DS, age 12, in y7.
He has always, always, been slow to get what's in his head out and onto paper. I think this is a combination of wanting to get it done absolutely right, and just this being the way he is.
I remember at his parents' evening in reception year, that they said he was perfectly capable of doing everything, it just took him a long time. For example, when he was in reception, and they did lots of play based stuff and working in small groups, his teacher would always call him in one of the earliest groups to do a task, because he would stay on with the later groups and continue to do it while the others from his group finished and went off to play. He never objected to this - he enjoyed having the time to get things done as he wanted to.
All through primary it was the same story, and we've worked really hard to help him speed up and to relax a bit about whether it's perfect or not. In y6 we really seemed to be progressing with this.
The other thing we've always been told about him by teachers (and that we see ourselves) is that he is bright and curious with a passionate interest in the world around him; he asks good questions; when he enjoys a subject he will go off and find out more about it independently etc etc. His primary teachers told me they were looking forward to seeing him get into science at secondary and get inspired and challenged by that.
Now into y7 and he's drowning. The 20 minute homeworks he gets take him an hour. He struggles because he can't refer back to his exercise book because he didn't get everything written down in the lesson so the information he needs isn't there. The highest he's ever got in a test is 50%.
I am well aware that there is an element of him having to pull his finger out and just.do.it. But I don't think that's all it is. Also it's hard to push him because his reaction to that tends to be to get upset and demotivated (e.g. if I point out he's spent 45 minutes on a '20 minute' homework and he has two more to do this evening so let's speed up) - then we use more time dealing with that.
School are aware but I don't think they get how worried I am about him - his HoY agrees that his test scores don't seem to be reflecting his ability but other than vague suggestions of extra time nothing else has been said. I can see that extra time will help but there are only so many hours in the day....
Anyway. Thank you for reading this and if you have a child who is similar I would love to hear your tips on how to help him.
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Secondary education
Please tell me about your dc who does everything slooooowly
FreezerBird · 22/03/2017 12:24
Yes, i have a daughter in year 7 who is chronically slow. In primary school she complained about being distracted a lot, and she was in a class that was famous for being disruptive, so that rang true. But the truth is, she does everything slowly, down to and including going to the loo (can be in there 15mins easily and has no idea what she's been doing
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I'm interested that you say your son gets agitated when you try and hurry him. DD2 is prone to total meltdowns when we try and get her moving. Totally counter productive and very, very frustrating for all of us.
I have no answers, but I'm watching in case someone else does. She is very stressed at school at the moment but can't articulate why. I'm wondering if there's a link.
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