Tips and tricks for becoming a tiger mom
January 21, 2024 9:32 AM Subscribe
So, it's become clear that I need to be way more involved in my 6th grade son's academics than I have been. (Read through my past AskMes for background!) I come from a Gen X background where my parents were not at all involved in academics, so it all feels very unfamiliar to me. My son has a lengthy IEP but his behavioral issues have always taken precedence over academics in terms of my energy and financial resources. Now in middle school I can't continue to ignore academics.
His middle school appears happy to let him fail. I'm working on updating the IEP but obviously have to become more involved on a day-to-day basis. I accept that no matter how good the IEP I still need to be much more involved. (For those of you who read the earlier math question - my worries came true and they put in him an "inclusion" class where they appear to be satisfied with him doing the bare minimum and teach incredibly slowly with an over-reliance on computer programs for math fundamentals.)
I'm overwhelmed about where to start. He needs support in I would say four different areas:
1) Getting assignments turned in. Everything is online but the teachers never follow up with missed assignments or assignments that need to be redone.
2) Shoring up math fundamentals. He missed a lot of math fundamentals due to IMO covid school closures in a key year; teaching methods; and behavioral issues.
3) Reteaching the current math lessons. Whatever they are doing in class is not working for him to learn the current lessons well enough.
4) Writing. He has poor fine motor skills so he needs to type and produce more text. He generally writes the bare minimum (like three word responses) and they never follow-up to require more. This is a kid who tests in the gifted range for verbal IQ and reads at a 12th grade level and can have long, sophisticated conversations. He can write more!
On my part, I feel hugely overwhelmed at the realization that I have to add another time-consuming task to my day-to-day life. Also disappointed that instead of say, spending my time teaching my kid how to cook, that time has to go into school work. I need help figuring out how to make academics part of our daily routine. Yes looking into tutors but they are hard to find and expensive.
Changing schools is obviously on the radar but I have a hard time believing that things are going to be that different anywhere else. Also the good news, (saved for last!) is that he is really doing great socially, with a nice group of friends and enjoying the benefits of a neighborhood school.
His middle school appears happy to let him fail. I'm working on updating the IEP but obviously have to become more involved on a day-to-day basis. I accept that no matter how good the IEP I still need to be much more involved. (For those of you who read the earlier math question - my worries came true and they put in him an "inclusion" class where they appear to be satisfied with him doing the bare minimum and teach incredibly slowly with an over-reliance on computer programs for math fundamentals.)
I'm overwhelmed about where to start. He needs support in I would say four different areas:
1) Getting assignments turned in. Everything is online but the teachers never follow up with missed assignments or assignments that need to be redone.
2) Shoring up math fundamentals. He missed a lot of math fundamentals due to IMO covid school closures in a key year; teaching methods; and behavioral issues.
3) Reteaching the current math lessons. Whatever they are doing in class is not working for him to learn the current lessons well enough.
4) Writing. He has poor fine motor skills so he needs to type and produce more text. He generally writes the bare minimum (like three word responses) and they never follow-up to require more. This is a kid who tests in the gifted range for verbal IQ and reads at a 12th grade level and can have long, sophisticated conversations. He can write more!
On my part, I feel hugely overwhelmed at the realization that I have to add another time-consuming task to my day-to-day life. Also disappointed that instead of say, spending my time teaching my kid how to cook, that time has to go into school work. I need help figuring out how to make academics part of our daily routine. Yes looking into tutors but they are hard to find and expensive.
Changing schools is obviously on the radar but I have a hard time believing that things are going to be that different anywhere else. Also the good news, (saved for last!) is that he is really doing great socially, with a nice group of friends and enjoying the benefits of a neighborhood school.
Your son sounds like he has some ADHD traits, and I can tell you as a "gifted kid" with ADHD traits that sitting on my head would not be helpful way of getting me to succeed academically. What smart and bored kids need is bigger, more interesting challenges, and the tools to help them focus. There is no shame in seeking help for your son in this way, and finding out if he has ADHD now, rather than after he's skidded and fumbled through more school years, is going to help tremendously in the rest of his life.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:58 AM on January 21 [13 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:58 AM on January 21 [13 favorites]
Yes looking into tutors but they are hard to find and expensive
Whoops and I missed this. We started with the local mass-market place and they were fine but $$. There may be lower cost options like after school math “clubs,’’ or a call to your local college or high school might help.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:00 AM on January 21 [3 favorites]
Whoops and I missed this. We started with the local mass-market place and they were fine but $$. There may be lower cost options like after school math “clubs,’’ or a call to your local college or high school might help.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:00 AM on January 21 [3 favorites]
Changing schools is obviously on the radar but I have a hard time believing that things are going to be that different anywhere else.
I went to a lot of different schools because my family moved a lot, and my experience was that they really were very different from one another in good and bad ways. The part of this that is intrinsic to your son is going to stay the same, of course, but a different environment, different teaching approaches, and so on might create some different outcomes.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:16 AM on January 21 [2 favorites]
I went to a lot of different schools because my family moved a lot, and my experience was that they really were very different from one another in good and bad ways. The part of this that is intrinsic to your son is going to stay the same, of course, but a different environment, different teaching approaches, and so on might create some different outcomes.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:16 AM on January 21 [2 favorites]
Can you clarify if he is actually failing his current classes grade wise, you think the school is failing him in reaching his potential, or both?
posted by nakedmolerats at 10:20 AM on January 21
posted by nakedmolerats at 10:20 AM on January 21
Response by poster: He’s getting Ds and Fs in 4 classes.
posted by haptic_avenger at 10:30 AM on January 21
posted by haptic_avenger at 10:30 AM on January 21
Yikes!
Our youngest was in a similar space. He got an ADHD diagnosis, and we were able to get him into an ADHD program. Which was only once a week, but he met with a person who helped him organize. Went through the assignments he was going to need to turn in, looked at things he had not turned in, etc. It really helped. He pretty much got all A's, B's and a few C's his senior year in HS. And is doing well in college.
So, get him some help. Whether that's tutoring, therapy of one sort or another.
posted by Windopaene at 11:11 AM on January 21 [6 favorites]
Our youngest was in a similar space. He got an ADHD diagnosis, and we were able to get him into an ADHD program. Which was only once a week, but he met with a person who helped him organize. Went through the assignments he was going to need to turn in, looked at things he had not turned in, etc. It really helped. He pretty much got all A's, B's and a few C's his senior year in HS. And is doing well in college.
So, get him some help. Whether that's tutoring, therapy of one sort or another.
posted by Windopaene at 11:11 AM on January 21 [6 favorites]
For math there is an online play-based platform called Beast Academy that is outstanding.
posted by bq at 11:23 AM on January 21 [3 favorites]
posted by bq at 11:23 AM on January 21 [3 favorites]
For assignments… I had this issue for a bit. Discovered a bunch of assignments had t been done by a kid who was a perfectionist and scared to ask for help. Once we discovered it, we had two marathon sessions where we just sat down and didn’t get up except for short breaks until they were all done. There was crying and yelling. What was helpful was that the assignments had rubrics: extremely explicitly lists of what would be included in an acceptable answer. Once he was caught up it was much easier to keep on top of things but still requiring periodic check-ins.
posted by bq at 11:28 AM on January 21 [1 favorite]
posted by bq at 11:28 AM on January 21 [1 favorite]
Check and see if there are school-supported tutoring programs, whether in person or online. I work for an online tutoring company, and the students pay nothing. Your school might have such a program.
