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Current Parenting Trends and Related Articles
Available resources, attitudes, and advice on parenting a struggling learner have evolved, reflecting a better understanding of learning differences and changing education pressures, as follows:
- Recognition of Learning Differences: Struggling learners were stigmatized or mislabeled as lazy or unintelligent. Today, conditions like dyslexia, ADHD, and autism, as well as newer concerns, OCD, and social anxiety, are seen as neurological variations rather than shortcomings. Autism is much more prevalent than it was in previous generations.
- Social and Learning Anxiety: Child anxiety and depression, with the rise of social media, are more pronounced, undermining learning confidence and self-esteem, which, of course, adds to the parenting challenge.
- Early Intervention: Advances in learning science have shifted the focus to early intervention and away from drugs. For instance, there are now numerous options for treating ADHD without medication.
- Changing School Priorities: There has been a (too?) slow evolution in education, away from memorization (and knowledge) and toward critical thinking and creativity. Parents need to adapt to these changing school goals. This starts with new school year resolutions focusing on longer-term goals for your child, lifelong learning, not day-to-day busy work – more on resolutions here.
- Inclusion and Accessibility: Schools are working to create environments that accommodate diverse learners. This includes accommodations and accessibility measures. This can lead to more surprising interactions for children during the day, which might require parental input at night. Thinking about the different parenting needed for boys is also evolving.
- Parental Advocacy: Parents of struggling learners are more informed and more likely to become advocates for their children. They engage with schools to protect their child’s love of learning or to push for more help via an IEP or other resources.
- Holistic Approach: Factors like mental health, emotional well-being, and socio-emotional learning are integral to a child’s success in school.
- New Technology: New ways to support and help your child. More on technology and learning here.
While attitudes have evolved, parenting a struggling learner remains challenging, especially when ensuring your child receives the right support. Access to resources, adequate funding for special education programs, and reducing disparities in education remain concerns.
While the diagnoses vary for each child, the journey is often very similar for the child and the parents.
Parenting Trends & An Expanding Toolkit
State scholarships in a growing number of states are opening up after-school funding to help parents of struggling learners. Gemm Learning is an approved provider in several state programs.
There has also been an evolution in thinking about disciplining your child. Here are tips on disciplining your child.
The content curriculum has expanded and moved into lower grades that were previously all about reading, writing, and math basics. That means parents need to spend more time helping their children with the fundamentals – including helping their child with reading at home, remediating bad learning habits, and building writing skills.
Parenting a struggling learner has become more strategic as the ingredients for academic success change. A common theme is building reading skills through text-heavy interests, e.g., joining a drama program, listening to music, and even karaoke!
Another tool available to parents now is leveled books, which use words in narrow bands of difficulty to help children avoid frustration.
Parenting Resources Related to Reading
A lot of parenting a struggling learner comes down to managing the learning-to-read process and getting your child excited about reading and into a reading routine. Summer is a tough time for children who labor over reading. Here is our advice on stress-free summer reading.
No doubt, the frustration and humiliation that children experience with learning delays is timeless. These videos about the stress of learning delays had a profound effect on my attitudes about parenting a struggling learner – and led to the founding of Gemm Learning.
Books On Learning Delays
Here are a few book suggestions, written for parents.
For Auditory Processing
Like Sound Through Water: A Mother’s Journey Through Auditory Processing Disorder by Karen J. Foley
At age 3, Ms. Foley’s son, Ben, could not yet talk and had difficulty understanding when spoken to. This memoir describes a mother’s determination to help her child communicate. It details her search for an accurate diagnosis among misinformation and the enlightening results of her efforts.
When the Brain Can’t Hear: Unraveling the Mystery of Auditory Processing Disorder by Teri James Bellis, P.H. D.
Dr. Bellis is a highly respected audiologist who grew up with a deaf sibling. She experienced cognitive problems later in life after a car accident. Among them was a change in the way her brain processed auditory information. This led Dr. Bellis to further explore auditory processing challenges. Her book details what APD looks like at infancy, childhood, and adulthood as well as how it is diagnosed and treated.
Brain Plasticity
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge, M. D.
This book explores the roots of neuroplasticity, its potential, and the experiences of individuals who have benefited from an understanding of this science. The author also details Fast ForWord and its relationship to neuroplasticity
Spirited Children
Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, and Energetic by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
The birth of Mary Sheedy’s son marked the beginning of a new understanding for this parent educator. The word more seemed to best describe how markedly her son’s behaviors and disposition differed from peers. This book offers insight into how to interpret and respond to these challenges to foster success.
Autism Spectrum Disorder
The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida
This book, written by a 13-year-old Japanese boy with Autism, was translated into English by KA Yoshida and David Mitchell, parents of a child with autism. It includes his explanations for behaviors commonly associated with autism, such as repetition, raised volume, or becoming extremely upset over mistakes. However, it also shares the author’s perspective on the challenges that accompany autism and how that ultimately shapes his perception of the world.
