Arkansas Agency Responsible for Regulation of Child Care Center and Family Child Care Home
learning disabilities
Helping Children with Learning Disabilities
Has your kid been diagnosed with a learning disability? With these parenting tips, you lot tin help them build self-confidence and detect success at school—and in life.
When it comes to learning disabilities, look at the big picture
All children demand dear, encouragement, and back up, and for kids with learning disabilities, such positive reinforcement can assistance ensure that they emerge with a strong sense of self-worth, conviction, and the determination to keep going fifty-fifty when things are tough.
In searching for means to assist children with learning disabilities, remember that you are looking for ways to help them help themselves. Your job as a parent is non to "cure" the learning disability, but to give your child the social and emotional tools they demand to work through challenges. In the long run, facing and overcoming a claiming such as a learning inability tin can help your child grow stronger and more resilient.
E'er recollect that the way you deport and reply to challenges has a big impact on your child. A good attitude won't solve the problems associated with a learning disability, but it tin requite your child hope and confidence that things can improve and that they will eventually succeed.
Tips for dealing with your kid's learning disability
Proceed things in perspective. A learning inability isn't insurmountable. Remind yourself that anybody faces obstacles. It's upwardly to y'all as a parent to teach your child how to deal with those obstacles without becoming discouraged or overwhelmed. Don't allow the tests, schoolhouse bureaucracy, and endless paperwork distract you from what's really important—giving your child plenty of emotional and moral support.
Become your ain expert. Do your own enquiry and proceed abreast of new developments in learning inability programs, therapies, and educational techniques. You may be tempted to look to others—teachers, therapists, doctors—for solutions, especially at first. Just y'all're the foremost skillful on your kid, then take accuse when it comes to finding the tools they need in order to learn.
Exist an advocate for your child. You may take to speak upward fourth dimension and time again to become special help for your child. Embrace your role as a proactive parent and work on your advice skills. It may be frustrating at times, just past remaining at-home and reasonable, still business firm, you tin brand a huge divergence for your child.
Remember that your influence outweighs all others. Your child will follow your atomic number 82. If you lot arroyo learning challenges with optimism, hard piece of work, and a sense of humor, your child is likely to embrace your perspective—or at to the lowest degree see the challenges as a speed bump, rather than a roadblock. Focus your free energy on learning what works for your child and implementing it the best yous can.
Focus on strengths, not just weaknesses
Your child is not defined by their learning disability. A learning disability represents one area of weakness, but there are many more areas of strengths. Focus on your kid's gifts and talents. Your child's life—and schedule—shouldn't revolve around the learning disability. Nurture the activities where they excel, and make enough of time for them.
Recognizing a learning disorder
By agreement the different types of learning disorders and their signs, you can pinpoint the specific challenges your child faces and find a treatment programme that works.
[Read: Learning Disabilities and Disorders]
Helping children with learning disabilities tip 1: Take charge of your child'due south education
In this age of endless budget cuts and inadequately funded schools, your role in your child'south education is more important than e'er. Don't sit back and let someone else be responsible for providing your child with the tools they need to larn. You can and should take an active role in your kid's pedagogy.
If in that location is demonstrated educational demand, the school is required by law to develop an Individualized Educational activity Plan (IEP) that delivers some educational benefit, but not necessarily i that maximizes student accomplishment. Parents who want the best for their kids may notice this standard frustrating. Understanding special education laws and your schoolhouse'due south guidelines for services will help you get the best back up for your kid at school. Your child may be eligible for many kinds of accommodations and support services, but the schoolhouse might not provide services unless you ask for them.
Tips for communicating with your child's school
Being a vocal advocate for your child tin can be challenging. You'll need superior advice and negotiation skills, and the confidence to defend your child's right to a proper instruction.
Analyze your goals. Before meetings, write downwardly what you want to accomplish. Decide what is most important, and what you are willing to negotiate.
Be a good listener. Permit school officials to explain their opinions. If you don't understand what someone is saying, enquire for clarification. "What I hear you maxim is…" can help ensure that both parties understand.
[Read: Effective Communication]
Offer new solutions. You have the reward of not beingness a "part of the arrangement," and may have new ideas. Practice your research and discover examples of what other schools accept done.
Proceed the focus. The school system is dealing with a large number of children; y'all are but concerned with your child. Help the meeting stay focused on your kid. Mention your child's name often, don't drift into generalizations, and resist the urge to fight larger battles.
Stay calm, collected and positive. Go into the meeting assuming that everyone wants to assistance. If yous say something you regret, simply apologize and endeavor to get back on rail.
Don't give upwardly easily. If you're non satisfied with the schoolhouse'due south response, try again.
Recognize the limitations of the school system
Parents sometimes make the mistake of investing all of their fourth dimension and energy into the school equally the primary solution for their child'south learning disability. It is better to recognize that the school state of affairs for your child will probably never be perfect. Too many regulations and express funding mean that the services and accommodations your child receives may non be exactly what you lot envision for them, and this volition probably cause you frustration, anger and stress.
Try to recognize that the school will be but one part of the solution for your child and leave some of the stress behind. Your attitude (of support, encouragement and optimism) will have the most lasting touch on your kid.