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 12:05 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 12:05 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
Professional tutoring and assistance is probably a good idea, but in the meantime, and/or as a supplement, do you have friends that your kid trusts and likes who have expertise in any of the areas he needs help?
During the height of the pandemic lockdowns, I "bubbled" with a neighbour family, partly for the purpose of helping their two kids with their "social studies" (history, politics, sociology) homework. They would come over to my place and discuss their assignments, and I would try to find ways of making the abstract more real/interesting to them. It helped and also gave their parents a bit of a break. All of us enjoyed the discussions so much that they still come over regularly to get help or just discuss something that they're curious about beyond what is being taught in the classroom.
I'm not a professional educator by any means, so I was pleasantly surprised that it worked out so well. You might find that your friend group has a few people who would be quite happy to help.
posted by rpfields at 12:08 PM on January 21 [7 favorites]
During the height of the pandemic lockdowns, I "bubbled" with a neighbour family, partly for the purpose of helping their two kids with their "social studies" (history, politics, sociology) homework. They would come over to my place and discuss their assignments, and I would try to find ways of making the abstract more real/interesting to them. It helped and also gave their parents a bit of a break. All of us enjoyed the discussions so much that they still come over regularly to get help or just discuss something that they're curious about beyond what is being taught in the classroom.
I'm not a professional educator by any means, so I was pleasantly surprised that it worked out so well. You might find that your friend group has a few people who would be quite happy to help.
posted by rpfields at 12:08 PM on January 21 [7 favorites]
Can you get into the Google Classrooms and see if there is a calendar of work? If so, you might be able to Subscribe to that calendar on your phones -- giving you and him visibility to upcoming assignments. (I have no idea why this isn't standard practice!!)
My wife simply used our kid's credentials to log in to the Classrooms once in a while to make sure they were keeping up. *shrug* That is a possibility, too.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:11 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
My wife simply used our kid's credentials to log in to the Classrooms once in a while to make sure they were keeping up. *shrug* That is a possibility, too.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:11 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
Best answer: We had similar issues with one of our kids, especially coming out of COVID, when the school stopped asking the kids to do anything at all. From experience, this will take 30-60 minutes a night (or at least every other night) going over each of his classes, reviewing whether he turned the correct stuff in, whether there is a test or quiz coming up, encouraging him to write more than 3 sentences, etc. You have to make it a routine - like brushing teeth - so that it becomes automatic. Even though it would be better in an ideal world for the kid to learn to do all of this himself, there is no way for him to go from zero to fully-functioning without some significant support. I also recommend asking around about math tutors - in my kids' classes, there are a couple of "known" tutors who work with many of the kids in the class, know the syllabus, etc. One of my kids did a twice-a-week Zoom tutoring session with a tutor and two other kids for a while in math, which let us split the cost somewhat. Also look into "executive function" support - e.g., counseling or therapy in this area.
posted by Mid at 12:13 PM on January 21 [12 favorites]
posted by Mid at 12:13 PM on January 21 [12 favorites]
Best answer: I taught children your son’s age for a long time, though in a non-school and non-US context, and I totally agree that this all sounds really overwhelming for both you and your son.
Thinking about your four areas of concern as an educator:
1) Getting assignments turned in. Everything is online but the teachers never follow up with missed assignments or assignments that need to be redone.
Two ideas here:
First, I have questions about the technology’s role here. I wonder how much of his low grades can be attributed to problems with (the teacher’s/school’s thinking about the value of…) the timely completion of the assignments in question rather than their content. For example: does he receive a mark of zero/F/incomplete for a totally-complete and totally-correct piece of work he submits five seconds after the digital deadline? How much can his teachers adjust this? How much would having, for example, deadlines set not at one second before the start of a lesson but, say, two days in advance of that lesson change his workflow and the teacher’s marking regimen?
I also question how much of the teacher’s ignorance of what needs to be redone is based on the technology’s inability to flag, without needing to click through twenty very textually dense screens, students in need of a redo or feedback. If a teacher cannot see who needs what support without clicking through (for example) a login screen, a class selection screen, an individual student’s name, an assignment title, and a “reveal comments” button — and also has 179 other students in their six classes of 30 students each day — it would be much, much more challenging to keep tabs on students like your son, who may in the classroom both verbally and emotionally present, as you state, as charmingly articulate and mature, but who are merely anonymous student number 362649262 in the digital gradebook.
I mention this because many, many teachers globally struggle with how to accommodate the needs of students like your son in a school’s imposed-from-above gradebook and planning software that was purchased without much thought about accommodating and including all kinds of children with all kinds of needs, especially when ed-tech companies sell software to schools that assumes students are, fundamentally, just interchangeable pieces in a big database. Sadly, systems that don’t make it easy for teachers, counselors and administrators to add notes, flag assignments for further review, edit due dates or initiate contact with you as a parent can stop even the most well-intentioned of employees from seeing students like your son as they begin get lost until the technology hits some barrier and pops up a message indicating that they are too far gone.
Second, I don’t know if this is possible, but I wonder if the IEP could be updated or changed to provide more specificity on how, exactly, his middle-school academic work is to be assigned, submitted, and then evaluated and graded, if that part of the document is even somewhat of a holdover from elementary school. If your son was Deaf and spoke ASL, for example, there would (probably?) be in his IEP at least something about providing written or ASL instructions and guidelines instead of only the spoken-English oral ones for daily homework assignments, or for providing ASL interpretation services for him to complete an oral presentation. The “everything is online” part here worries me in particular given how clunky and inaccessible so much educational-technology software can be. I do wonder if it could be the case that doing assignments or projects on paper, or even orally, may mean he’d be better able to demonstrate his proficiency in ways his teachers can less easily ignore; at the very least, paper assignments he submits and brings home with pen-and-ink commentary would allow you to create a permanent and unalterable record of his performance to prove his needs are being neglected.
2) Shoring up math fundamentals. He missed a lot of math fundamentals due to IMO covid school closures in a key year; teaching methods; and behavioral issues.
3) Reteaching the current math lessons. Whatever they are doing in class is not working for him to learn the current lessons well enough.
I’m not sure if what you call the inclusion class is a math intervention class, but if it is that, he should be experiencing something much more helpful than what you report is taking place. This 2022 PDF for middle-grades school leaders thinking about math intervention classes I found has a quick “what it is and what it isn’t” on page 7. I’m not familiar with all of the ins and outs of classes like this, but after reading the PDF I would say it’s worth looking at a few things here:
- How well is his IEP being applied by this class’ teacher? Is the teacher actually an experienced math teacher for children your son’s age or are they an instructional aide, paraprofessional, or an externally-contracted provider? Is whoever runs it accountable to the same people, trained to the same level, and in contact with parents and administrators in the same way as math teachers are for students who don’t go to this class?
- Is the class long enough, frequent enough and small enough for any actual intervention to take place? Is this actually a class, or more of a homework club, test-prep session or study hall? Does the class happen in a classroom, a corner of the library, at two desks in the hallway?
- In your son’s mind, is what he’s missing by going to this class (Spanish? After-school sports? Debate Club?) actually making it harder to reach his academic and social goals in other, non-math areas of his life at school now and in the future? Does he have friends in the intervention/inclusion class?
- How positively are the school-side but non-academic parts of attending this or any other intervention/inclusion class run, and how gracefully is the difference between your son and his fellow inclusion/intervention students and the “normal” math students handled? Are the kids who go to your son’s class disruptively pulled out of “normal” math class or are they allowed to walk there at the start of the lesson on their own? Are they kept out of math-related activities or whole-school competitions like a Math Olympiad, or are they celebrated for their progress at assemblies and parent evenings? Learning these answers will tell you a lot about whether the school culturally sees these classes as a perfectly natural and positive part of school life that they constantly work on making better or an inconvenience they wish they weren’t legally required to offer.
