The beginning of the school year can be exciting and also nerve racking for many parents. This is especially true for parents of children who have attention, learning, and social difficulties. As Facebook this week filled with many families sharing pictures of their children with their Minecraft, Lego, and Princess lunchboxes headed out the door for the first days of school many hearts filled with hope about the year ahead. As a specialist who works with children who often need a little more support at school, I know of many parents who said a few extra prayers and took a few extra deep breaths this month hoping for a smooth transition to the next grade. This month's newsletter seemed like a good place to share some of the strategies that I think can help make for a better transition for these amazing children who at times need a little extra resources and support.
Here are some tips that hopefully you find helpful:
1. Be involved and contact the teacher prior to an issue occurring. I typically find that the more engaged and involved that you can be the better. This looks different for each parent/teacher pairing, but is important. A lot of times I recommend that after the first couple of weeks of school have passed it can be important to contact the teacher if this hasn't happened already to introduce yourself and to talk more directly about your child. I think it can be very important to speak openly about your child's strengths, his or her struggles, and what has worked well in the past for him or her. Volunteering in the classroom when possible can often be a great way to get to build this type of relationship with the teacher and see how your child is doing. This can be helpful as well since often children with attention, learning, and social difficulties struggle with describing their world around them including the ins and outs of their day.
2. Be collaborative in nature. It is really important to take a team-based approach. This team-based approach will often happen automatically when an IEP or 504 accommodation plan is in place. Even when these supports are not occurring, partnering with the teacher and other supportive professionals such as the principal, vice principal, school psychologist, counselor, occupational therapist, speech pathologist, etc. can be incredibly helpful.
3. See the teacher as a resource and a helper. The more that you can come from a place of seeing the teacher in a positive light and as someone who is there to be a support to your child the better. Deep down, the teaching profession is filled with many people who have dedicated their lives to the education and development of our young people. While the desire can be that like a mama bear wanting to defend her baby cub if there is an issue, the more that you can give the teacher initially the benefit of the doubt the better and go into a meeting with a teacher to be a resource and a helper, often more positive results can be found.
4. If there are significant challenges for your child set up a strong foundation. If a child is exhibiting significant attention, learning, and/or social difficulties it would likely be time to formally have him or her assessed if this hasn't already occurred so that it would be possible to provide more systematic and consistent treatment to him or her. In addition, this process is often the start of getting a child an IEP or 504 accommodation plan through the school district if there is a documented attention, learning, or social difficulty, which can lead to more intervention and support if problem behaviors arise at school.
5. If partnering solely with the teacher isn't working, involve more people. Sometimes for whatever reason, partnering or collaborating with just the teacher isn't producing the results needed for a child. In these cases, I recommend making sure more people are involved in the collaboration process to make sure the child's needs are being appropriately assessed and met. Sometimes this can be adequately done through a collaboration with people inside the school such as the principal, special education resource specialist, school psychologist, etc. In other cases, however, it can be critical for a family to bring in resources from outside of the district to support them. These outside specialists might have a different take and way of advocating for the parent and the child inside a school forum. It is not uncommon for families to have advocates attend school meetings with them to argue for more services and interventions when a family feels that not enough has been done to address service needs for their child. As a psychologist, I have also attended many school meetings for children that I work with in the community to assist the team to better support children academically and socially in the school environment. I often attend meetings (not just in cases in which something has gone wrong), but to be one more person of our collaborative team from a strengths-based approach.
Ultimately, there are many things that go into a successful partnership with a new teacher and unfortunately it isn't a magic formula. Hopefully these tips will aid in the process. Deep down, it does take time to build relationships (with your child and with you). The more that you can be positive, collaborative, and helpful about sharing about your child, the more likely you will probably get good results.
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