I am getting concerned about my daughter

[RyanLondon]

I have a daughter who is 10 years old, and she is in Primary School, year 5. She is an only child. When she was in Years 1 and 2 and 3, she always seemed at the top of her class. However, over the last year or two, we are beginning to get concerned about her ability or if she has any other issues.

I write this post very reluctantly because I am not big on labelling kids and stuff and I personally feel kids now study far more than we ever did. My wife is what I would call a pushy parent, academics is everything to her and she was very academic. Although I feel its important, its not everything to me, and even if she had average grades and was happy and a good person, I would be more than happy.

The thing that concerns me a lot is if she learns something today, in 2 days she will not remember how to do it, and will almost certainly fail most of the questions. We spend about £300 a month on private tutoring, plus we spend time going through stuff with her if she needs help and practice sessions. I feel she gets far more support than the average kid, so you would assume she would be able to learn and remember. By the way, she is in a normal school.

The thing is with all this support, she is still forgetting stuff she has learnt. Apart from that if you talk to her she is a smart kid. In some ways very smart. She is well balanced and likes the usual stuff girls her age like. She has a bit of temper tantrums, but I had the same, it just fades as you get older. But her ability to keep information in seems extreme to me. Its stuff that she has learnt many times, and then forgets in a day or two.

I have a bad feeling she has inherited some of the negative elements from me. Although I went to university, I was terrible at studies up until 16. I know if I was born in this generation, there would be a high chance I would be labelled possibly even medicated. But because I had other creative abilities, I managed to do better than my peers who were academic.

She also doesn't have many friends in school, even though if you look at her you wouldn't think it. Her personality is different from a lot of the other girls, so she doesn't do well in groups. She does better one to one. I was the similar, but I had a lot of friends.

But I don't want to label her because I was in many ways like her. She could be totally different and maybe I am unconsciously assuming she has my traits.

So I don't know what to do about her. She hates studying. And she can't absorb or remember much. I am wondering if I should get her seen by a specialist. The bottom line is, she is the most important thing in my life, so I want to feel that I have done my best by her!

Any thoughts advice or suggestions welcome. Are there organisations or charities I could talk to? Or parents groups?

Could she just be totally turned off education by how much "extra" work and tutoring she is getting?

In year 5 it seems a lot to be having so much extra outside school. Perhaps she needs to be allowed to have more time to herself?

What do her teachers say? Is the work she is doing outside school advanced or is it year 5 level?

When you say "can't remember" do you mean something like you show her how to add fractions on Monday, she gets it, buy when you show her fractions again on Wednesday she is utterly clueless. something like that could indicate dyscalculia.

If you mean a bunch of facts, she may just not be interested. I agree with PP that this is a lot of extra school work - she may just have switched off from education.

As I'm sure you're aware, it's fairly common for DC who are ahead in infants (particularly girls, those who are old in year, or those who come from middle class families) to lose this advantage as others catch up further up the school.

First of all I would say your wife needs to face that your daughter is not her and treating her as the person she is.

Why the tutoring? Is it to get into some super-selective senior school? If so, do you really think that would be the right school for her? If not, why are you doing it?

Have you been swept away by the London perfect-child arms race? You know there are whole swathes of the country where 10 year old girls just play out, do a bit of homework, maybe go to ballet once a week- and nobody worries about whether they remember how to add fractions from one day to the next? Would your daughter actually be happier with a normal life like that?

Let her be herself. Stop with all the pressure and hot housing.

As you are able to afford tutoring it may be worth paying for a private ed psych assessment. They can screen for specific learning difficulties such as working memory & processing speed. It cost us about £500.

Is her school concerned.

Is it that she genuinely doesn't remember, or is it that she is completely fed up of school plus extra tuition and so can't bear to talk about it?

Have you spoken to her about it?

Extra tuition on top of school is a lot of pressure for some children. Maybe she needs time to relax, to play and to switch off?

It’s odd but you don’t once tell us what her school actually say.

What’s the feedback from teacher consultations / reports / the tutor

She may just have too much information thrown at her all at once by the sounds of it she is constantly studying. Give her a break from all the pressure and just let her be a kid.

When she was in Years 1 and 2 and 3, she always seemed at the top of her class

Were you similarly (possibly over the top) supportive of her academic work then? As a child who spends a lot more of their time practicing the basic skills learnt in KS1 will likely be ahead of those who practiced less. Once they move on from mostly skill practice, the extra practice won't make the same differences.

I think your avoidance of labelling is wrong - whilst I can understand the motivation, if there are reasons for her performance, understanding them is the way to solve.

And certainly extra tutoring seems foolish without identifying what might be useful.

Wow. That is an excessive amount of tutoring.
Does she ever get to play with other dc? To go to climb trees, or roll down a grassy hill ? Does she go to Brownies or dance or football or drama ? Perhaps she is presenting as 'different' from her peers because her experience of life is different from her peers?

What is said at Parents' Evenings ?
How do school see her ?