4) Writing. He has poor fine motor skills so he needs to type and produce more text. He generally writes the bare minimum (like three word responses) and they never follow-up to require more. This is a kid who tests in the gifted range for verbal IQ and reads at a 12th grade level and can have long, sophisticated conversations. He can write more!
I am wondering why anyone like your son is being given assignments that will even permit a three-word response as sufficient to demonstrate their understanding of something, especially in what I presume are classes like history or literature, subjects in which a child like your son can really develop a love of learning about the world. It’s worth asking the teachers in classes like these for a justification of the pedagogical choices involved in asking your son to, for example, learn about medieval lifeways in al-Andalus for a month or read Number the Stars during an intensive unit on children in the Holocaust and then have to only answer some multiple-choice questions or complete a fill-in-the-blank worksheet. (If the teachers are also assigning things like “design, script and present a live newscast in costume from a historical period of your choice” or “use the strategies we covered in our unit on poetry to create a zine with at least five forms of poems from the list below”, then you have less to worry about, of course.)
Finally, I want to end on a positive note:
he is really doing great socially, with a nice group of friends and enjoying the benefits of a neighborhood school
This is really, really important and will help you a lot, too, because it seems like you as a parent have the benefit of at least some possible connections with his friend’s parents and the resources and information they have about the school, the teachers and its systems, as well as the benefit of proximity, making it at least theoretically easier to meet with school staff and deepen your knowledge of their approach.
And yes, as commenters above have said, please have your son assessed for ADHD! So many young people struggle with middle school, high school and college unnecessarily because symptoms many adults socially or culturally attribute to “normal” teenage hormonal changes through puberty (”laziness”, impulsivity, risk-taking, poor foresight, poor time management, irritability, exhaustion, an inability to finish what you start…) are actually signs of undiagnosed ADHD which many a child with ADHD was able to manage or mask without conscious effort, or the awareness of the adults in their life, before the complexity of post-primary schooling and puberty brought those masking systems to a breaking point by making the physical and emotional cost of maintaining them unsustainable.
The good news is that the awareness schools and families have of how insidious and damaging it can be to a student’s life all through adulthood is only growing; in my own experience as a teacher who started from a pretty low base of knowledge of ADHD, I found the videos on the YouTube channel of Dr Russell Barkley, a world-leading expert on ADHD, very accessible and also incredibly helpful in myth-busting and getting my colleagues to take the possibility that ADHD could be part of someone’s life much more seriously than before. The stigma is fading and kids your son’s age are receiving the gift of far easier, far happier teenage years because of this. Memail me if you’d like to know more.
Good luck!
posted by mdonley at 12:49 PM on January 21 [17 favorites]
Thinking about your four areas of concern as an educator:
1) Getting assignments turned in. Everything is online but the teachers never follow up with missed assignments or assignments that need to be redone.
Two ideas here:
First, I have questions about the technology’s role here. I wonder how much of his low grades can be attributed to problems with (the teacher’s/school’s thinking about the value of…) the timely completion of the assignments in question rather than their content. For example: does he receive a mark of zero/F/incomplete for a totally-complete and totally-correct piece of work he submits five seconds after the digital deadline? How much can his teachers adjust this? How much would having, for example, deadlines set not at one second before the start of a lesson but, say, two days in advance of that lesson change his workflow and the teacher’s marking regimen?
I also question how much of the teacher’s ignorance of what needs to be redone is based on the technology’s inability to flag, without needing to click through twenty very textually dense screens, students in need of a redo or feedback. If a teacher cannot see who needs what support without clicking through (for example) a login screen, a class selection screen, an individual student’s name, an assignment title, and a “reveal comments” button — and also has 179 other students in their six classes of 30 students each day — it would be much, much more challenging to keep tabs on students like your son, who may in the classroom both verbally and emotionally present, as you state, as charmingly articulate and mature, but who are merely anonymous student number 362649262 in the digital gradebook.
I mention this because many, many teachers globally struggle with how to accommodate the needs of students like your son in a school’s imposed-from-above gradebook and planning software that was purchased without much thought about accommodating and including all kinds of children with all kinds of needs, especially when ed-tech companies sell software to schools that assumes students are, fundamentally, just interchangeable pieces in a big database. Sadly, systems that don’t make it easy for teachers, counselors and administrators to add notes, flag assignments for further review, edit due dates or initiate contact with you as a parent can stop even the most well-intentioned of employees from seeing students like your son as they begin get lost until the technology hits some barrier and pops up a message indicating that they are too far gone.
Second, I don’t know if this is possible, but I wonder if the IEP could be updated or changed to provide more specificity on how, exactly, his middle-school academic work is to be assigned, submitted, and then evaluated and graded, if that part of the document is even somewhat of a holdover from elementary school. If your son was Deaf and spoke ASL, for example, there would (probably?) be in his IEP at least something about providing written or ASL instructions and guidelines instead of only the spoken-English oral ones for daily homework assignments, or for providing ASL interpretation services for him to complete an oral presentation. The “everything is online” part here worries me in particular given how clunky and inaccessible so much educational-technology software can be. I do wonder if it could be the case that doing assignments or projects on paper, or even orally, may mean he’d be better able to demonstrate his proficiency in ways his teachers can less easily ignore; at the very least, paper assignments he submits and brings home with pen-and-ink commentary would allow you to create a permanent and unalterable record of his performance to prove his needs are being neglected.
2) Shoring up math fundamentals. He missed a lot of math fundamentals due to IMO covid school closures in a key year; teaching methods; and behavioral issues.
3) Reteaching the current math lessons. Whatever they are doing in class is not working for him to learn the current lessons well enough.
I’m not sure if what you call the inclusion class is a math intervention class, but if it is that, he should be experiencing something much more helpful than what you report is taking place. This 2022 PDF for middle-grades school leaders thinking about math intervention classes I found has a quick “what it is and what it isn’t” on page 7. I’m not familiar with all of the ins and outs of classes like this, but after reading the PDF I would say it’s worth looking at a few things here:
- How well is his IEP being applied by this class’ teacher? Is the teacher actually an experienced math teacher for children your son’s age or are they an instructional aide, paraprofessional, or an externally-contracted provider? Is whoever runs it accountable to the same people, trained to the same level, and in contact with parents and administrators in the same way as math teachers are for students who don’t go to this class?
- Is the class long enough, frequent enough and small enough for any actual intervention to take place? Is this actually a class, or more of a homework club, test-prep session or study hall? Does the class happen in a classroom, a corner of the library, at two desks in the hallway?
- In your son’s mind, is what he’s missing by going to this class (Spanish? After-school sports? Debate Club?) actually making it harder to reach his academic and social goals in other, non-math areas of his life at school now and in the future? Does he have friends in the intervention/inclusion class?
- How positively are the school-side but non-academic parts of attending this or any other intervention/inclusion class run, and how gracefully is the difference between your son and his fellow inclusion/intervention students and the “normal” math students handled? Are the kids who go to your son’s class disruptively pulled out of “normal” math class or are they allowed to walk there at the start of the lesson on their own? Are they kept out of math-related activities or whole-school competitions like a Math Olympiad, or are they celebrated for their progress at assemblies and parent evenings? Learning these answers will tell you a lot about whether the school culturally sees these classes as a perfectly natural and positive part of school life that they constantly work on making better or an inconvenience they wish they weren’t legally required to offer.
