“Why is my child struggling with his school work, homework, academics? Why can’t my child read simple sentences? Is my child going to scale through and get into a good secondary school?”

These are questions that parents have asked over and over again, and they still continue to ask. Most of the time the school is blamed for the problems the young one may be facing., and I can understand where parents are coming from. But before we go down that route and pour all the responsibility on the schools I want to share with you from my personal experience some basic reasons that may account for the problem a child may be facing and let’s see what solutions we can also offer for them.

1. Visual Problems: If a child cannot see clearly he may not be able to distinguish the differences in the letter shapes on a page or the blackboard. This means he will not be able to read! Simple solution, take him to an optician and get an eye test done. If the optician says the child is too young and needs to be able to read to have the test done. Do a simple home test yourself to ascertain your child’s  visual capabilities. This test can be done with simple objects of differing sizes, for example (pin, ball, pen), start from a far distance where your child cannot figure out what the objects are and move forward and notice the distances when he can see and identify the ball, pen, and pin. If he can’t identify the ball until it is very near him and can barely see the pin then you know that the stumbling block is a visual impairment.
2. Hearing Problems: A child’s hearing skills continue to grow and develop during childhood, but they must be able to hear to learn a language if a child cannot hear you clearly take him to the doctor. It could be fluid or wax that is blocking the sounds and thereby creates an impediment to actually hearing what is said. Once this has been removed by the doctor, your child would be able to hear and learn faster than before.
3. Time Problem: “What is that?” you may rightly ask. This is my main problem with our system that wants children to learn everything so fast. The schools are basic factories where children are churned in and out, feed with different lessons all day and they are all expected to understand, right there and then. And if they don’t they get left behind. Parent’s then have to spend more money employing a home tutor to rectify the problem. The child feels frustrated, tired and learns to hate school because it’s difficult. The tutor wants to achieve great results so nine times out of ten, the child really getting it is not a focus. For you to work on the child getting it you must always go back to the beginning and check out each step and the process. You will eventually find the point where the stumbling block has occurred, solve that first and move on, you may find that the solution has been solved and the child is no longer someone who struggles but an achiever!

Children are not supposed to struggle in the school environment as their main work is to learn! Right, to learn. Learning is part of life, without it, a baby cannot develop and become a fully functioning adult in the society. Our children are actually great learners if only we would let them learn. We as parents and teachers are guides, our calling is to enable them to be the best versions of themselves. We can only do this if we ensure that they have everything at their disposal to achieve this, whether its the doctor for eardrops, optician for glasses, or just more time to understand.

So next time we notice our children not doing so well in class, teachers and parents alike, let us check that the basic tools of seeing, hearing and especially understanding is addressed first. Children will do very well when they know that we truly have their backs. They were born to learn let us help them achieve this goal in a great and effective way.