How to handle DD6 possible learning difficulties and DH attitude towards the whole thing ? Who’s right and who’s wrong ?

[jahb]

The school have mentioned my just turned 6 year 1 DD may have some attention issues that are creating a barrier to her learning. She’s at a private school.

anyhow, they want to explore further by having her observed by the senco. All fine.

she’s doing OK in phonics and is expected there. Her maths score is 96 and her English score is also 96.

the teachers don’t want her to fall properly behind and thinks she just can’t focus and it’s creating a barrier for her learning.

my DH thinks everyone just wants to label every e and she is only 6 and might improve when she matures in a few months.

we don’t have the outcome or the senco observation yet, so I guess we will see then.

can anyone share experiences here with their child going through something similar and the other parent just thinking the concerns aren’t valid etc ? I’m sure my DD will be fine no matter what the outcome and I definitely support her not falling behind.

I am looking at tutoring for her to help her as well, in the meantime.

thanks for reading.

I’m a primary school teacher and I’m afraid those score don’t mean much to me in the context of year 1. 96 out of what?? What is the average score?? Is this considered low by the school??
As it is private is it also quite selective and academic? Are their expectations higher than your average? Be aware any extra help or intervention might end up costing you more money.
I partially agree with your DH. I would agree to any help the school are willing to give but she is also young and will change very quickly. Have you seen things at home that make you question her focus or ability to learn new things??

That’s the PIRA and PUMA standardised scores ? I thought every school uses those and it’s a national thing ?

Sencos arent really in charge of giving out lables so your partner can relax.

They will observe a child in class give the teacher some ideas of things to try to support attention and then come back a bit later on to see if they helped.

She’s fidgety when doing homework etc. but it’s not extreme. But then I don’t know other six year olds.

I am hoping it’s just that she needs to grow out of it too of course. But I don’t want her to fall behind and lose confidence. She loves learning.

The school isn’t a really academic one. It’s more of an all round school.

Your husbands attitude sounds good to me.

Let senco do their thing and listen to what they have to say, no other action necessary.

Tutoring for a 6 yo is imo totally unnecessary. Let her be a kid.

Her biggest thing is writing and applying her phonics sounds, especially set 2 and 3 to her writing.

But what if she falls hugely behind ? She’s already not meeting standards they’d expect. Will she be unhappy when she can’t keep up at all ? She needs a lot of one on one help already according to her teacher.

Shes 6. She's in a private school who are watching carefully. Kids learn at different speeds. Don't worry about something that hasnt happened yet. Read to her lots, let her have fun, love her as she is.
Worrying about a 6 year old being behind before senco have even taken a look is unreasonable imo.

The teachers are saying she’s not learning as they’d expect. It’s not just me saying that.

Am I the only one who thinks it’s quite unsettling that the OP’s instinct is to hire a tutor?

I wonder what the world is coming to.

You don’t appear illiterate or entirely stupid OP. What you need is 20 mins writing and reading practice in the morning say three times a week and where you or your dp sit with your daughter and help her concentrate and learn. Then in the evening you read with her every single day.

If your school doesn’t set much homework then ask the teacher to share what they are learning next week in class so you can shadow at home.

There are ample resources online. Does your school use Spelling Shed and TT rockstars and the like? And you can get her on DuoLingo for maths and French/Spanish. A lot of love the gamified approaches in my experience and will happily do ten mins of each app while dinner is cooking.

Teach her to play chess and Monopoly - great for building focus.

In short - parent her, stop outsourcing it to paid third parties and work on the problem at home. You’ll see rapid results - if you don’t then go chat to the Senco.

Why so much pressure from the school? She's 6 years old. I'm with h on this one, giving it a few months and seeing what happens.
I should imagine with a private school there is more pressure 'to get things right' no matter how trival it might be or even realistic.
I knew someone who swore blind her kid was reading quality newspapers at the age of 6, yet when I baby sat the d she struggled with basic kids books.
Fast forward she went on to uni and now has a sucessful career in law.

How old are her 5 siblings? And how are they doing academically? Any signs of ADHD in the rest of the family (including parents)?
this is all very early to be worrying about academics. In Northern Europe some kids haven’t even started school yet.

are academics important to you? Some people are content to see their kids apply themselves, be happy and be creative.

It is fairly common for at least one parent to refuse to accept any kind of Sen or disability.

