Learning struggles can occur in any academic area and at any age. Often struggling students are very intelligent or gifted, they just process information differently. Not all of these students are seen as having special needs, or learning disabilities, but they are struggling learners.
A learning issue should be suspected if…
- ✔ Your child works harder than he/she should have to
- ✔ Homework is a struggle
- ✔ Your child often forgets instructions, math facts, or spelling words
- ✔ Schoolwork takes longer to complete than it should
- ✔ Your child is frustrated
- ✔ Your child feels they are dumb
- ✔ Your child is behind in their grade level
- ✔ Your child is exhausted at the end of the school day
“Prevention is always easier than remediation.”
-Patricia Vail, author of books on learning disabilities
Often, a parent knows something is not quite right before anyone else becomes suspicious. Well-meaning professionals will sometimes suggest to “wait and see” if the student grows out of a stage. It can be a matter of maturity, but if it is a weak underlying processing skill at the root of the cause, then during the months you wait to see if your child grows past it, his peers are racing ahead academically. The gap between your child and the others keeps widening. Identifying a learning weakness or disability can be critical to a child’s self esteem, as well as their academic success.
Whether a student needs intervention depends on the amount of stress the learning challenge is causing and how it is affecting learning, self esteem and behavior.
The Learning Skills Pyramid is the foundation of successful remediation. If you focus on just parts of the problem, therapy will not always bring about the desired results. You’ll be left with missing pieces in your program. And that’s where HOLS comes in. In order to identify the contributing factors, a Functional Academic and Learning Skills Evaluation must be administered to determine the source of the missing pieces. Only then can a comprehensive program be designed that will address your child’s weaknesses in developmental order.