Learning differently part 1

This time last year I was sitting down for a parent's evening meeting with our son's teacher and was expecting a similar chat about how well behaved and how well mannered he was  but how there was still concern over the lack of progress he was making despite the fact that he was receiving additional help through a teaching assistant  and received other help through services and activities such as fun fit and visits from the speech and language therapists.

It had been obvious when he first started school at 4 that there were concerns over his learning mainly through the clarity of his speech and his fine and gross motor movements ( up until this point he has difficulty with pencil control and letter formation as well as difficulty with co-ordination) compared to others in his class. Although as a mother who could understand him I could see that although he found it difficult for others who didn't know him well to be understood his understanding of the world around him was good. That first year that he started school at the age of 4 his teacher took it upon herself to ask someone to do an IQ test on our son and later informed me that his score was very low and it that it wouldn't improve. We later on that week moved him to a different school.

We visited the other local schools and spoke to the headteachers about our sons difficulties and placed him into a school where the headmaster agreed that at such a young age it wasn't appropriate in labelling a child until he had a chance to develop. 

At the ages of 6 and 7 it came apparent that he also had difficulties retaining information such as days of the weeks in the correct order and following more than 3 instructions at a time also proved to be problematic for him as well as being able to learn through phonics. He had stayed on the same reading stage since starting school despite numerous hours spent with him trying to bring him forward.

So last year when he was 8 with a new teacher I had resigned myself to hearing the same thing but instead she wanted to come up with an action plan to get to the bottom of his problems.