When Your Smart Child Struggles

When your smart child struggles, it’s natural to wonder why.  You may hear feedback at parent conferences like, “Your child is smart but he or she just needs to try harder or pay more attention, etc.”  But often students are trying but never seem to reach their potential.  They may be struggling in reading or math or having difficulty completing their homework or struggle with test taking.  

There is clearly something going on under the surface, but it can be difficult to tease it apart on your own to find out what supports your child needs. Here’s a breakdown of a few different levels of investigation & support to help you unlock the smart in your child and give them the tools to live up to their full potential!

Make sure to communicate with your teacher to see where specifically your child is struggling.  Does your teacher have any specific areas of concern like reading fluency, attention issues or math difficulties?  Your teacher may also have advice as to specific supports to help.

If there seems to be a gap between your child’s intelligence and their academic performance, it may be helpful to have your child assessed to see if there is a learning disability or specific diagnosis like ADHD or dyslexia.  Ideally, this assessment is administered by a licensed psychologist with credential to administer this type of assessment.  If you are looking for local providers we recommend, give us a call and we can share our recommendations with you.

If this assessment does result in a diagnosis, it is still important to understand the root cause.  For example, why does my child struggle with attention (ADHD) or reading (dyslexia).  One of the outcomes of a diagnosis can be access to an IEP or 504 plan which provides accommodations for your child.  These accommodations can be helpful, but it is important to understand that they are not addressing the root cause but providing supports to help your child perform better.  These can include accommodations like being given more time to complete tests or homework or sitting at the front of the class to help with attention or ADHD issues.  

Our focus at LearningRx is to identify and address the root cause of learning struggles.  For example, if a child is diagnosed with dyslexia or struggles with reading, the root cause is often weaknesses in cognitive skills like long-term memory and auditory processing.  If a child is diagnosed with ADHD, often one of the root causes can be slow processing which requires your child to work harder and therefore struggle to sustain attention.  

It can be frustrating to understand why your smart child is struggling, but these strategies can help.  We work with many students like this and we typically see a “scattered” cognitive profile.  For example, logic is often a very strong skill enabling your child to grasp concepts and have strong overall comprehension (they are smart), but if there are weaknesses in other areas like working memory, processing speed or attention, as academic expectations increase, smart students start to struggle.

If this describes you or your loved one, call LearningRx in Eagan. We can help you discern why your child is struggling and determine if LearningRx training can help.