4) Writing. He has poor fine motor skills so he needs to type and produce more text. He generally writes the bare minimum (like three word responses) and they never follow-up to require more. This is a kid who tests in the gifted range for verbal IQ and reads at a 12th grade level and can have long, sophisticated conversations. He can write more!
I am wondering why anyone like your son is being given assignments that will even permit a three-word response as sufficient to demonstrate their understanding of something, especially in what I presume are classes like history or literature, subjects in which a child like your son can really develop a love of learning about the world. It’s worth asking the teachers in classes like these for a justification of the pedagogical choices involved in asking your son to, for example, learn about medieval lifeways in al-Andalus for a month or read Number the Stars during an intensive unit on children in the Holocaust and then have to only answer some multiple-choice questions or complete a fill-in-the-blank worksheet. (If the teachers are also assigning things like “design, script and present a live newscast in costume from a historical period of your choice” or “use the strategies we covered in our unit on poetry to create a zine with at least five forms of poems from the list below”, then you have less to worry about, of course.)
Finally, I want to end on a positive note:
he is really doing great socially, with a nice group of friends and enjoying the benefits of a neighborhood school
This is really, really important and will help you a lot, too, because it seems like you as a parent have the benefit of at least some possible connections with his friend’s parents and the resources and information they have about the school, the teachers and its systems, as well as the benefit of proximity, making it at least theoretically easier to meet with school staff and deepen your knowledge of their approach.
And yes, as commenters above have said, please have your son assessed for ADHD! So many young people struggle with middle school, high school and college unnecessarily because symptoms many adults socially or culturally attribute to “normal” teenage hormonal changes through puberty (”laziness”, impulsivity, risk-taking, poor foresight, poor time management, irritability, exhaustion, an inability to finish what you start…) are actually signs of undiagnosed ADHD which many a child with ADHD was able to manage or mask without conscious effort, or the awareness of the adults in their life, before the complexity of post-primary schooling and puberty brought those masking systems to a breaking point by making the physical and emotional cost of maintaining them unsustainable.
The good news is that the awareness schools and families have of how insidious and damaging it can be to a student’s life all through adulthood is only growing; in my own experience as a teacher who started from a pretty low base of knowledge of ADHD, I found the videos on the YouTube channel of Dr Russell Barkley, a world-leading expert on ADHD, very accessible and also incredibly helpful in myth-busting and getting my colleagues to take the possibility that ADHD could be part of someone’s life much more seriously than before. The stigma is fading and kids your son’s age are receiving the gift of far easier, far happier teenage years because of this. Memail me if you’d like to know more.
Good luck!
posted by mdonley at 12:49 PM on January 21 [17 favorites]
> 2) Shoring up math fundamentals. He missed a lot of math fundamentals due to IMO covid school closures in a key year; teaching methods; and behavioral issues.
> 3) Reteaching the current math lessons. Whatever they are doing in class is not working for him to learn the current lessons well enough.
Math is a subject where the skills and abstractions get stacked on top of each other, year after year after year. Having a reasonable level of ability for the material and concepts taught during the previous couple of years provides the basis for understanding and effectively learning the current year syllabus. I suspect that 2) lack of math fundamentals that were meant to be taught in prior years may be a strong causal factor in 3) not absorbing the current year's math lessons. I'd recommend prioritizing 2 over 3.
(i don't have any expertise in education, but did do a math degree & spent a few years tutoring a few 101 & 201 level undergrad math courses. i know some adults who fell behind with their math education during childhood due to switching between far too many math teachers for one reason or another & struggle with concepts like percentages)
posted by are-coral-made at 12:50 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]
> 3) Reteaching the current math lessons. Whatever they are doing in class is not working for him to learn the current lessons well enough.
Math is a subject where the skills and abstractions get stacked on top of each other, year after year after year. Having a reasonable level of ability for the material and concepts taught during the previous couple of years provides the basis for understanding and effectively learning the current year syllabus. I suspect that 2) lack of math fundamentals that were meant to be taught in prior years may be a strong causal factor in 3) not absorbing the current year's math lessons. I'd recommend prioritizing 2 over 3.
(i don't have any expertise in education, but did do a math degree & spent a few years tutoring a few 101 & 201 level undergrad math courses. i know some adults who fell behind with their math education during childhood due to switching between far too many math teachers for one reason or another & struggle with concepts like percentages)
posted by are-coral-made at 12:50 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]
Best answer: GenX here. I feel you on a cellular level.
One other item to consider is your attitude about his schoolwork. For me I had a very “ugh just get it done” mindset that wasn’t translating well to my kiddo. I had to understand that I am setting an example for my kid of the desire to do well, to put one’s best foot forward. To be proud of the work turned in. To be proud of one’s effort. So I worked with that goal in mind.
So take a few minutes and relax yourself before starting homework. Appreciate that it’s not just getting it done, but learning how to be while doing the work: relaxed, curious and persistent.
I agree that you’ll be homework secretary like described above, but also as you get a sense of where your kid is missing fundamentals, don’t be afraid to go off script a little and spend time building the skill he lacks.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:58 PM on January 21 [10 favorites]
One other item to consider is your attitude about his schoolwork. For me I had a very “ugh just get it done” mindset that wasn’t translating well to my kiddo. I had to understand that I am setting an example for my kid of the desire to do well, to put one’s best foot forward. To be proud of the work turned in. To be proud of one’s effort. So I worked with that goal in mind.
So take a few minutes and relax yourself before starting homework. Appreciate that it’s not just getting it done, but learning how to be while doing the work: relaxed, curious and persistent.
I agree that you’ll be homework secretary like described above, but also as you get a sense of where your kid is missing fundamentals, don’t be afraid to go off script a little and spend time building the skill he lacks.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:58 PM on January 21 [10 favorites]
Response by poster: A few responses… he actually has been assessed for ADHD (by a highly reputable neuropsychology practice) and doesn’t have it. But I’m sure some of the ADHD supports could be relevant too.
Very correct insight about the ed tech platforms. Part of what sent me over the edge this weekend was figuring out that there is a SEVENTH platform I have to keep up with, and that’s just for math!!
To the posters suggesting lack of challenge in the humanities, I think the school has very low expectations in general for writing and research. But private schools are not an option due to his behavior. Possibly he’ll be in better shape by high school, but that’s unclear.
I’ll throw in here - I have a hard time making any demands of the school. They have had to deal with challenging behavior from him and it feels hard to ask for more. And the school is high poverty which also makes it hard to ask for more (even though I frankly think low standards are hurting all the kids). I feel they do not know what to do with my kid since the small fraction of kids in his demographic (10%) usually are completely unproblematic and at the top of the class.
posted by haptic_avenger at 1:23 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]
Very correct insight about the ed tech platforms. Part of what sent me over the edge this weekend was figuring out that there is a SEVENTH platform I have to keep up with, and that’s just for math!!
To the posters suggesting lack of challenge in the humanities, I think the school has very low expectations in general for writing and research. But private schools are not an option due to his behavior. Possibly he’ll be in better shape by high school, but that’s unclear.
I’ll throw in here - I have a hard time making any demands of the school. They have had to deal with challenging behavior from him and it feels hard to ask for more. And the school is high poverty which also makes it hard to ask for more (even though I frankly think low standards are hurting all the kids). I feel they do not know what to do with my kid since the small fraction of kids in his demographic (10%) usually are completely unproblematic and at the top of the class.
posted by haptic_avenger at 1:23 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]
On of the reasons IEP’s exist is to make sure your son is getting adequate support, and you are well within your rights to ask for more. I am a teacher and when parents approach me in a friendly, collaborative manner to request that I do something in particular to help their child, especially their child with special needs, I don’t mind at all. And I do it if I can, or if it’s impossible I politely let them know that.