Autistic Logistics: A Parents’ Guide to Tackling Bedtime, Toilet Training, Tantrums, Hitting, and Other Everyday Challenges by Kate C. Wilde
Autistic Logistics addresses the daily challenges that many children with autism and their parents, teachers, caregivers, or other professionals face. It offers understanding, step-by-step instructions, and solutions to help support their needs and goals.
Dyslexia
Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz
Written by the co-director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, this book examines how dyslexia occurs and the significant impact of early diagnosis and effective treatment. It also offers ways parents can help their children develop phonemic awareness to become fluent readers.
Gemm Learning uses Fast ForWord software at home to build essential language processing and pre-reading skills, and then reading comprehension.
Taking Control of Your Child’s Education
The “summer slide” can be particularly devastating for children with learning difficulties. Left on their own, they might not read or engage in anything academic. This loss in learning momentum leads to a slide that takes months to recover from—more on the summer slide here.
Raising a child with learning delays is challenging enough, including auditory processing disorder, dyslexia, and ADHD. This challenge multiplies when you include the recognition that your child is not on the same learning trajectory as the rest of the class.
So parenting a struggling learner sometimes requires a different path than the one recommended by the school.
Reality Checks
Your learning-delayed child is on a different path. His day is more exhausting, and when he comes home, he is more likely to be irritable. Many things others find easy, he does not. Your child can still go on to live a happy and productive life, but his path will be different.
The school’s timeline is different. While your child’s teacher cares deeply about your child, she focuses on class results this year. In contrast, your horizon extends longer to a time when your child is reading and learning comfortably.
Meanwhile, you focus on minimizing negative associations with learning. You are fine with short-term results until never-ending test prep, overly hard books, or busywork stress out your child.
Schools do not address underlying learning delays. Schools work around learning difficulties, and they do not treat them. That’s not their role. They instruct. And so, while you want your child to learn the fundamentals, the school has a curriculum to get through.
Often, they have to move on, even if children in the class are not yet proficient readers or learners. If you want to treat a learning disability, you will have to do that after school hours. Meanwhile, keep yourself informed by reading our blog.
Lobby for Less Homework
Your child will not find the homework as easy as others, especially after a tough day. Homework overload just helps reinforce a negative relationship to learning, to the school, and to you, as the parent enforcer of this unwelcome after-school work.
Do your child a huge favor by arranging for a lighter homework load. Your child needs to focus on the building blocks of learning, the fundamentals. Homework and tests have very little value. Most teachers will understand the bigger picture here.
There is a huge question about the value of homework anyway. And so there is no real downside to this modification.
Find Confidence Builders
Part of your child’s different path will be building inner resilience and confidence. The school day is mainly about confidence erosion: humiliating events such as having to read out loud to the class or having to respond to a teacher’s question quickly.
In addition, your child likely experiences frustration at struggling with reading or math while those subjects seem to come more easily to peers.
And so, it is important to find activities that play to your child’s strengths to balance that eroding confidence. Are there sports, music or other activities where your child does well, where there is the potential for achieving or at least matching peers? Confidence and inner resilience become more and more critical.
If Reading is Torture, Go Slowly
The single most important career skill is reading. To become a good reader, your child needs to practice, which means they need to have a positive connection to reading. This is not easy when a child has language processing delays. Reading can be exhausting, even torturous.
Help your child avoid reading defeat by choosing “just right” books. Harry Potter can wait. Parenting a struggling learner means meeting your child where she is. Here’s how to select books in your child’s reading zone.
If the school is sending home books that you know are too hard and risk shutting your child down to reading, let the school know. Show patience in choosing books to avoid negative feelings attached to reading.
Fight For Accommodations at School
It is worth advocating for accommodations like sitting at the front of the class and more time for tests. Mainly, these accommodations will reduce your child’s stress and help maintain a more positive connection to learning.
Similarly, if an IEP is in the cards, it is worth fighting for. With an IEP, you will have a lot less trouble negotiating for less homework, easier books, and the other aspects of the school day that are currently affecting your child’s confidence and sense of self-worth.
Look After Yourself
Just as the airlines say, put on your oxygen mask before attending to your child; your child is best served when you are happy and healthy. There is a lot of stress and anxiety involved in parenting a struggling learner.
You may experience self-doubt and concern about what others think. Do people understand that if there is a difficult behavior happening in public, you sometimes need to pick your battles? And you might also wonder if there is more you could have done or should be doing.
Most parents of children with learning difficulties can tune into their child’s needs and be patient and understanding. But it takes a toll, including anxiety that children might pick up on.
And so treat yourself well, and maintain other interests to keep some kind of life balance. And don’t ignore your other children if you have any, which can sometimes happen when there is a struggling learner in the family.