(obviously I am not in a position to know whether your child does or does not have one).

my child has an autoimmune disease and ASD and adhd.

her father who is now my ExH somewhat reluctantly believes in the auto immune disease (I suspect only because blood tests are required every six months and he therefore feels it is scientific) but thinks she is making up the autism and adhd.

she’s been diagnosed now for six years and this followed her dropping out of school due to anxiety and self harming and attempting suicide. Apparently this is just bad behaviour.

it is very, very common for people to refuse to accept that their child has any kind of Sen and totally refuse any help offered.

I used to be a secondary teacher and usually year 10 or 11 was when these parents started panicking as they realised that their “refusal to accept a label” had resulted in a child who was going to fail all their GCSEs.

Nope.

Anecdotally I know of a few kids who didn't get diagnosed / didn't get interventions very early and the harsh reality is they are unlikely to catch all of that delay up.

Equally the school might have unrealistic expectations it is impossible to know.

I agree with @MaggieMar - sit with her and do some reading / puzzle books appropriate for her age etc. You'll soon see if she gets distracted / doesn't pay attention / cannot seem to take anything in.

96 is above average. 94+ is the average standardised score for PIRA and PUMA.

Wait and listen to what the SENCO has to say.

In the meantime, get her to read her book everyday and talk about the stories that you read to her.

Maths - practice number bonds to 5, then 10 and 20.

Phonics play has some good games.
Teach your monster to read is a good app.
Lots of maths games on Top marks.

In general there are two ways of thinking about this.

one is let kids be kids, they all catch up anyway, etc.

the other is tiger mum force them to do lots of work outside school and make them learn three instruments.

in reality there is a lot in the middle.

if she is falling behind then doing some extra stuff outside school won’t hurt. There’s lots of stuff you can do as a parent to support phonics and reading - getting her to read every day, looking at doing a bit of practice each day on something like wordshark to keep learning the sounds.

My advice would be if the school is offering extra support then say yes. Say yes to everything really, it's no reflection on your child that they benefit from extra support. Even if there's nothing underlying, it's probably going to be a benefit to have the extra support while it lasts!

We were originally spoken to in Year 1 about an ASD diagnosis but it was on the basis "her interests are unusual" (they might be unusual at a small village primary but actually, amongst our social group they aren't). Anyway, we didn't pursue a diagnosis until Year 3 when it was mentioned again but the reasons were better explained and we could see she was struggling socially.

She does have ASD. We weren't sure until we had the diagnosis because we didn't think she was unusual at all. It's only SINCE the diagnosis that we realised that not only are we also likely ND but we work in professions stuffed full of bright, perfectionist, high achieving neurotics. So chances are that we, and our social circle, and their kids, all have elements of ND. So what's normal to us, and what we surround ourselves with, also ND.

None of us were diagnosed as kids but lots of people putting measures in place and / or getting late diagnosis.

Since diagnosis she's been much more open and it's quite clear she is ASD. No doubt 30 years ago she, like us, would have not been diagnosed

There's no harm in seeking a diagnosis. We have one which has been shared with school and with our DC but not beyond that. It's helped her emotionally realise why she might feel the way she does. It's meant we can use for reasonable adjustments in school. But there's no label beyond that. If she wants to share in due course, she can.

With regard to the 96 in English and Maths, my children's junior school did assessments every term. If a child scored 100 they were performing exactly as they should. If they score 100 in every test over time they are making good progress. A child scoring in the high 90s would be nearly meeting expected standards but not quite. A score of well over 100 meant the child was scoring above what was expected, The more over or under 100 a child scored the more behind or ahead of what was expected they were. This might be the type of tests OP's DD has been doing.

Her scores are within the average range for those tests so I’m not sure why the school is flagging as a big concern. I’d let the senco observe anyway as it might be helpful.

What was her interest? Hard isn’t it because we all generally surround ourselves with people similar to us!

My dad was a teacher and he always said the worst parents were the ones who wouldn't accept the fact that their child was average. They'd put so much pressure on the children to do better.

This is anecdotal but is quite common as far as I know, my daughter was quite far behind in Reception - year 2, by the time year 2 ended the school had put her on the SEN register. She basically couldn't read, writing and spelling were practically non existent. I was beside myself with worry, thinking that she'd never be able to get GCSEs or live a normal life, I remember it keeping me up at night thinking about it.

Anyway, she rapidly caught up between years 4 and 6, she's now in year 11 and on track to pass all of her GCSEs, she's predicted to get 6s in English (equivalent of a B) which is just absolutely amazing to me considering how far behind she was.

Basically what I'm saying is that at 6 I wouldn't worry at all, their ability can shoot up all of a sudden. I believe that some children just aren't ready for academic learning at that age.