The IEP process can be really bureaucratic, but it sounds like it would benefit him to have them re-evaluate whether his current math placement is truly the “least restrictive environment” that will allow him to succeed. The IEP should contain a written justification of why he can’t be in a gen-Ed class, and you can ask for that to be revisited.
Could it be that behavior issues are happening for many students, not just your son? That could connect to why teachers have low expectations - they are too busy managing behavior to teach the students to do more. And low expectations can cause kids to check out of school, creating a vicious cycle. Another school may be a lot better in this regard.
posted by mai at 1:49 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
The IEP process can be really bureaucratic, but it sounds like it would benefit him to have them re-evaluate whether his current math placement is truly the “least restrictive environment” that will allow him to succeed. The IEP should contain a written justification of why he can’t be in a gen-Ed class, and you can ask for that to be revisited.
Could it be that behavior issues are happening for many students, not just your son? That could connect to why teachers have low expectations - they are too busy managing behavior to teach the students to do more. And low expectations can cause kids to check out of school, creating a vicious cycle. Another school may be a lot better in this regard.
posted by mai at 1:49 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: On the math class: it is a co-taught inclusion class. According to my son the inclusion class “does stuff with cut-out triangles” while the other side of the class does worksheets with problems.
posted by haptic_avenger at 3:21 PM on January 21
posted by haptic_avenger at 3:21 PM on January 21
"On the math class: it is a co-taught inclusion class. According to my son the inclusion class “does stuff with cut-out triangles” while the other side of the class does worksheets with problems."
While this sounds outrageous at first, he's not passing that either.
Can you frame it about how bright and capable he is, but that school doesn't like to fail kids, so he has to SHOW them how much he is capable?
Is he allowed any screen time? There's so many great math games out there. If he's say allowed an hour of screen time regularly, a bonus hour of specific apps that will help him with math might be appealing.
posted by ReluctantViking at 3:28 PM on January 21
While this sounds outrageous at first, he's not passing that either.
Can you frame it about how bright and capable he is, but that school doesn't like to fail kids, so he has to SHOW them how much he is capable?
Is he allowed any screen time? There's so many great math games out there. If he's say allowed an hour of screen time regularly, a bonus hour of specific apps that will help him with math might be appealing.
posted by ReluctantViking at 3:28 PM on January 21
I cannot recommend speech-to-text strongly enough for written assignments. You can practice with dictation at first if you're a fast typist, but speech to text and then editing is going to serve him well for the rest of his life.
Hell, staple a printout of dictated answers to worksheets.
posted by DebetEsse at 6:03 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
Hell, staple a printout of dictated answers to worksheets.
posted by DebetEsse at 6:03 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
What's your son good at, academically? Are there subjects he shows signs of actual enthusiasm for?
The math ship might have sailed, for him, and your time might be better spent on encouraging him to excel at subjects he's good at and enjoys than on pushing him to swim after math's ever-receding stern until he drowns.
I say this as the parent of a child who does have ADHD and really struggled with wrapping her head around the maths curriculum all the way through school, never really clicking with any of it apart from geometry which she found surprisingly (to her) intuitive, and yet is currently blossoming into a strong, capable, competent, confident young adult with excellent prospects for any future she decides to pursue - a young adult, furthermore, who knows full well that I am and always will be right there in her front row of cheerleaders.
My own struggle to accept the idea that she might never attain anything like the mathematical competency I've personally found so useful turned out to be just one more difficulty piled up onto the mountain she was already dealing with every day.
But all of us, in the end, just do the best we can with what we have. I have a library of internal resources that she doesn't, and she has a library of internal resources that I don't, and that's OK. Took me longer than it should have to work that out, but I think both of us are glad that I eventually did. I know for sure that I am.
Part of what helped me was thinking about the ways in which my own mother had pushed me educationally, and just how ineffective all of that pushing was, and how much I'd resented it, and how little of my subsequent success had anything to do with any of it. "Could do better if he applied himself" was a recurring theme in all my school reports. And they were right! I did really well at the subjects in which I did apply myself; the difference in outcomes was just stark.
The lesson I took from that stark difference was to internalize the idea that I'm just lazy. I spent decades beating myself up for that. The lesson I'd have been better off taking is that dealing with shit so irrelevant to my needs and interests that I just cannot begin to care about it is a pointless goddamn waste of my time.
Maths is treated as a core competency in pretty much every school curriculum I'm aware of, on the basis that numeracy is an indispensable skill for survival in the modern world; we jam numbers down their tiny throats because we're completely sure that's good for them. But is it? Seems to me that in 2024 we might be better off centering our curricula on media literacy and skepticism - real skepticism, not reflexive gainsaying - about our dominant cultural narratives.
And one of those dominant cultural narratives is the idea that education is all about fixing our kids' deficiencies so as to bring them up to some minimum standard, rather than helping them learn how to hone their skills so as to thrive and excel in whatever niche they find for themselves.
I think playing to our strengths while helping our kids play to theirs is a much better use of everybody's time.
posted by flabdablet at 6:38 PM on January 21 [9 favorites]
The math ship might have sailed, for him, and your time might be better spent on encouraging him to excel at subjects he's good at and enjoys than on pushing him to swim after math's ever-receding stern until he drowns.
I say this as the parent of a child who does have ADHD and really struggled with wrapping her head around the maths curriculum all the way through school, never really clicking with any of it apart from geometry which she found surprisingly (to her) intuitive, and yet is currently blossoming into a strong, capable, competent, confident young adult with excellent prospects for any future she decides to pursue - a young adult, furthermore, who knows full well that I am and always will be right there in her front row of cheerleaders.
My own struggle to accept the idea that she might never attain anything like the mathematical competency I've personally found so useful turned out to be just one more difficulty piled up onto the mountain she was already dealing with every day.
But all of us, in the end, just do the best we can with what we have. I have a library of internal resources that she doesn't, and she has a library of internal resources that I don't, and that's OK. Took me longer than it should have to work that out, but I think both of us are glad that I eventually did. I know for sure that I am.
Part of what helped me was thinking about the ways in which my own mother had pushed me educationally, and just how ineffective all of that pushing was, and how much I'd resented it, and how little of my subsequent success had anything to do with any of it. "Could do better if he applied himself" was a recurring theme in all my school reports. And they were right! I did really well at the subjects in which I did apply myself; the difference in outcomes was just stark.
The lesson I took from that stark difference was to internalize the idea that I'm just lazy. I spent decades beating myself up for that. The lesson I'd have been better off taking is that dealing with shit so irrelevant to my needs and interests that I just cannot begin to care about it is a pointless goddamn waste of my time.
Maths is treated as a core competency in pretty much every school curriculum I'm aware of, on the basis that numeracy is an indispensable skill for survival in the modern world; we jam numbers down their tiny throats because we're completely sure that's good for them. But is it? Seems to me that in 2024 we might be better off centering our curricula on media literacy and skepticism - real skepticism, not reflexive gainsaying - about our dominant cultural narratives.
And one of those dominant cultural narratives is the idea that education is all about fixing our kids' deficiencies so as to bring them up to some minimum standard, rather than helping them learn how to hone their skills so as to thrive and excel in whatever niche they find for themselves.
