typical helicopter parent; not because they love hovering over their children’s every life decision as control freaks, instead, it’s just purely fear, uncertainty and concern.
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The hurry and impatience that parents have may sometimes cause them to turn blind towards their children’s actual problems or specific needs. The most common mistake that parents make is it overlook the learning difficulty that their children face. The thought process that instantaneously goes on a parent’s mind upon looking at a report card full of bad grades is, “what is being done doesn’t seem to be enough”.
Some parents make the grave mistake of creating an after-school timetable for their child; which is basically a timetable that their children should follow at home when they come back from school. This includes fixed time for eating, fixed 20-minute break times and for the most part, it’s just study time, consisting of a list of practice papers and assessment books that has to be done. This is such a mechanical and restrictive way of educating a child and there is no way learning would ever be enjoyable. In fact, this harms a child’s mental well-being and could possibly worsen a child’s learning difficulty should he or she have one.
Source: Myrepublica
Parents need to be keen observers and they need to assess their children to identify the possible learning difficulties that they might have. So, here are some signs that parents can look out for, so that they can nip the problem in the bud!
IMPULSIVENESS
Some children may have the habit of acting impulsively, meaning to say, they don’t think before they act. Hasty actions with undesirable consequences will always create unhealthy situations and an unconducive environment which will be barrier for the development of a healthy mind for a child. This impulsiveness acts as a hurdle for children to perform well in examinations as they do not give the proper attention that every question in exam paper needs.
Parents who identify their child to be a little impulsive in their actions can consider sending their child to a tuition centre. Though it may be a difficult decision initially, as a parent, you can talk this through with your child and convince him or her of the benefits, and it is also of utmost importance to mention the impulsive characteristic that the child has to the tutor-in-charge.
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Letting the tutor know beforehand and giving them the heads-up about the possible challenges that may arise in tutoring the child will enable to tutor to be more aware and the tutor will be able to take the necessary steps to solve the issue as much as possible.
POOR MEMORY
Some children often display signs of poor memory in very early stages and this can be observed in many small ways. For example, you could ask your child to keep in mind the list of groceries that need to be bought and thereafter get your child to repeat the list when you’ve reached the supermarket. Often times, children who have poor memory may not even have made the conscientious effort to commit the list of groceries to their memory in their first place.
They make the mistake of believing that the information gets retained automatically as long as it’s being heard but in fact, committing something to memory takes effort and patience and in the case of exams, students need to make use of the spaced-repetition strategy.
Many tuition teachers give their students the proper assessments and practice questions to help train their students to develop their memory-retention skills.
UNDERSTANDING CONCEPTS
Some children are late-bloomers and not many people understand this. For such children, parents may always feel that the juice is never worth the squeeze as no matter how much they try to train their children, progress is just very mild or never seen. This can be demotivating many a times but the key to overcome this is to not just bombard children with practice questions; one needs to understand the underlying problem.
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Children who are slow-learners are often discouraged and they inevitably feel inadequate. It is tuition teachers’ and parents’ responsibility to reassure such children that success can be achieved and that it’s just a matter of time. Reassurance and proper guidance as well as expert training by tuition teachers will enable the student to excel over time.
Apart from the main signs mentioned above, there are also other minor signs that can be looked out form such as.
- Trouble with telling time
- Getting easily distracted
- Short attention span
- Problems with adapting to different situations
- Difficulty in expressing thoughts and feelings
- Forming an opinion
Parents do not need to be alarmed nor is there a need to be worried when such signs are observed. A child has a vulnerable and flexible mind and when the right seeds are sown, at the right time and right place, you can visually see your child reap the benefits.
The best thing that parents can do for their children is to hire a private tutor or to get their children into a group tuition as soon as when these signs are observed. Parents may not be equipped to deal with this by themselves and the best option is to leave this is in the hands of the experts at an early stage!
