AboutLeslie Truex Expertise I am a parent of two, but also I'm a social worker with over 15 year experience working with children and families. I can provide many tips and techniques to help with child behavior, interventions for specific behavioral issues, ideas to help children through difficult times such as divorce or grief, hints on keeping the family running smoothly, and tips for developing confident, happy children.
Experience I have a master's in social work and over 15 years experience working with children and families. I have worked in schools, public health, mental health and adoption agencies providing parent education courses and children's groups.
Question We have a 9 year old daughter (mature for 9) only child. She is bright, but often forgetful, intelligent, very tall for her age, athletic and competitive. She loves school and academics including homework. Our normal straight A student is in 4th grade now and the teacher suffered a tremendous tragedy the 3rd week of school and left. Our daughter has now gotten some irregular grades in both math and reading. Her reading grade is an A, but all her scores show A's and 1 big F. Then her math grade is all over the map and she does not consistently understand how to get the correct answer. I am a degreed parent and have taken to helping her daily with her math on our own as no math homework comes from school. When we asked about the progress report with so many odd grades in the two subjects, yet all else were A's in all subjects, she does not have an answer. She admits to a fear to ask for help in class. She fears the sub teacher will blow her off as she has in the past. She does not seem to be lying about anything, just not telling us the rock bottom information on how we can help, or why it is hard. We are worried we are beating this up too much. School holds the children highly responsible and does not ask a 2nd time for things to be turned in, or corrected, as it is all their responsbility. Please tell me if this is common, and what direction I should be going in to help.
Answer Hi Cindi,
Most schools have parent teacher conferences to discuss students progress and the goals for the child. Have you had this meeting yet? If not, you need to schedule one.
Children don't always know why they have difficulties so your daughter will probably not have a good answer as to why she's having problems. It could be there are interventions that can be done in class. Perhaps she needs glasses. Maybe the loss of the teacher has made her feel lost.
Somethings you can do:
1) Get a check up to make sure things like her vision and hearing are okay. As a parent, you may think these things are fine. But usually, children don't know they don't see or hear as well as others and any deficiency isn't picked up until a screening.
2) Have a conference with the teacher. What is the teacher seeing in terms of work in the class?
3) Consider counseling. The guidance counselor at school may be able to help or you can see one outside of school.
If she had no problems before, but is struggling now, its a sign that something has changed. This change could be physical or emotional. Or it could be that 4th grade is a lot harder than 3rd and she needs a tutor. But until you screen for these things and talk with the teacher, maybe even request a SST (student study team meeting...it maybe called something else at your school but its where several school personnel and you meet to determine a plan to help your daughter) meeting, you'll simply be guessing.
