It’s almost time to go back to school!

If you’re like most parents, you are spending the last few weeks of summer with your family: relaxing and reconnecting and enjoying your time together. Maybe you went away or possibly, you preferred a stay at home holiday.  You may have scheduled trips to the local library and bookstore for your kids to prevent the “summer slide.” This is the perfect time for them to check out and buy books that interest them and capture their attention—including topics such as animals, sports heroes, mysteries, or adventure, allowing them to travel to new places or reintroduce them to familiar but forgotten passions.

However your time was spent, your kids are most likely exhausted from holiday programs, beach days, and play dates. And, you know they’ve spent far too much time watching television, snap chatting, texting, and playing video/computer games.

Now, with summer coming to a close, it’s time to buckle down and get ready to go back to school. Unfortunately, you may have a child who doesn’t view this time of year as exciting. Your child may be feeling stressed about the increased level of academics in the classroom this year. Their struggles may have surfaced throughout the previous school year: you noticed your child having difficulty with reading words in context (trouble sounding out unfamiliar words), or maybe demonstrating a weakness in remembering what they read or listened to; their spelling skills may have begun to deteriorate with the introduction of multi syllable words; or perhaps their maths skills declined due to increasingly difficult concepts.

If reading and spelling are difficult for your child, they may be suffering from weak symbol imagery–the ability to visualise letters and sounds within words. Weak symbol imagery will cause difficulty in establishing sight words, contextual fluency, and spelling.

If reading or language comprehension are difficult for your child, weak concept imagery—the ability to image a gestalt (whole)—may be the cause. Weakness in concept imagery will interfere with reading and listening comprehension, memory, oral vocabulary, critical thinking, and writing.

Your child’s maths skills may be suffering as well due to an inability to create a gestalt image for the concepts underlying maths processes. Individuals often attempt to memorise facts instead of being able to think, reason, and problem solve with numbers. Symbol imagery and concept imagery are necessary sensory-cognitive functions that underlie reading, comprehension, and maths skills.

This time of year should be exciting, not worrisome. The last thing you want is to have your child dread going to school when it hasn’t even started yet. As a parent, what can you do? You might want to consider having your child evaluated in order to see what is causing the difficulties. Once the area of weakness has been determined, it’s important to know that treatment is available. Lindamood-Bell’s sensory-cognitive programs develop the necessary skills that underlie reading, comprehension, and maths.

Your child’s backpack is full. More importantly, let’s make sure her skill set is full by going back to school with us!

For information on how to contact us in order to get your child prepared to go back to school with confidence, please see the listing of our Learning Centres.