Diverse Learning

What can You Do If Having A Child With Learning Difficulties  Is Disrupting Your Family Life

A child with Learning Difficulties may struggle with several different skills. They may take a relatively long time to finish homework activities and need more help than your other children. They may also have extra work from therapists or reading teachers that needs to be done (not to mention going to therapy sessions or tutors!).

This often involves the child's parents doing a lot of running around and other children in the family may feel that the child with Learning Difficulties is getting all of their parent's attention.

This can cause confusion and resentment within the family. Parents may become exhausted by the effort to give each child the attention that they want - or they may just feel guilty that they can't stretch themselves that far. Other children may get impatient with the child with Learning Difficulties when they don't understand things or can't keep up in games. They may also become jealous of the extra attention that the child with Learning Difficulties is getting.

It can help all members of the family (including the child with LD, their brothers and sisters and grandparents) if they understand as much about what a Learning Difficulty is as possible. It may be helpful to explain that everybody's brains work in different ways - we all have brains and bodies that are good at some things and not so good at others. The child with Learning Difficulties is just as smart as their brothers and sisters but there are some things that their brains find harder to do, and some of those things can make it really hard for the child with LD to understand or do their school work.

The child with LD, with the right assistance, may improve in many areas including school performance, sport, play and social skills. Parents need to assure the child that they will be able to improve their skills. This may not happen quickly but it is important to keep trying!

Set aside times for others in the family 

Children are all individuals and therefore all have their particular areas of need. Plan to set aside time during the week to spend with each child on their own.

Have a timetable/plan for each child's work 

Planning will help you to make sure that you have time to spend with each child on their areas of need. It will also help you to set reasonable limits for what you can achieve. It may be helpful to plan on a weekly basis rather than trying to do each activity every day.

Involve other children in therapy 

A lot of therapy/homework activities can be turned into games that the whole family can play. Eg. The therapist may be able to give you games of snap or Scattergories instead of doing work sheets on vocabulary. Physical exercises can often be turned into games as well. This will help you to include the whole family in what is happening in therapy and have fun at the same time!

Have a family timetable or regular routine for day to day activities 

Together with your children, plan a routine of things that you do every day, such as: get dressed,have breakfast, go to school, come home and have a snack, homework time, time for dinner etc.

Set up an agreement with your children to set down guidelines for how many of these activities they should do by themselves, and what the parents responsibilities should be in helping. Have a chart or reward system to monitor whether your children are doing the things agreed and have a list of consequences/ rewards for doing the activities eg. $5 if all of these activities are done each week, a sticker or a star for each activity etc. If all the children have helped to plan the routine (and they have incentive for working by themselves for short periods of time), they may have more understanding of the fact that you need to spend time with the child with Learning Difficulties.

Have breaks from work

Sometimes it can be helpful to have a break from extra work that your child with Learning Difficulties has been given and have family time instead. "Overworking" a child can have negative effects (such as losing the child's interest in learning, or giving the impression that learning new things is always hard and boring).

Ms Janelle Schembri | Diverse Learning Coordinator