Waiting for the School to Help Your Child?

Parents are Angry

There are a lot of angry parents out there. Parents who don't feel that their child is getting the help they need. Just peruse facebook and look at the dyslexia groups. You won't scroll far before you find someone angry at the schools. Or worse yet Waiting for the Schools.

For those who wait for a solution there may be no end. We get emails almost every day from parents trying to get the schools to do something. I feel for these parents. I really do. But the truth is that in most cases the schools are not in a position to help. Schools are setup for those who learn easily with traditional teaching methods. The law guarantees an education. The law does not guarantee a good education. It does not guarantee special help. And therein is where the problem lies.

If you rely on the schools you will run into at least these issues:

• Navigating the bureacracy can takes months or years. By the time you have fought the schools and bureacracy your child has fallen further behind. Or it's entirely too late.
• Most schools are not only understaffed, but do not have the training to deal with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, or dyscalculia. We get teachers ordering the Learning Success System all the time simply because they were never trained in these areas.
• If you do get your child into a special program they will likely be warehoused with lots of kids of varying ability. Your child needs individual attention but what they will get is actually accomodations more likely to fit the group than their own needs. Warehousing of students is extremely common. Students are simply given busy work and fed this until they "graduate". Never actually getting an education to go with the diploma. It's a game of pacifying parents and fulfilling the requirements of the system while keeping costs low.

Some parents go through huge frustrations before finally opting out. Putting their kids in private schools, or homeschooling them. For many that is not an option. For those we recommend doing a simple neuro-sensory educational therapy program at home.

For example, take Liz Roe's experience. In this article she voices her opinion and talks about the problems her daughter went through before opting out of public school for private school.

 For many parents private school is not an option. Even if it is, you should consider what you can do at home. That's where the real work can be done. Giving your child the assistance they need at home is one of the best things you can do for your child. You become the Super Hero. At least to your child. You the parent get the super powers. You wave the magic wand that takes your child's pain away.

All it takes is a little know how. Just knowing the simple things you can do to develop your child's learning ability. It's these simple exercises that work because they go back to the root of the problem. They mimic the developmental exercises children naturally do as they grow. And that's where learning abilities develop. Going back to these developmental exercises is life changing. Especially when administered by a parent, the person the child most wants to please. No option beats a parent, armed witht he right exercises, working a little each day with their child. Even 15 minutes a day will work wonders.

It's understandable how frustrating it can get. We pay our taxes and we expect those taxes to go to good use. We expect the schools to handle this. But you can expect all you want. You can fight the schools all you want. It won't help your child.

 Learning difficulties are rampant. Estimates are around 15-20 percent of children are dyslexic. More have dyslexia's evil twin, dyscalculia. And most people don't even pay much attention to dysgraphia, even though it is often the most important to fix first. The schools, in most cases, all but denythe existence of these learning problems.

• 80% of children with an IEP have reading difficulty and 85% of those are Dyslexic.
• Most schools do not test for dyslexia
• Many schools do not recognize that dyslexia even exists. the educational system in general does not used the term "dyslexia".

Over and over I see parents waiting on the schools. Fighting with the schools. Angry at the schools. Wasting countless hours, weeks, months, and even years on a solution that likely will never come. I sympathize. It shouldn't be this way. We should have an educational system designed to handle this. Especially with the large numbers of children with the problem. But we don't. And you can spend your breathe trying to change the world, or you can make a change for your child.

Dyslexia is a blanket term. While symptoms may be similar the underlying problems may be very different. No to dyslexics are alike. So there is no one size fits all solution. However we do know all the things to cover to help.

• Build up the components of learning
• Build up confidence
• Integrate the body

These same strategies work for dysgraphia and dyscalculia (writing and math)

While the reasons why this work may be as sophisticated as rocket science. Doing it isn't. As a matter of fact it's amazingly easy. Anyone can do it. Given the right instruction.

Parents want the best for their children. Most of the time teachers do also. That's why they became teachers. It's the bureacracy. Bureacracy has all kinds of ways of creating problems for these young learners. It's bigger and stronger than all of us. Hopefully it's not always that way. Hopefully someone defeats it. but for today the most important thing is helping your child. Don't take on Goliath when you have a little one to care for.

Your child's future is far to important.