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 A friend of mine has passed on an email they received from a  friend.  I will do my best to try and offer good honest advice.

Q: I am homeschooling my kids along with my 2 1/2 yr old tagalong. My question to you all is do you have any information you can share on a kids that is not learning. I am asking for a friend of mine, I had her little girl in our preschool co-op last year and noticed that she was often confused about colors, numbers, time placement, etc. Her mom told me that she is really struggling this year to even differentiate between numbers and letters. I advised having her tested for a learning difficulty and bringing her home to give her another year to mature. Danny do you have any advice regaring why the child is not learning?

A: First, how old is she? You state she was in your preschool class last year, so is she still in Preschool or Kindergarten? Also, is she homeschooling or in public school? If she is in public school, I would definitely bring her home to get a little more mature and work with her more 1-on-1.

We struggled through the last 3 years trying to learn colors, numbers, letters, sounds, counting to 20 etc. with my twins. They were still mixing up their numbers with letters until a couple of weeks ago. I focused the entire week on numbers and decided not to work on letters again until we had the numbers down. We worked the entire week on 1-20 and they were still getting confused on 14-20 at the end of the week, but on Friday I decided to work on the 100’s chart anyone hoping they would see the connection. It worked!! By the end of the day they could completely fill in the 100’s chart by thinking it through and not looking at the filled in chart!! Amazingly, the numbers 14-20 started making sense to them. Now, this week we are focusing heavily on letters, sounds and blends. They fill in missing numbers on the number chart but we focus heavily on the reading. They have not mixed up 1 number or letter!! They have really taken off, I mean they learned to count to
100 in a day. The weeks prior they kept messing up 14-20 and suddenly it all clicked when I introduced the 100’s chart. My point is, most kids do catch up when it is the right time.

I was truly stressed and worried about them as well, trying to decide whether or not to test them. A friend of mine is a Psychologist with the schools and she recommended waiting until the end of 1st grade/beginning of 2nd to test, because of the wide range of learning abilities. Also, that early of testing still gives plenty of time to fix anything that is wrong.

I am so glad that I didn’t have them tested earlier. It does put a stigma on them and naturally allows parents to “expect less” because of the situation. A lot of things can be overcome if we encourage our kids and give them the extra help and time needed to mature. Once there is a diagnosis, it somehow dilutes the expectation, making less seem ok, because of the circumstances. It should be the opposite as so much more can be accomplished if the expectation is still there.

I would have the child tested going in to 2nd grade if there hasn’t been substantial improvement. However, in the meantime, the parent’s could easily relax and let nature take its course while providing extra help. In the meantime, the mother can read a wonderful book titled, Better Late Than Early : A New Approach to Your Child’s Education This book could be very encouraging for her!!