Managing the Professionals Around Your Child
Parents of children with learning difficulties often coordinate multiple professionals—special education teachers, speech therapists, psychologists, tutors, and more. Success requires establishing an overarching philosophy based on your values and priorities, ensuring everyone works toward shared goals.
Build strong relationships with your child’s teacher, as they’re key to effective partnerships. Keep organized notes, set calendar reminders for progress checks, and communicate your plan clearly to all professionals.
Remember, schools primarily focus on instruction, not intervention. Balance academic support with protecting your child’s love of learning. Consider trade-offs carefully—some interventions require short-term effort for long-term gains. Your clarity helps everyone support your child effectively.
Best Practices for Raising a Child With Learning Disabilities
Every child is different, every home is different, and nobody has all the answers. However, here are some themes to keep in mind as you parent your struggling child.
Mindset & Approach:
The central theme here is to focus on a long-term love of learning, not to pressure your child too much, even if he is lagging behind:
- Be flexible—focus on what your child can do, not predetermined standards
- Recognize that their learning trajectory will differ from their peers
- Play the “long game” by prioritizing love of learning over keeping pace with classmates
Building Confidence:
Confidence is the rocket fuel of learning, and so it must be nurtured and protected. So much learning comes from having a go, failing, and then trying again. Children with confidence lean into learning.
- Provide opportunities for success outside academics (sports, hobbies, creative pursuits)
- Distinguish frustration from lack of motivation—children often shut down when overwhelmed, not because they’re lazy
- Use positive reinforcement at home, aiming for a 6:1 ratio of positive to negative comments
Practical Supports:
Your child is probably going to need your support for an extended period, so it’s important to establish routines you can maintain and find ways to avoid meltdowns and learning setbacks.
- Read to your child as long as needed and choose age-appropriate books
- Incorporate hands-on learning experiences to make education enjoyable
- Use helpful tools: technology, visual supports, memory aids
- Maintain structured routines to reduce anxiety about expectations
Emotional Support:
Behavioral issues are inevitable but can be helped. The book Parenting from the Inside Out is a good starting point here, meeting your child where she is, not where you wish she was.
- Validate your child’s feelings rather than dismissing their struggles
- Listen when they express difficulty—acknowledge “this is hard for you”
- Offset school negativity with positivity at home
Advocacy:
You are the world expert on your child. They need your support and a proactive approach to put their learning difficulties behind them with an intervention or to at least reduce the symptoms that cause frustration.
- Learn about your child’s specific disability
- Leverage strengths to address weaknesses
- Secure school support like IEPs
- Explore learning interventions targeting underlying learning difficulties
Know The Jargon of Learning Clinicians and Neurologists
Most learning diagnoses are actually a description of symptoms that rise above certain thresholds. There is no underlying condition or disease, yet the terminology can be overwhelming for parents. This guide explains common learning conditions to help ease fears.
Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) affects how the brain processes auditory information, making it difficult to understand spoken language despite normal hearing. It’s caused by genetic and environmental factors. Sound-based interventions like Fast ForWord, used by Gemm Learning, can effectively treat APD.
Sensory Processing involves how our nervous system interprets sensory information through three main types: proprioceptive, vestibular, and interoceptive. Physical interventions like Interactive Metronome can help children with sensory integration delays.
Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit impairs the ability to understand written information. It may result from learning disabilities, attention disorders, or neurological conditions. Starting with reading interventions that improve automaticity can free up brain capacity for higher-order comprehension skills.
Dyslexia is a learning disability affecting reading skills, characterized by difficulty decoding words and poor spelling and fluency. It’s a description of reading difficulty, not a disease. Gemm Learning uses Fast ForWord to treat dyslexia.
Decoding versus Fluency: Decoding is sounding out individual words, while fluency is reading effortlessly with speed, accuracy, and expression.
Dyscalculia affects mathematical calculations, impacting 2-5% of the population. More information here.
Dysgraphia affects writing ability, making it challenging to produce legible handwriting and impacting spelling. It’s often a secondary symptom of deeper processing delays. Learn more here.
Executive function refers to the skills of organizing, planning, and self-regulating.
ADHD involves problems with focus, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness. ADHD-PH stems from sensory processing delays, while ADHD-PI relates to language processing or working memory delays. Gemm Learning uses Fast ForWord to treat inattentive ADD.
Bottom Line
To summarize, it is important to recognize that if your child has shut down or is struggling, s/he will have a different educational path to adulthood, which is perfectly okay.
There are arguments about the silver linings of dyslexia – resilience and creativity that emerge from learning challenges.
But if your child’s learning difficulties persist, consider taking action. Learning delays can often be treated. Gemm Learning is one such intervention. We provide Fast ForWord online software with coaching to target the root causes of learning and reading difficulties. Learn more about Gemm Learning here.