Tip 2: Identify how your child learns best
Everyone—learning disability or non—has their own unique learning fashion. Some people learn best by seeing or reading, others by listening, and still others by doing. You lot can assist a child with a learning inability by identifying their primary learning fashion.
Is your child a visual learner, an auditory learner, or a kinesthetic learner? One time you've figured out how they acquire best, yous tin accept steps to make sure that blazon of learning is reinforced in the classroom and during home study. The following lists will assist you determine what blazon of learner your kid is:
Is your child a visual learner?
Visual learners:
- Learn best by seeing or reading.
- Do well when material is presented and tested visually, rather than verbally.
- Benefit from written notes, directions, diagrams, charts, maps, and pictures.
- May love to depict, read, and write; are often good at spelling.
Is your child an auditory learner?
Auditory learners:
- Learn best by listening.
- Practise well in lecture-based learning environments and on oral reports and tests.
- Benefit from classroom discussions, spoken directions, study groups.
- May love music, languages, and being on stage.
Is your child a kinesthetic learner?
Kinesthetic learners:
- Learn best by doing and moving.
- Do well when they tin move, bear on, explore, and create in order to acquire.
- Benefit from hands-on activities, lab classes, props, skits, and field trips.
- May dear sports, drama, dance, martial arts, and craft.
| Studying Tips for Different Types of Learners |
| For visual learners: |
|
| For auditory learners: |
|
| For kinesthetic learners: |
|
Tip 3: Think life success, rather than school success
Success means dissimilar things to different people, but your hopes and dreams for your child probably extend beyond good report cards. Maybe you hope that your child'south futurity includes a fulfilling job and satisfying relationships, for example, or a happy family and a sense of contentment. The betoken is that success in life—rather than just school success—depends, not on academics, but on things similar a healthy sense of self, the willingness to ask for and accept help, the determination to proceed trying in spite of challenges, the ability to form healthy relationships with others, and other qualities that aren't equally piece of cake to quantify as grades and exam scores.
Six skills for success in life with a learning disability
A twenty-yr written report that followed children with learning disabilities into adulthood identified the following half dozen "life success" attributes. Past focusing on these broad skills, you can help give your child a huge leg upwardly in life.
1: Self-awareness and self-confidence
For children with learning disabilities, cocky-awareness (knowledge about strengths, weaknesses, and special talents) and self-conviction are very important. Struggles in the classroom can cause children to doubtfulness their abilities and question their strengths.
- Ask your child to list their strengths and weaknesses and talk about your own strengths and weaknesses with your child.
- Encourage your child to talk to adults with learning disabilities and to inquire about their challenges, as well every bit their strengths.
- Work with your child on activities that are within their capabilities. This will help build feelings of success and competency.
- Help your child develop their strengths and passions. Feeling passionate and skilled in one area may inspire hard work in other areas too.
2: Being proactive
A proactive person is able to make decisions and have action to resolve problems or achieve goals. For people with learning disabilities, being proactive also involves self-advocacy (for instance, request for a seat at the front of the classroom) and the willingness to take responsibility for choices.
- Talk with your learning disabled kid about problem solving and share how you approach issues in your life.
- Inquire your kid how they approach issues. How do problems make them feel? How practise they decide what action to take?
- If your child is hesitant to make choices and take action, effort to provide some "rubber" situations to test the water, like choosing what to make for dinner or thinking of a solution for a scheduling conflict.
- Discuss different problems, possible decisions, and outcomes with your child. Have your child pretend to be role of the situation and make their own decisions.
three: Perseverance
Perseverance is the bulldoze to go on going despite challenges and failures, and the flexibility to modify plans if things aren't working. Children (or adults) with learning disabilities may need to work harder and longer because of their disability.
- Talk with your child well-nigh times when they persevered—why did they continue going? Share stories well-nigh when you have faced challenges and not given up.
- Discuss what it means to keep going even when things aren't easy. Talk almost the rewards of difficult work, too as the opportunities missed past giving upwardly.
- When your child has worked difficult, but failed to achieve their goal, discuss different possibilities for moving forward.
four: The ability to set goals
The ability to set realistic and attainable goals is a vital skill for life success. Information technology also involves the flexibility to adapt and adjust goals according to changing circumstances, limitations, or challenges.
- Assist your kid identify a few short- or long-term goals and write down steps and a timeline to accomplish the goals. Cheque in periodically to talk about progress and make adjustments every bit needed.
- Talk about your own curt- and long-term goals with your kid, as well as what you do when yous see obstacles.
- Celebrate with your child when they achieve a goal. If certain goals are proving as well hard to achieve, talk about why and how plans or goals might be adapted to make them possible.
v: Knowing how to ask for help
Strong support systems are primal for people with learning disabilities. Successful people are able to ask for aid when they demand information technology and attain out to others for support.
- Aid your child nurture and develop good relationships. Model what it means to be a proficient friend and relative then your kid knows what information technology ways to help and support others.
- Demonstrate to your child how to enquire for help in family situations.
- Share examples of people needing help, how they got information technology, and why information technology was good to ask for help. Present your kid with role-play scenarios that might require help.