I think playing to our strengths while helping our kids play to theirs is a much better use of everybody's time.
posted by flabdablet at 6:38 PM on January 21 [9 favorites]
First of all, I’m really really happy to hear how well he is doing socially. I remember some of your earlier comments about how the pandemic affected him. That social stuff is super hard to teach and will make such a difference in his happiness and honestly potentially in his workplace success too.
Second, I think the advice to get his login for his various school programs and check on his completion yourself is good, even though I know it’s a pain in the butt. Middle school is traditionally a time when kids start having more to keep track of, and although for a typically developing kid it may be appropriate for parents to slowly relinquish control over the middle school years, for a 2E kid I think you’ll need to do some scaffolding beyond what the school can provide, for longer. But I think it’s totally reasonable to see if you can get a support like “circle back to Avenger Jr about missing assignments with x frequency” added to the IEP.
Regarding writing, since this sounds like it may be a property of the school rather than a choice on the teachers’ part to skimp on his education in particular: is there any chance has a hobby with a literate online community? Or are there more formal extracurricular activities you could sign him up for, or encourage him to join, that would make use of this strength? One of the dangers with a 2E kid is that if all the energy goes toward “fixing” his weaknesses, he may not know how to celebrate his strengths, or to find places where they’re of use. I’m less sanguine than flabdablet is about what happens if you give up on math entirely (and that description of an “inclusion” class is enraging, and makes me wonder if you ought to be bringing some kind of paid advocate to your IEP meetings) but I think it’s true that a lot of happiness as an adult is about finding where what makes you you can serve the world.
posted by eirias at 6:54 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]
Second, I think the advice to get his login for his various school programs and check on his completion yourself is good, even though I know it’s a pain in the butt. Middle school is traditionally a time when kids start having more to keep track of, and although for a typically developing kid it may be appropriate for parents to slowly relinquish control over the middle school years, for a 2E kid I think you’ll need to do some scaffolding beyond what the school can provide, for longer. But I think it’s totally reasonable to see if you can get a support like “circle back to Avenger Jr about missing assignments with x frequency” added to the IEP.
Regarding writing, since this sounds like it may be a property of the school rather than a choice on the teachers’ part to skimp on his education in particular: is there any chance has a hobby with a literate online community? Or are there more formal extracurricular activities you could sign him up for, or encourage him to join, that would make use of this strength? One of the dangers with a 2E kid is that if all the energy goes toward “fixing” his weaknesses, he may not know how to celebrate his strengths, or to find places where they’re of use. I’m less sanguine than flabdablet is about what happens if you give up on math entirely (and that description of an “inclusion” class is enraging, and makes me wonder if you ought to be bringing some kind of paid advocate to your IEP meetings) but I think it’s true that a lot of happiness as an adult is about finding where what makes you you can serve the world.
posted by eirias at 6:54 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]
I’m less sanguine than flabdablet is about what happens if you give up on math entirely
I'm not super-sanguine about it myself. But it pays, I think, to give serious consideration to the question of whether pushing a kid through a process so manifestly not designed to help that particular kid acquire both competence and the enjoyment that flows from it is actually counterproductive.
Kids learn stuff faster than adults do, given consistent opportunities to do so. But that's a statistical truth, not an individual one, and if an education system has already failed as egregiously as this one seems to have done, the best option actually remaining on the table might be for kiddo to pick up his own math education as and when he finds a need to later in life, regardless of how sad and enraging this deplorable state of affairs might be right now.
I'm not saying that the ship has sailed; this is 6th grade after all, still early days. But it might have done, and that's a possibility whose consequences would be worth taking seriously if they could make the difference between thriving and horrible resentment for the remaining years of schooling.
posted by flabdablet at 7:25 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
I'm not super-sanguine about it myself. But it pays, I think, to give serious consideration to the question of whether pushing a kid through a process so manifestly not designed to help that particular kid acquire both competence and the enjoyment that flows from it is actually counterproductive.
Kids learn stuff faster than adults do, given consistent opportunities to do so. But that's a statistical truth, not an individual one, and if an education system has already failed as egregiously as this one seems to have done, the best option actually remaining on the table might be for kiddo to pick up his own math education as and when he finds a need to later in life, regardless of how sad and enraging this deplorable state of affairs might be right now.
I'm not saying that the ship has sailed; this is 6th grade after all, still early days. But it might have done, and that's a possibility whose consequences would be worth taking seriously if they could make the difference between thriving and horrible resentment for the remaining years of schooling.
posted by flabdablet at 7:25 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
In other words, if there's tigering to be done, it seems to me that the teeth involved are best bared at the school system's multiple glaring deficiencies and ridiculous expectations, not at the kid. Model productive ways for him to use his teeth.
posted by flabdablet at 7:27 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 7:27 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
If homework is more about hoop jumping than actual learning, you can put reduced homework load on an IEP.
Have you asked your son at all about what he thinks his challenges are and what obstacles he thinks are in his way?
You could use this info to brainstorm with the school (and your son) about how your son can get the support he needs to turn in assignments. Is that something the resource teacher/aid can help with for in school work? Can parent(s) take actions to help kiddo remember to make sure homework is submitted each night? Can the teacher set aside class time for students to turn in their work (or provide reminders)?
If you haven't done so already, you may need to help your son come up with an after school schedule/routine that accommodates his needs. I would also suggest working on executive function skills in a context outside of school... for something your son wants to do.
It sounds like the school's math curriculum isn't working for your son. While there's way more to math than arithmetic, fluency can make a big difference. (e.g. visit Kumon for math.) Or your son might prefer working with someone using JUMP or MEP Math. (MEP math curriculum is free to download). Life of Fred might be of interest as well. And hey, since your son is a strong reader he might find the resources from the folks at the Art of Problem Solving interesting.
Does your kid have any interest in doing martial arts? Besides teaching focus, many martial arts schools aimed at kids will specifically require students to be doing acceptably in school.
Are there fair and reasonable consequences and rewards for your son regarding his school work and behavior? Are the routines and rules in your household setting your son up for success? (E.g timing and duration of screen time).
posted by oceano at 10:27 PM on January 21 [3 favorites]
Have you asked your son at all about what he thinks his challenges are and what obstacles he thinks are in his way?
You could use this info to brainstorm with the school (and your son) about how your son can get the support he needs to turn in assignments. Is that something the resource teacher/aid can help with for in school work? Can parent(s) take actions to help kiddo remember to make sure homework is submitted each night? Can the teacher set aside class time for students to turn in their work (or provide reminders)?
If you haven't done so already, you may need to help your son come up with an after school schedule/routine that accommodates his needs. I would also suggest working on executive function skills in a context outside of school... for something your son wants to do.
It sounds like the school's math curriculum isn't working for your son. While there's way more to math than arithmetic, fluency can make a big difference. (e.g. visit Kumon for math.) Or your son might prefer working with someone using JUMP or MEP Math. (MEP math curriculum is free to download). Life of Fred might be of interest as well. And hey, since your son is a strong reader he might find the resources from the folks at the Art of Problem Solving interesting.
Does your kid have any interest in doing martial arts? Besides teaching focus, many martial arts schools aimed at kids will specifically require students to be doing acceptably in school.
Are there fair and reasonable consequences and rewards for your son regarding his school work and behavior? Are the routines and rules in your household setting your son up for success? (E.g timing and duration of screen time).
posted by oceano at 10:27 PM on January 21 [3 favorites]
If you'd like to teach him to cook, teach him to cook.
Writing the shopping list is a small writing exercise
Setting a budget and then trying to buy ingredients from the shopping list to fit that budget is maths.
Cooking can involve maths and science.
Etc.
