Kyra has been evaluating children for thirty years. Much has changed, for better and for worse. One of the most concerning elements of today’s evaluation methods is the lack of grit in today’s diagnostics. Parents share that their children lack motivation, stop when it gets hard, and don’t dig in.
Kyra listens to parents, observes when the same problem is expressed multiple times with multiple parents and investigates where she sees patterns. Let’s talk about the current accommodations for children with dyslexia and ADHD and whether they are hurting or helping.
The Importance of Failure
Failure is feedback. If we don’t allow our kids to fail, we impede their ability to self-reflect. As a mom, watching your child fail is emotional and stressful. It’s heartbreaking on all levels. However, watching your children turn their failures into triumphs is one of the greatest joys a parent can experience.
Let’s face it, most of our decisions are driven by emotions, even though we want to think that we approach decision-making through logic. Emotions are powerful and have become even more potent for our kids. Two competing thought processes drive decisions: logic and emotions. Although the two can occasionally be intertwined, deciphering whether the choices you make come from logic or feelings can be essential to ensuring you make the best long-term decisions.
Modifications and Accommodations for Learning Challenges
Are modifications and accommodations helping or hurting children with learning challenges? This topic brings debates from both sides, yet we don’t talk about it enough. It deserves a thorough discussion.
If you look at some of the great people who have overcome learning challenges and turned them into successes (Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, Henry Winkler, to name a few), they all talk about their failures. However, you don’t hear them talk about their modifications and accommodations. Why is that? Because they did not have any when they were growing up. This does not mean that Kyra is against modifications and accommodations. There is absolutely a time and a place for them. However, we must monitor what we modify–something we don’t always see happening. It’s often that false hope is given to parents and children who believe the legal document will help them overcome their learning struggles. So far, Kyra has yet to see a child enter the system for a short time, catch up, and no longer need the I.E.P. because of the assistance the school provided them. I am sure there are stories where it happened, but not as many as stories of kids who never met their optimal learning potential—enabling leads to disable, which seems to be the train we have been watching. It’s concerning.
The Downside of Learning Accommodations
Logic is the ability to make decisions using sound and rational thought processes, starting with the truth. Kyra once sat in an anI.E.P. meeting where a mother could not understand why the school staff was seeking further assistance for her son, who was two years behind grade level in reading. She said, “He makes all A’s on his report card.” Kyra spoke up and said, those are modified A’s. All heads turned. The mom asked for clarity, so Kyra explained that her son was reading two years below grade level. Some kids in the classroom were reading at or above grade level and received all A’s on their report cards. This was mind-blowing to her, and in that meeting, she learned the truth about her son’s learning and decided based on the facts, not emotions. She enrolled him in an outside reading intervention, and he started to improve. Kyra often wonders what would have happened if she had not spoken up in that meeting.
Support For Your Child’s Learning Challenges
Motivation is the force that causes us to act on our desires or fears. It comes from internal or external stimuli and is an outward driving force that makes people feel compelled to do something. If we automatically get an A or never get a bad grade, we lose the desire and the fear of consequences. Parenting comes with emotional highs and lows. If we want to raise our children to be independent thinkers, we must be willing to let them fail and help them learn from their falls.
As we see a decline in independent thinking, motivation, and curiosity, we would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Please feel free to comment or share a message with Kyra directly.
If your child is struggling and you’re looking for creative and personalized solutions, schedule a complimentary 10-minute phone evaluation with Kyra today.