Hi Guys,

I wasn't expecting this many responses, so I will do my best to reply hopefully covering most people.

She gets 3 hours of tutoring per week. The sad reality as far as I can see is almost 50% of her classmates get similar either through Kumon or similar systems. Because she wasn't being responsive in groups like Kumon, I felt best to give her one to one support, hence why we pay for a tutor to come to our house and spend a bit of time with her.

Do I feel its excessive? Absolutely. Although I am not a teacher, I own a business which deals with secondary school education, and based on what I have observed, its slowly becoming a norm is some sections of society.

However, I would like her to not fall behind, so I go along with my wife on these things. Having said that, she probably gets far more playtime and free time then all her mates, and I am not exaggerating. Its mainly because I have had to fight for it.

@RedSkyArNight, to answer your question, I will teach her a very basic fraction on Monday, and I double and trip check she has understood, by Wednesday or Friday, she is almost always getting the questions wrong, and this has happened with the exact same questions she did on Monday. So I would give her the same questions on Friday, and even though she got it right on Monday, she is getting 80% wrong by Friday. Shocking! I feel guilty pushing her as I can't logically understand why this is happening. Up until recently I assumed she is either slow academically like me, or she is not putting any effort in. But deep down in my gut instinct it wasn't making any rational sense!

@Lowdoor We are not even aiming for Greammer school or private schools even if we could afford it, because it would be too much for her, so we abandoned that ages ago. So its not for that. Just to keep up at the top 20 of her class.

@AlexanderHamilton I will consider that. Her school haven't shown any concern, but her school is sub-standard, and I am not just saying that for the sake of it.

@Highhorse, nothing majorly concerning interns of her school, but they don't pay much attention on a lot of areas. I know she has had bullying issues etc in the past, which we discussed and helped her through. But she is average as far as I know from the school.

I would say outside school on weekends, lets say there is a 12 hours day, so on an average day she would spend an 1.5 hours doing work. Weekdays, no more than 30 minutes. All other time is leisure and entertainment. And she gets proper one to one quality time with us. I am close to my daughter, very close, as I mainly work from home, and I have flexible working, we go for a lot walks parks etc even though we live in London. And she has been travelling quite a lot up until recently.

I think some of you are misunderstanding. But that doesn't matter. All I want to know is forget the grades and tutoring, even without that, she shouldn't forget so quickly. I don't care about good schools or universities. If I had my way, I wouldn't have gone Uni. I don't think I gained anything. I used to read and read well before uni even though I wasn't academic.

So I don't need to be sold about pressures of studies and pushy parents. I get that all. I am trying to avoid that, but I have to strike a balance between my view on the world and giving her a good start in life. Otherwise she may at some point say, why didn't you push me. She already once said, "I wish I had gone to Grammar school", as all her cousins talk about it, and she feels she missed out, and she gets angry about it. What she doesn't realise is it would have been too much for her, so I took a decision not to.

I have a lose-lose situation and I just want to help her.

It is quite unusual for a child who is taught something well enough to fully understand it on monday, review on wednesday, and then still get it all wrong on friday. 3 hours 1on1 tutoring, and 5 1/2 hours more work than most in a week is a lot of probably not-worthwhile investment if the level remains low (If you kept up with that for another 7 years, you could have instead invested it and handed her a signficantly better start than a marginal grade improvement.

So rather than just more tutoring, and more time teaching stuff that doesn't work, find out what it is that she struggles with, so you can then find the strategies that address that. So the Ed Psych report that AlexanderHamilton mentioned is the way to go.

On not pushing her, and her turning against you - you should start getting her fully on board the decisions of her life as early as possible, what does she want, what does she think her level is.

I think you need to see an educational psychologist, my instinct upon reading your post is that there is something more going on here. It’s not necessarily about labelling your daughter it’s about understanding how best to support her.
Now is the time to do it, senior school is tough for most children and even harder for those struggling socially anyway.

Hi,

I will take your advice and investigate whats going on. I have always asked her or encouraged her to tell me what she wants to do. However, the truth is most people in their twenties don't know what they want, I didn't know in my twenties, so how can I expect her to know?

Having said that, I have said to I will help her achieve whatever she wants, whether she wants academics, get into music, cartooning, acting, animation, art. If I could do it again, I would probably have gone the art root. So I have encouraged her to get into anything she wants. I even encouraged to get into music editing and animation. As I have bits of knowledge on it, I know I can at least get her started.

But I think before all of this, we need to find out whats going on, so I think I'll start on that. Thank you.

This may sound odd but is it only with you or is it with the tutor too? She may really enjoy just having time with you and not really be absorbing what you’re saying. My DS adored his swimming teacher and didn’t really progress at all...I think he just enjoyed the company...when they left there was a new teacher...learned fast!

It’s certainly not adding up. I think that’s a lot of tutoring and it seems not to be working. Is it just maths or other subjects. I’m so glad that it’s not the norm where we live

I’d cut down the tutoring hours. Ds (he’s 14 now) has a tutor for 1 hour a week as he massively underachieving in English. Any more is too much & he shuts off. He was at a private selective school but couldn’t cope with the pressure.