Cooking is an important skill, but maybe it can also help make maths more relatable.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 2:40 AM on January 22 [4 favorites]
Writing the shopping list is a small writing exercise
Setting a budget and then trying to buy ingredients from the shopping list to fit that budget is maths.
Cooking can involve maths and science.
Etc.
Cooking is an important skill, but maybe it can also help make maths more relatable.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 2:40 AM on January 22 [4 favorites]
Complementary to all the suggestions above, I would consider "what is he interested in? what are his strengths? what has he done well with in the past, and what kinds of activities does he find rewarding? how could the work he needs to do be adapted to his interests and strengths and motivations, and how could a plan for how to do it be developed that gives him a sense of ownership and agency in it, to the extent posssible?"
I would consider reframing what's most important here. What matters most is developing a positive relationship with learning and a sense of himself as someone who's capable of completing the tasks that are given to him, with as good an understanding of why completing work is hard for him as possible.
It can be scary and miserable feeling incapable of completing the demands that are put on us - even if a kid his age isn't always going to show that on the outside in a straightforwardly obvious way - and can make it even harder to motivate ourselves to do it next time.
I just recently saw this video about 'the Wall of Awful' that's the most vivid explanation I've seen about how an extended history of failing to meet demands we can't live up to can add to the difficulty and psychic pain of trying to meet them in the future. While it's on an ADHD channel, it's not an ADHD-only phenomenon - any time there's a persistent mismatch between the demands of our environment and our neurology we're at risk for one getting built.
So it's important to seek to ensure that the supports we give are grounded in a quality understanding of someone's neurological needs, both to prevent accidentally building new Walls of Awful and to help master any ones that already exist. So I would focus on understanding what's hard for him about completing work now, and "what's a plan that he can actually be successful with", rather than beginning with a goal for completing a specific type or amount of content.
So e.g. if the issue is that he struggles to complete work if it doesn't challenge him, making it harder could be useful. If the issue is that it's a struggle to break down multi-step tasks, having extra support for that or starting with simpler tasks might be. Even if he's intellectually capable, executive function capacity is just as important to honor, too. And EF can be difficult for autistic people as well as for people with ADHD.
Finding a knowledgeable professional who you can trust to truly understand him for who he is and recommend appropriate strategies is the most reliable approach - if the school isn't providing that seeking additional professional support may be useful, whether that means consulting a professional outside of school (maybe one who specializes in working with/helping advocate for 2E kids) or switching to a different one.
The tiger-mom concept that children need to be pushed to do as much and as soon as possible in order to be successful in life isn't accurate, and particularly tends to backfire for neurodivergent kids. And as you recognize it takes a lot of time/energy/conflict that's hard on the parent as well!
And there's no rush to learn any particular content; it's never too late to learn it, whether that's later in his K-12 career or beyond. I had years in my own education where I got overwhelmed and barely learned any math, and then caught up later. And I've tutored community students in their 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond who started by taking remedial coursework and just got how to do math for the first time as adults, and then went on to success in STEM fields at respectable transfer colleges, grad schools, and in meaningful careers. So if the right strategy does turn out to be to dial back on the expectations, know that that doesn't have to be forever. Getting him set up with the right expectations and supports he can succeed with now will put him in a better position to catch up if or when it's right for him.
posted by beryllium at 4:29 AM on January 22 [7 favorites]
I would consider reframing what's most important here. What matters most is developing a positive relationship with learning and a sense of himself as someone who's capable of completing the tasks that are given to him, with as good an understanding of why completing work is hard for him as possible.
It can be scary and miserable feeling incapable of completing the demands that are put on us - even if a kid his age isn't always going to show that on the outside in a straightforwardly obvious way - and can make it even harder to motivate ourselves to do it next time.
I just recently saw this video about 'the Wall of Awful' that's the most vivid explanation I've seen about how an extended history of failing to meet demands we can't live up to can add to the difficulty and psychic pain of trying to meet them in the future. While it's on an ADHD channel, it's not an ADHD-only phenomenon - any time there's a persistent mismatch between the demands of our environment and our neurology we're at risk for one getting built.
So it's important to seek to ensure that the supports we give are grounded in a quality understanding of someone's neurological needs, both to prevent accidentally building new Walls of Awful and to help master any ones that already exist. So I would focus on understanding what's hard for him about completing work now, and "what's a plan that he can actually be successful with", rather than beginning with a goal for completing a specific type or amount of content.
So e.g. if the issue is that he struggles to complete work if it doesn't challenge him, making it harder could be useful. If the issue is that it's a struggle to break down multi-step tasks, having extra support for that or starting with simpler tasks might be. Even if he's intellectually capable, executive function capacity is just as important to honor, too. And EF can be difficult for autistic people as well as for people with ADHD.
Finding a knowledgeable professional who you can trust to truly understand him for who he is and recommend appropriate strategies is the most reliable approach - if the school isn't providing that seeking additional professional support may be useful, whether that means consulting a professional outside of school (maybe one who specializes in working with/helping advocate for 2E kids) or switching to a different one.
The tiger-mom concept that children need to be pushed to do as much and as soon as possible in order to be successful in life isn't accurate, and particularly tends to backfire for neurodivergent kids. And as you recognize it takes a lot of time/energy/conflict that's hard on the parent as well!
And there's no rush to learn any particular content; it's never too late to learn it, whether that's later in his K-12 career or beyond. I had years in my own education where I got overwhelmed and barely learned any math, and then caught up later. And I've tutored community students in their 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond who started by taking remedial coursework and just got how to do math for the first time as adults, and then went on to success in STEM fields at respectable transfer colleges, grad schools, and in meaningful careers. So if the right strategy does turn out to be to dial back on the expectations, know that that doesn't have to be forever. Getting him set up with the right expectations and supports he can succeed with now will put him in a better position to catch up if or when it's right for him.
posted by beryllium at 4:29 AM on January 22 [7 favorites]
someone else perhaps said this above, I didnt read every response, but tutors are easy to find on Outschool (a website for hiring tutors, sorry for no link but it will def be the first hit when you google) and very good. you can read their reviews. lots of teachers moonlight there as a side hustle. i think you will probably be able to find someone at your price point... also theres a cool org called The Paedia Institute that has live online zoom based highly participatory Latin classes for kids.. I thought having to take latin was dumb, when I was made to take it, but it helps with vocabulary enormously. idk ..just two thoughts : ) at outschool they also have group classes and classes on fun but educational stuff, eg programming with scratch, or composing a song in garage band, say. it is all live instruction and a majority of them are very engaging - a world of difference compared to a one to many zoom class where half the kids are off screen playing roblox and the teacher has given up - and you are able to see a recording of every session there afterwards to see how engaging of your learner they were. hope it helps!
posted by elgee at 5:37 AM on January 22 [1 favorite]
posted by elgee at 5:37 AM on January 22 [1 favorite]
Good luck. My kid has an IEP due to an eye issue. The school had no problems putting a bunch of stuff on there, but do they actually follow it? No, not really.
Tutors are good. The cheapest decent one we could find was $50 an hour, for basic math stuff. We cut that off pretty quickly. We actually had a Montessori teacher who taught through the rec center for our kids when they were 3-5 years old. She was happy to take my daughter and teach her at the same time even though she was 8-9 years old, she also loves little ones so she wasn't too embarrassed, and the teacher gave her age appropriate work. That helped the most, by far. Each session was 3 hours long and since it was through the community center, it wasn't expensive. Thank god.
Her grades were bad enough in school where she qualified for in-school tutoring as well. It was like puling teeth to get the school to do it, but they finally did and she went once a week for 45 minutes for about half the year.
