Why Parents Make The Difference for Success by Third Grade
In this New York Times article titled “Yes, Your Time as a Parent Does Make a Difference“. the author correctly argues that parents make a difference.
In this article we are discussing parents role in helping your child to achieve success by third grade where your child is a smart child who learns differently. Over 60 percent of the students learn differently and an overwhelming percentage of the smart struggling students do, too. We call these students right-brain learners — because their strength is learning best when the student sees and experiences information, and their strength is in the right-brain.
We will also assume that if your child learns differently, your child has either an attention and/or eye-teaming issue — which is true for over 98% of the students we see.
For Success by Third Grade, we change the wording from Parents Make a Difference to Parents Make The Difference for 5 key reasons:
1- Most systems in schools are slow to diagnose students with learning problems. In the last year that Florida reported the data, half the students diagnosed with a disability were not diagnosed until 3rd grade. Parents can initiate a process to have your child evaluated – more on this is available at our page The RTI Trap, that discusses how far too many students are caught in the Response to Intervention or RTI Process that is designed to help students without special education services, but too often delays or denies evaluations.
2- Most school-based programs are logical, sequential and auditory and do not serve the right-brain learner. These right-brain learners often have problems with reading comprehension and standardized tests, in large part because they learn differently and have an attention, eye-teaming or related issue.
3- Eye-teaming issues, where a child skips words and lines when reading, are not often caught my school based testing.
4- Psychological testing, done by either a school-based psychologist or an outside psychologist, often misses the learning difference and eye-teaming issues
5- To achieve Success by Third Grade for your child, parents make the difference by
– Identifying if your child has a problem early on. Research shows that if your child has a word identification problem in 1st grade there is almost a 90% chance that your child will be a poor reader in 4th grade. As a parent, you want to proactively identify how your child learns best and your child’s challenges ASAP.
– Understanding if your child learns differently and whether your child has an attention, eye-teaming and/or related issue
– Finding out what your child’s present level of reading comprehension is. Too often reading tests in the early grades measure reading fluency — how well your child reads out loud and does not measure reading comprehension. Reading fluency is quite important, but the key academic skill your child needs to succeed in school, on standardized tests and in life is reading comprehension.
– Finding the right program to get your child back to grade level- recognizing that right-brain programs often work best for right-brain learners
When a student is identified in 1st or 2nd grade, there is a far greater chance to get back to grade level. Even if the learning difference is identified in 3rd grade, there are some programs that can help your child to achieve success in months not years.
If you would like more information, visit our Success by 3rd Grade page where you will get at no cost:
– A downloadable copy of our book “Success by 3rd Grade”.
– Our Success Assessment that screens for a learning difference, attention, eye-teaming and related issue
– A Success by Third Grade Strategy session
We encourage you to visit Success by Third Grade and to call 561-361-7495 so you can be a Make the Difference Parent.