I’m not saying an ed psych report is a magical cure all but it will give you a starting point.

This might sound like an odd question, but what is she good at? What things can she do that she enjoys? Like reading, crafting, computer games, etc. Are there things that she is competent in which would suggest an issue with the subject matter in question, or her level of interest in it, rather than a memory or understanding problem. and if there are things that she is good at can you use those skills to help her with the things she's struggling with?

I’m a primary school teacher. I’d say you need to ask the school SENCO to refer her to the Education Psychologist who will assess her for poor working memory, amongst other things.

A young relative had trouble reading and it appeared that she couldn’t remember words that she had been told on the previous page. Sometimes she could read and then the next day she couldn’t, though she was doing well in learning French. It turns out she couldn’t distinguish words on coloured pages and that’s why she could read French words as they were on white paper and also why some days she could read if the print was on white paper. It took a while to figure it out, she is now ten and said recently she still can’t read on coloured pages. It was a huge change for a child who struggled at school to one who is doing very well and loves to read.

Your DD sounds exactly like my own DD and ds

Both dyslexic. DD, ADD and suspect ds ADHD.

I realised early on neither would be rocking the world of academia.

Dance, drama, singing, martial arts, swimming, gymnastics.. You name it we did it.
DD has taken a couple of the ECAs and has now created a business out of them.
With ds he didn't know what he wanted to do so we made a huge list
then knocked off things he didn't fancy. He did a load of the online careers tests to see whether he would like to work indoors or outdoors. As a tradesman or in an office environment, in sport or in music.
Gradually we have whittled it down to just a few options.
One of which he has decided to qualify in whilst at evenings and weekends pursuing other options and at the end he will choose. Or do both and see which is the more enjoyable option.

It could always be that your DD is over loaded. Just because others do more tutoring doesn't mean you have to

I know some parents might not agree with this, but have you tried to offer an incentive or reward? Even if its just to test whether she has a genuine learning challenge or if she is just not interested or trying to retain the information.

When I was younger, I would say I was above average. However, I was not always interested in school. Especially, because my dad would make me do extra work out of school like reading groups, math tutor. It was like I almost wanted to just switch off. I could read a book out loud and if you asked me a question about it, I would have no idea. I could basically switch my brain off, while reading and seeming like I was participating. I can still do this now, for example when reading my kids their bedtime stories lol. Sometimes, I will read to them, while thinking to myself what I need to get done or making plans for the next day.

Anyway, there were times during school I would get incentive to try my best. For example, I begged my parents for a dog for two years. They did not want a dog. But my dad decided that if I go all A's then I could get a dog that quarter (Im american and we got grades in quareters). This was at the age 11/12. Suddenly, I had a drive to do the best I could do to get a dog. My dad was completely shocked when I came home with the report card showing all A's and of course, he had to get me a dog :) The teachers could not understand why one test I would get an F and the next an A+. It would simply be because one test I would study and pay attention in class and then for whatever reason, the next I would not pay attention at all.

When I was older in high school (from ages 14-18), my first year I was practically failing math. But my third year, I suddenly decided I would pay attention and study hard. My previous math teacher told me he went to check on how I was doing, as he knew I really struggled in his class and he knew the teacher I had was a very difficult one. He was surprised to find out that I was top of the class. Not only was I the top, but I practically had a perfect score in the class. He approached me to ask if it was his teaching because he could not understand why I struggled in his class. I explained, that I simply started to make an effort, pay attention in class and actually study for tests.

I know, this is not the case with everyone and some children have learning challenges. But sometimes, it can really just be a motivation problem. I wish I had been more motivated as a child. For some reason I was not.

Why is she saying “I wish I’d gone to grammar school” when she’s still in year 5? Or am I completely misunderstanding-in which case I apologize.

I would take a break from it all, seriously. I would give you and your daughter a break. Take some of the pressure off (I don't mean that nastily, I know all you do is because you love her). And, I wouldn't worry too much. Speaking for myself, I was very clever in primary school, but when I reached High School for the first two years I dropped right off..I mean completely..went from having consistently very high marks (coming runner up as school dux) to very low marks, really low. But in the subsequent years I picked up again and achieved the highest female results in my O grades and Highers (showing my age there) in my High School. What happened? I've no idea, but the point is it wasn't the end of me, my abilities came through in the end. And they will for your child too, so take some of the pressure off you both (because she will be picking up on your worry and concern) and just let her be a child, have a break, both of you, and give it some time.

I too am a primary school teacher, and fully endorse making an appointment with the school SENCO. Working memory issues sound part of your daughter’s problem. Ed psych assessments take some time to arrange - the earlier the better for you. If you decide to do this independently, keep the school in the loop so that everyone can work together for the benefit of your daughter.
(As a mum I would say keep the pressure off and keep confidence high. Praise whenever possible. Don’t mention any difficulties for 2 weeks, however much you want to. See if that has any effect.)