6: The ability to handle stress
If children with learning disabilities learn how to regulate stress and at-home themselves, they will be much better equipped to overcome challenges.
- Use words to identify feelings and help your child acquire to recognize specific feelings.
- Inquire your child the words they would use to depict stress. Does your child recognize when they are feeling stressed?
- Encourage your child to identify and participate in activities that aid reduce stress like sports, games, music, or writing in a journal.
- Ask your child to depict activities and situations that make them experience stressed. Break down the scenarios and talk almost how overwhelming feelings of stress and frustration might be avoided.
Recognizing stress in your child
It'due south of import to exist enlightened of the dissimilar ways in which stress tin can manifest. Your kid may behave very differently than yous do when they are under stress. Some signs of stress are more obvious: agitation, trouble sleeping, and worries that won't shut off. Simply some people—children included—shut down, space out, and withdraw when stressed. It's easy to overlook these signs, so exist on the picket for any beliefs that's out of the ordinary.
Tip 4: Emphasize healthy lifestyle habits
It may seem like common sense that learning involves the body as well as the encephalon, but your child's eating, sleep, and exercise habits may be fifty-fifty more of import than you recall. If children with learning disabilities are eating right and getting plenty sleep and exercise, they will exist better able to focus, concentrate, and work hard.
Practice – Practice isn't just good for the body, information technology's practiced for the mind. Regular concrete activeness makes a huge difference in mood, free energy, and mental clarity. Encourage your child to get exterior, move, and play. Rather than tiring out your child and taking away from schoolwork, regular exercise volition actually assistance them stay alert and attentive throughout the day. Exercise is likewise a bang-up antitoxin to stress and frustration.
Sleep – Learning disability or not, your kid is going to accept trouble learning if they are not well rested. Kids need more sleep than adults do. On average, preschoolers need from eleven-thirteen hours per night, centre school children need about x-11 hours, and teens and preteens need from 8½-10 hours. You can help make sure your child is getting the slumber they demand past enforcing a gear up bedtime. The blazon of light emitted by electronic screens (computers, televisions, phone, and tablets) is activating to the brain. So you tin also help by powering off all electronics at to the lowest degree an hour or two before lights out.
[Read: Babyhood Insomnia and Sleep Problems]
Diet – A healthy, nutrient rich diet will aid your child's growth and development. A diet full of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and lean protein will assistance heave mental focus. Be sure your child starts the day with a adept breakfast and doesn't get more than four hours between meals or snacks. This will help go on their energy levels stable.
Encouraging healthy emotional habits
In addition to salubrious physical habits, you lot can too encourage children to take salubrious emotional habits. Like yous, they may be frustrated by the challenges presented past their learning disability. Try to give them outlets for expressing their anger, frustration, or feelings of discouragement. Mind when they want to talk and create an surround open to expression. Doing and so will help them connect with their feelings and, eventually, learn how to at-home themselves and regulate their emotions.
Tip 5: Accept care of yourself, likewise
Sometimes the hardest part of parenting is remembering to take care of y'all. It's easy to become caught up in what your child needs, while forgetting your own needs. But if yous don't look subsequently yourself, you run the risk of burning out. It's of import to tend to your physical and emotional needs and then that you're in a healthy space for your child. You won't be able to help your child if you're stressed out, exhausted, and emotionally depleted. When you're calm and focused, on the other hand, y'all're amend able to connect with your child and help them be at-home and focused too.
Your spouse, friends, and family unit members can be helpful teammates if you can find a fashion to include them and learn to ask for help when you need it.
Tips for taking intendance of yourself
Go on the lines of communication open with your spouse, family unit, and friends. Ask for help when yous need information technology.
Take care of yourself by eating well, exercising, and getting enough rest.
Join a learning disorder support group. The encouragement and advice yous'll go from other parents tin be invaluable.
Enlist teachers, therapists, and tutors whenever possible to share some responsibility for day-to-mean solar day academic responsibilities.
Learn how to manage stress in your own life. Make daily time for yourself to relax and decompress.
Affordable Online Therapy
Get professional person assistance from BetterHelp's network of licensed therapists.
HelpGuide is reader supported. Nosotros may receive a committee if you sign upwards for BetterHelp through the provided link. Learn more.
Communicate with family and friends most your kid'due south learning inability
Some parents keep their child's learning disability a secret, which can, fifty-fifty with the best intentions, await like shame or guilt. Without knowing, extended family and friends may not understand the disability or recollect that your kid'due south behavior is stemming from laziness or hyperactivity. Once they are aware of what's going on, they can back up your child'south progress.
Within the family unit, siblings may feel that their brother or sister with a learning inability is getting more attention, less subject area and preferential treatment. Even if your other children understand that the learning disability creates special challenges, they tin hands experience jealous or neglected. Parents tin can help curb these feelings by reassuring all of their children that they are loved, providing homework help, and by including family members in whatever special routines for the kid with a learning disability.
Source: https://www.helpguide.org/articles/autism-learning-disabilities/helping-children-with-learning-disabilities.htm
0 Response to "Arkansas Agency Responsible for Regulation of Child Care Center and Family Child Care Home"
Post a Comment