It was the first month of first grade, and my youngest daughter had no idea yet that she was failing.
While she was delighted to be getting some new front teeth, I was getting a knot in my stomach thinking about the news her teacher had delivered: she struggled with attention and she was at the bottom of her class.
I didn’t understand how she could be failing. I had heard this before. In fact, this was the third time.
Her older sister had struggled in first grade too. But the teacher’s words really made my stomach tighten up, because they brought back memories of all the years I had struggled myself with attention and learning. Sitting in class and feeling so stupid and so alone was a feeling I had had every day in school.
I dreaded that fate for my little girl. How could this have happened? My despair at hearing her teacher’s words was overwhelming.
Soon, she was crying during reading time.
All the tutoring and special programs did nothing to help her. Her special reading glasses didn’t help her. By second grade, she had headaches and stomachaches everyday.
At Brownies, she got frustrated when they did crafts. The leaders were tiring of her frustrated outbursts as she struggled to do things the other girls did with ease.
Everyday when the other kids in the neighborhood went out to play after school she said she “didn’t feel well.”
The hardest part was, I felt so helpless . . . .
For me, the hardest part wasn’t that my daughter was struggling . . . it was really that I felt so helpless trying to fix it. As a teacher, I had helped hundreds of kids learn. I had even taught myself how to learn. But this was different.
I beat myself up over all the times I had given up in frustration when we argued over homework.
I replayed in my mind the scenes of picking her up from school ready for a fun afternoon but she was so exhausted from a hard day that she just wanted to go home.
At first, I checked out tutoring options. I was so optimistic listening to the tutoring center director describe for me how my child would make a year’s worth of growth in just 30 sessions . . .
But, of course, you can guess what happened . . . after many more than 30 sessions my child was exactly the same – only more frustrated, more exasperated, and still sad that she wasn’t keeping up in class.
The worst part was: the teachers and tutors really had no idea how to help or what to do. I worried that my child would start to believe what their teachers thought — that she was stupid, hopeless, inattentive and lazy.
In the beginning, I blamed myself for passing on my attention problem to my child, for not getting her prepared enough before she started school.
I was worried about her . . . and my worry affected my whole life.
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