He's nearly 5, and second youngest in his year 1-equivalent class here. He's reached all development milestones normally, and everything has been fine, though he's very touchy and quite insecure.
He finds school 'work' really hard. They're not formally learning reading yet, but they have worksheets, and he is becoming terribly worried about getting it wrong. It's things like drawing the right kind of person figure with the right number of balloons, or connecting the right picture on the left to the right picture on the right, and he can rarely manage alone. The teacher says he doesn't often ask for help and she's on occasion found him weeping over his worksheet because he doesn't know what he's supposed to do. I think that intellectually he understands these concepts but somehow he can't process the instruction from the teacher.
When I ask him to do something he can do it in the end but often needs quite a long time with no interruption to get a handle on what he's supposed to be doing. In the same way he sometimes struggles to find a word, and then gets furious and cries with frustration if his brothers jump in with it before him. I wonder if the pressure of having to do something in a group to a timetable is terribly stressful for him.
By way of background, home languages are English and Italian, and school is bilingual French/English (though more French really). Community language is French. He speaks all 3, but makes more errors in syntax and vocab than you might expect. I'm not sure whether the language issue is a problem as he speaks the right language spontaneously in the right situation and doesn't mix them up. I suspect the errors are symptomatic of some other slight delay in processing information.
He's the middle of 3 brothers.
I have "How to talk so children will listen....." and have found it's made a step change in getting him to tell me about school and what's happening there.
I'd be really grateful for any insight in how to help him. I'm worried he's going to start hating school when it gets more formal.
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Behaviour/development
Does DS2 have trouble processing information and instructions?
Romanarama · 21/10/2009 20:39
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