Should I try to help my daughter at home, or leave all her education to the school ?

[mummyloveslucy]

Hi, my daughter has just turned 5 and has a mild global developmental delay apparently. Basically she's about 2 years behind developmentaly.
She is as good as gold at school and when the teachers tell me and show me what she's done in class, I can't believe how good it is.
At home we try to do writing practice. She loves writing, so I'm trying to help her at home as much as I can to try to boost her learning a bit. I really want her to catch up with her class mates as soon as possible.
She can write her name at school if they write it and then do broken lines underneath, she makes a very good attempt. When I try that at home she can't or won't even do an L. for the L, she does a strange m shape, or an e etc. I find it realy infuriating, that she won't even try.
How can I help her to progress if she keeps being this stubborn?
I find that after school, she dosn't want to do anything appart from play or watch T.V and we go out at the weekends. She loves drawing and writing, she writes like this: e e s s m n o etc. If I try to show her what to do or help her in any way, she'll just refuse.
Is it best to do nothing with her and just leave all her teaching to the school? I do really want to help her as I'm concerned that she's so far behind. There are only 9 in her class, so she gets a lot of attention pluss 20 minutes a day of one to one help with her word formation.
She is comming along well at school, but she has a very long way to go to catch up.
She is a happy, very loving little girl but she is very strong willed. (I think she gets that from me)
She is also wetting herself very frequently at home but not in school. She usually says "I can't help it". I spoke to her about it recently and asked why she does it at home and not at school, and she replied "because I like doing it at home".
I like to think I have the right balance of being firm but fair and kind to her, but it dosn't seem to be working.
I'd be really greatful for any advice.

I'd suggest talking to the teacher - tell her everything you've put down here. my personal instinct is that perhaps she's feeling a bit of stress and that there's no point in pushing stuff at home if she doesn;t want to do it. I bet she'll ctach up in her own time.

fwiw when dd was that sort of age she would get very annoyed/disinterested in doing school type stuff at home - maybe they use up all their full-on concentration in the school day.

in the longer term/on the broader question I think home needs to be supportive/complementary and that this can be in a wide variety of forms - doing stuff you're intersted in and enjoy that have a vaguely educative side-effect - museums, nature walks, whatever your thing is - but with the emphasis on enjoyment - imparting a love of learning.(no point in doing stuff like that if you don't enjoy it yourself imo iyswim)

talk to the teacher and try not to worry too much.

My 5yr old DD is just the same, doesn't want to do any reading or 'schoolwork' at home, wants to just play, my thoughts on the matter are they are still so little and if they want to relax and play at home after school then let them, my daughter's reading was initially behind the rest of the class but she's soon caught up, sometimes we practice our words at the tea table whilst eating as a 'game' then she doesn't see it as schoolwork. lots of luck

Your dilemma is so familiar! I think when you have a child with SEN you do want to bring them along by helping at home.
however FWIW we have found that when our DS was your DDs age he was very similar - totally unwilling/unable to do this formal school stuff at home.
So I think my advice (hard-won wisdom!) would be to back right off at this age. Don't push it at all. Push the school to help her as much as they can, advocate for her, make sure they are doing all they can. And then just let her come home and be herself and chill and play. School is a long, long day for a child of this age and it's all the more so for a child with SEN who is working doubly hard just to cope with the day.
I'd say have faith that as your child gets older they will become more interested in doing stuff at home; my ds is 8 this year and in the last couple of months he has become very keen to get us to help him practice school stuff. And because the impetus is coming from him, because he's ready, he is making faster progress than ever before.

I'd second the learn through play aprroach. join the dots is great for helping with writing. use pictures with no numbers at first then move on to simple numbers. Play games like dominos and snakes and ladders and later on pontoon.

If she wets herself often at home deny her attention for it as much as possible but praise her when she does use the toilet.

No advice about the reading, but has she had an eye examination to rule out any underlying refractive error or muscular problem (eye muscles)?

I imagine she is tired, like someone else said. I know that my dd at that age seemed full of learning when she started at school. It was almost as if there was no more space in her brain to learn something after a full day at school. Your dd's school sounds fabulous.

Thanks everyone for all the good advice. I'm sorry I didn't reply, but my computor crashed and wouldn't let me use the internet.
We had a break through this morning, I couldn't believe it. She came in to our room holding her white board and started writing on it on our bed. She wrote all by herself
"m o m y" and then showed me and said "Look, I wrote Mummy". I couldn't believe that she could even recognise the letter sounds let alone think of how to make them in to a word. I know it wasn't spelt properly, but what a start!
I think it's because she wanted to do it, and I wasn't pushing her.
I will use all the advice about learning through play, board games etc and loads of praise when she learns something or uses the toilet etc.
It will certainly make our family life a lot calmer and less stressful. I'll also speek to her teacher and explain the situation and ask for any fun activities that we'll enjoy doing together. Thanks again.

there are some great computer packages for young children too. We used reader rabbit software - just about anything from The Learning Company is good.

Thanks, I'll have a look at those.