QI AM really worried about my eight-year- old son. He is just starting back into school but he is dreading it. He has dyslexia and he finds the work in school hard.
To be honest, he had been very demotivated and negative about school from senior infants on but we never knew what the problem was. His writing was especially terrible but in most other ways he always came across to us as very intelligent.
He is popular and well liked by the other children in his class and we could never work out why he seemed to hate school so much. Mind you he was often in trouble with teachers for not paying attention and he was often described to us as lazy when it came to his written work.
His teachers along the way told us he simply wasn’t putting in the effort because they, too, believed he had the ability to do much better. We had him assessed only recently and discovered his dyslexia.
The trouble is that he now claims that this proves that he is stupid, as he has always believed, and doesn’t want to go back to school because he thinks the teacher will treat him differently. Because he will probably have to go out to the learning support teacher, he is afraid the other kids in his class will laugh at him.
Is there anything I can do to help him?
AThis is a tough, but hopeful, position for your son to be in. For some children the anticipation of going out to a learning support teacher can be similar to the anticipation of having to get braces on your teeth: you know it will be better for you but you worry about how others will perceive you.
Firstly, I think you need to acknowledge, for your son, that you recognise that he is feeling anxious about school and what things will be like when he goes back.
Secondly, you should talk to his teacher about how learning support is viewed in the school. It may be the case that all the children accept that learning support happens, and that children will come and go from it during the day.
In most schools the learning support programme is so integrated into the day-to-day rhythm that there is no stigma attached.
If this is the case in his school, then at least you can reassure him that it is unlikely that anyone will treat him differently, or tease him or laugh at him.
I wonder also how you, and he, understood the feedback from the psychologist who assessed him. I know you say that he has dyslexia and dyslexia is a particular kind of specific learning disability.
Dyslexia is usually associated with difficulty reading as the child mixes up letters and words. It can also lead to real problems with spelling. Perhaps this is why his written work never seemed to match how he was able to orally present the same information.
The key thing about any specific learning disability is that it is specific. That is to say that there are usually only one or two quite discrete things that the child will have difficulty with, and in every other area they will have average or above average ability.
Indeed, part of the diagnostic criteria for identifying a specific learning disability is that a child must have at least average overall intellectual ability. So the IQ test that your son must have done as part of his psychological assessment is proof for the world to see that he is a smart youngster.
If this didn’t come through clearly from the psychologist who assessed him, then ask them if they could chat to your son again, over the phone perhaps, to remind and reassure him of his overall intelligence (sometimes our children put more weight on the assurances of others!).
It is great that you were able to have him assessed because without this new understanding of the nature of his specific disability, he may have gone right through school with a false belief that he is stupid. Now there is evidence that he is clever!
The other thing that your son may find is that now that his specific difficulty has been recognised, in fact the teacher will be less hard on him as the teacher too will have a greater understanding that he isn’t being lazy, but rather has real difficulty with certain tasks.
If your son can get the help from a learning support teacher, then he will hopefully begin to feel a greater sense of achievement in, for example, writing tasks and, hopefully, this will build his self-confidence and self-esteem and allow him to be a bit more motivated in class.
So, while you can be understanding of his anxieties, there are many areas where you can reassure him. I imagine, also, that his actual experience in school now won’t match his fears, but will in fact have the potential to be much more positive for him.
- David Coleman is a clinical psychologist and broadcaster with RTÉ television.
- Readers' queries are welcome and will be answered through the column, but David regrets he cannot enter into individual correspondence. Questions should be e-mailed to healthsupplement@irishtimes.com