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Your child is struggling in school, getting bad grades and they hate being there. What can you do as a parent to intervene and help them to succeed? This article will tell you how to communicate with your child's teacher more efficiently. It will also tell you how to find out the real cause of why your child struggles.
Teacher-parent communication is the key in helping your child in school. If a teacher is not observant or fails to alert the parent about problems in the class, valuable time that could be used to get your child caught up may be lost. Teachers are very busy, so if you don’t feel the communication is adequate about your child, then you have the right to express your concerns. You may be noticing
a problem with your child’s reading or math skills. Set up an appointment and talk to the teacher. Waiting until a report card comes out will be too late. The need to establish and maintain an effective communication with the classroom teacher is very critical.
To open the dialogue on a positive note with your child’s teacher, ask for a conference with them. Express concerns about your child’s problem. Tell the teacher you want to work together to solve the problem. Explain that you will do whatever you can at home to help. The two of you together can discover your child’s strengths and weaknesses. You can come up with a plan to help in
getting them more motivated and caught up in their academics.
If you and the teacher decide that the problem is more than just motivation or lack of minor skills, you will want to have your child evaluated to find out what the problem is. Most states and school districts have a system to evaluate children in the school setting, called a “Child Study Team”. The Child Study Team will look at the records of the child and do in-class observations. They will set
up a diagnostic test and an interview with the school psychologist. Parental approval is required for most of this testing. Many times they can find out if there is a learning disability or some other problem.
Testing and evaluation done in the early elementary years can really avoid major educational frustrations later on. So stay in tune with your child’s school work from the beginning.
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