by Carolyn Forte

A common worry among homeschooling parents is whether their children are “falling behind” or are “not keeping up.”  There are many reasons for a child to have difficulty with the schoolwork assigned but parents are seldom aware of the full range of elements that can affect a child’s ability to learn easily.  Issues that are seldom considered include developmental maturity, learning style, early childhood trauma, undiagnosed vision problems, Sensory Processing Disorder and even nutrition and allergies.  Of course, there are far more serious problems that some children face, but the list above is often overlooked in otherwise normal, healthy children.  These children are often misdiagnosed with one of the alphabet-soup, catch-all labels that are so prevalent in our schools today. 

            The first and most common cause of difficulty with learning is a developmentally inappropriate curriculum.  Nearly all commercially available curriculum packages are totally out of sync with well understood and documented child development principles.  I often joke that kindergarten is the new second grade because of the advanced academic demands put on the youngest children today.  Most curriculum developers, both secular and Christian, follow the national standards, pushing early reading and abstract concepts in math on children who are too young to easily absorb them.  To make matters worse, children are asked to write without proper instruction in penmanship and without regard for the development of their hand-eye coordination.  As documented in the article Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose (www.dey.org), formal academic instruction in kindergarten can backfire, causing both intellectual and emotional harm.  This potential harm is continued throughout the elementary years as advanced concepts in math, English and social studies are forced on children far before they are intellectually ready.  Take a close look at your curriculum if your child is having difficulty.  Children under the age of 11 or 12 can have great difficulty with abstract concepts in math and English.  You can spend a hundred hours or more teaching your first grader the parts of speech.  Or, you can wait until he is 12 and teach them in a couple of weeks utilizing his learning style. 

            Many parents are aware of the concept of learning styles but few understand how profoundly a child’s ability to absorb material easily is affected by his innate learning style.  We do not all learn in the same way but typical school curriculum targets one specific style which is optimal for only 15-20% of the population!  Many children can readily learn the information in the lesson if the approach is adjusted to sync with their learning styles.  To learn more about how to do this read Discover Your Child’s Learning Style by Victoria Hodson and Mariaemma Willis. You can access their online Learning Style Assessment at http://excellenceineducationhomeschooling.com/learning-style-assessment/. For a good introduction go to http://excellenceineducationhomeschooling.com/tutorials/  for videos explaining how learning styles affect your child’s ability to learn.  One of our daughters had a great deal of difficulty with some subjects until I discovered that she almost instantly learned anything put to music.  Some children need lots of hands-on activity, others need to talk about the lessons to absorb them while others need solitude and quiet.  There are many facets to an individual’s learning style and it is well worth learning how to find and use the super highway to your child’s brain.

            Another very common and often overlooked cause of learning difficulty is an undiagnosed vision problem.  Most vision professionals only check for a few visual skills and never test children for difficulties with eye-teaming, tracking, focusing and visual processing.  Many children have 20/20 eyesight (a measure of how well you see something 20 feet away), yet have great difficulty with the visual tasks associated with doing schoolwork.  A child who has difficulty copying may be labeled ADHD when the real problem is that his eyes take so long to focus and refocus that he forgets what he was supposed to copy.  Likewise, a child whose eyes don’t work easily as a team or have trouble tracking together is likely to be diagnosed as dyslexic.  Since children’s eyes are not fully mature until around age eight, many children struggle simply because their eyes are not ready for so much close visual work.   With the extreme acceleration of America’s curriculum schedule, this problem is very common.  You can find out more about this at www.covd.org.

            One of the least recognized factors in learning difficulty is early childhood trauma, also known as Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACEs.  Trauma can be caused even before birth by a difficult pregnancy or during a difficult delivery.  It can also be a physical illness, surgery, accident, the death of someone close, divorce, adoption or other life disruption.  Dr. Karyn Purvis, founder of the Child Development Center at Texas Christian University, stated that a child who experienced early trauma can exhibit characteristics as low as half their chronological age in one or more developmental areas.  These children are still learning and developing but at a slower pace than normal.  Pushing them only causes more stress and may cause more damage.  They need extra time but will thrive eventually.  Dr. Purvis created a lecture video, The Neurochemistry of Fear, which is extremely helpful in understanding this problem.  It can be ordered at www.child.tcu.edu.

            Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) is another cause of learning difficulties that is not well understood.  Although most children on the autism spectrum also have some form of SPD, many children who are not autistic are also affected by SPD.  Sensory Processing Disorder can show up in many ways; a child can be both hypersensitive and hyposensitive in a variety of areas. He may exhibit repetitive motions that are often interpreted as autistic.  Interestingly, most if not all of the symptoms that are used by doctors (from the DSM-V) to label a child with ADHD are also symptoms of SPD.  SPD can be treated and remediated quite successfully.  The key is understanding what your child is dealing with and meeting his needs appropriately.  Dr. Karyn Purvis’ informative lecture, Sensory Integration, can be ordered from www.child.tcu.edu. Another good resource for information on dealing with SPD (recommended by Dr. Purvis) are the books by Carol Stock Kranowitz, M.A. beginning with The Out-of-Sync Child.  You may also want to find a physical or occupational therapist with expertise in Sensory Processing Disorder. 

            Other conditions such as allergies and chronic health issues can also have a profound effect on a child’s ability to learn.  All of the possibilities above should be taken into consideration when evaluating a child’s academic progress.  Many children are dealing with more than one of the conditions listed and need lots of understanding, patience and possibly therapies.  Though children are natural learning machines, they must go at their own pace.   The conveyor belt style of education we all grew up with is totally inappropriate for many children and no parent should feel compelled to keep pace when it is clearly not appropriate. One of the great blessings of homeschooling is time.  Education is not a race.  Help your child enjoy the adventure by giving him time to heal.  You will be amazed at the progress he makes when he is ready.