All this stuff together helped, and now she's pretty close to normal.
Her 5th grade teacher now does take-home homework sheets instead of computer nonsense, that has been a great help too. A normal kid can do them in about 10 minutes. Our kid takes 30 but we can see where she is at. I really appreciate the printed work.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:35 AM on January 22
Tutors are good. The cheapest decent one we could find was $50 an hour, for basic math stuff. We cut that off pretty quickly. We actually had a Montessori teacher who taught through the rec center for our kids when they were 3-5 years old. She was happy to take my daughter and teach her at the same time even though she was 8-9 years old, she also loves little ones so she wasn't too embarrassed, and the teacher gave her age appropriate work. That helped the most, by far. Each session was 3 hours long and since it was through the community center, it wasn't expensive. Thank god.
Her grades were bad enough in school where she qualified for in-school tutoring as well. It was like puling teeth to get the school to do it, but they finally did and she went once a week for 45 minutes for about half the year.
All this stuff together helped, and now she's pretty close to normal.
Her 5th grade teacher now does take-home homework sheets instead of computer nonsense, that has been a great help too. A normal kid can do them in about 10 minutes. Our kid takes 30 but we can see where she is at. I really appreciate the printed work.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:35 AM on January 22
My 5th grade son has so many overlapping challenges I really feel you. You've gotten a lot of good advice, we're specifically doing Kumon to help him catch up on math fundamentals that we think went missing during the pandemic or that he's very sloppy with. I don't think it's terribly expensive but I'm sure that's relative.
posted by ch1x0r at 8:04 AM on January 22
posted by ch1x0r at 8:04 AM on January 22
Best answer: Hmmm, one thing I noticed about touring private schools and looking at their middle grades is they place an enormous emphasis on Executive Functioning and planning skills in that time frame. Middle school is when academics start differentiating, the teaching support to get everyone to the minimum fall away and students who are poor planners are exposed.
I would suggest working on doable Executive Functioning skills first. Perhaps engage a tutor or therapist to come up with a planner system that works for him. Really pay attention for the beginning of the planning and provide lots of support and slowly take the support away until hopefully he can plan his assignment schedule on his own. It is hard for parents to do this because frustration and close relationships and existing dynamics make it really difficult.
Math is another story. I enjoyed learning math as a kid and considered myself a math kid. However, I am surprised by how math is taught today. I think schools are trying to inculcate math sense in kids that may not naturally have math sense without awareness of different types of learners. I think this type of fluid math reasoning is perfect for kids who know how numbers work but it does not work for kids who may not have a natural understanding of math. So, I think there are two suggestions for this. One suggestion is teaching your kid math to function in this world regardless of how well they do in school math which is a different sort of math. As much as the current educational establishment hates this, I would teach rote math to build up the core skills (adding, subtracting, etc.) and do it with speed. Places like Kumon (at least old school Kumon) excel at this. The second part is school math. This is a different sort of math because they want kids to do math their way and specifically show how they do it in the school way. I would approach this separately and think of it as another language to learn that is not really math. They have specific methods they use and this would be done through problem sets with a tutor or with you. I would identify a common problem and write a step by step with as few words as possible for solving that problem to memorize and as a reference. Do this for each common type so he has a reference sheet for each common problem.
posted by ichimunki at 8:13 AM on January 22 [1 favorite]
I would suggest working on doable Executive Functioning skills first. Perhaps engage a tutor or therapist to come up with a planner system that works for him. Really pay attention for the beginning of the planning and provide lots of support and slowly take the support away until hopefully he can plan his assignment schedule on his own. It is hard for parents to do this because frustration and close relationships and existing dynamics make it really difficult.
Math is another story. I enjoyed learning math as a kid and considered myself a math kid. However, I am surprised by how math is taught today. I think schools are trying to inculcate math sense in kids that may not naturally have math sense without awareness of different types of learners. I think this type of fluid math reasoning is perfect for kids who know how numbers work but it does not work for kids who may not have a natural understanding of math. So, I think there are two suggestions for this. One suggestion is teaching your kid math to function in this world regardless of how well they do in school math which is a different sort of math. As much as the current educational establishment hates this, I would teach rote math to build up the core skills (adding, subtracting, etc.) and do it with speed. Places like Kumon (at least old school Kumon) excel at this. The second part is school math. This is a different sort of math because they want kids to do math their way and specifically show how they do it in the school way. I would approach this separately and think of it as another language to learn that is not really math. They have specific methods they use and this would be done through problem sets with a tutor or with you. I would identify a common problem and write a step by step with as few words as possible for solving that problem to memorize and as a reference. Do this for each common type so he has a reference sheet for each common problem.
posted by ichimunki at 8:13 AM on January 22 [1 favorite]
Re: tutoring, look into your public library to see what they offer. Most of the public libraries I've worked for or used have offered some kind of free tutoring to K-12 students, whether that's a college kid or certified teacher with "office hours" in the library, or a 24/7 remote tutoring option.
If you can afford it, though, a consistent one-on-one tutor can be really powerful, especially if he forms a positive relationship with the tutor. Kids his age are so driven by relationships, and since you mention that he's doing well socially, that's likely to be true for him as well. It can be hard in the era of large class sizes and way too many demands on teachers to form those relationships in school, unfortunately.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 10:06 AM on January 22
If you can afford it, though, a consistent one-on-one tutor can be really powerful, especially if he forms a positive relationship with the tutor. Kids his age are so driven by relationships, and since you mention that he's doing well socially, that's likely to be true for him as well. It can be hard in the era of large class sizes and way too many demands on teachers to form those relationships in school, unfortunately.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 10:06 AM on January 22
As an actual tiger mom, I generally agree that you should get a tutor. I have one high achieving child and one who is average who has a tutor. My secret is that I encourage them both to do the things they are interested in. This started at a very young age for the high achieving one and only in high school for the average one because that's when he finally developed interests.
What I find is that that being allowed to focus on interests develops a part of them usually isn't measured. It's still an ongoing experiment with the average one, but I feel that this one thing is really crucial to helping my kids become "successful" adults, whatever that means.
I think this advice is not very useful if your child is struggling to pass classes. But where you can, I encourage you to actively encourage your child's interests. Even if your child is not making as much academic progress as you would like, they should still be allowed to pursue their interest if they have one.
posted by GliblyKronor at 8:21 PM on January 23 [1 favorite]
What I find is that that being allowed to focus on interests develops a part of them usually isn't measured. It's still an ongoing experiment with the average one, but I feel that this one thing is really crucial to helping my kids become "successful" adults, whatever that means.
I think this advice is not very useful if your child is struggling to pass classes. But where you can, I encourage you to actively encourage your child's interests. Even if your child is not making as much academic progress as you would like, they should still be allowed to pursue their interest if they have one.
posted by GliblyKronor at 8:21 PM on January 23 [1 favorite]
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You can also use the summer to do a math class privately; some private schools offer summer academies. Summer is also a good time for cursive boot camp. (One of my kids just isn’t ever going to have good handwriting; his line drawing and shading is amazing. Dunno what to say.)
For assignments etc., we have had variable success but in middle school it’s at minimum a weekly “show me all your Google classroom/Brightspace stuff.” (Insert rant here that teachers all use the assignments/calendars differently so due dates appear different and some assignments get submitted online and some don’t. It’s not just our kids.) Everything goes on the kitchen calendar. This family-driven approach works until it doesn’t, which for us was mid-high school, but it sounds like you’re in triage.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:57 AM on January 21 [9 favorites]