You see that your child is struggling in school, specifically in math. You hire a math tutor to help. After weeks of one-on-one tutoring, your child shows only slight progress. Then their math grades on the next report card are the same as before tutoring. What happened?
The issue isn’t with you, your child, or the tutor. While tutoring can help many children, when a child has a learning disability or other learning challenge, tutoring alone usually won’t be enough to help them make progress.
This article outlines how learning disabilities and other challenges can affect academic progress. It also discusses the proper role of tutoring for children with learning disabilities. Finally, it explains how a therapeutic school in New York might help your child.
Learning Disabilities: More Than Academics
Most parents realize that learning disabilities affect their child’s grades and test scores. Because the problem is academic, an academic support like tutoring should be the solution, right? While this thinking is logical, it overlooks how learning disabilities actually work. While a child might be getting low marks because they genuinely don’t understand the subject, learning disabilities often present additional challenges that affect academic progress. For example:
Executive Functioning. Executive functioning refers to the processes that the brain uses to organize information, manage emotions, and make plans. Researchers at Harvard refer to it as the brain’s “air traffic control” system. Like a skilled air traffic controller, executive functioning helps us plan where things should go, ensure they get there, and keep emotions in check throughout the process.
The connection between ADHD and executive functioning is well known. However, anxiety, autism spectrum disorder, depression, and other conditions have also been linked to executive functioning issues.
Working Memory. Working memory allows a person to temporarily hold a limited amount of information at the ready for immediate mental use. So, in the classroom, a student might need working memory to briefly store part of a times table chart to use while solving a larger math problem.
Working memory issues are often associated with ADHD, but conditions such as dyslexia can also affect working memory.
Emotional Difficulties. The research shows that children with learning challenges often experience higher rates of emotional dysregulation. Anxiety, learning disabilities, sensory processing issues, and other issues can throw emotions off balance.
Learned Helplessness. If you tried to do the same task 50 times with little or no success, you’d probably want to stop. Similarly, when a learning disability causes a child to repeatedly struggle with the same subjects or assignments, they may eventually decide that they cannot or will not do the work.
Additionally, some children may be struggling with multiple issues related to their learning disability at once.
How Learning Challenges Can Limit the Benefits of Tutoring
Many children, even those with learning disabilities and other learning challenges, benefit from tutoring. However, parents of children with learning disabilities must think about tutoring slightly differently for at least two reasons.
First, tutors usually focus solely on academic subjects. This means that while a tutor can help a student with place value, they typically won’t be able to help with executive functioning issues. So, even if the student “gets” the concept, if their executive functioning interferes with their ability to organize and turn in their work, the result will be the same. Similarly, tutors often don’t help with working memory, emotional regulation, or learned helplessness. If these issues are hindering your student, tutoring alone won’t be enough to get them where they need to be.
Second, tutoring usually lasts an hour or so, one or two days a week. However, a student who needs academic support due to a learning disability will often require assistance throughout each school day. Tutoring isn’t enough to consistently meet their needs.
For these and other reasons, parents should think of tutoring not as the sole answer to their student’s issues, but as one tool out of many.
How Parents of Children with Learning Disabilities Can Effectively Use Tutoring
Students with learning disabilities can absolutely benefit from tutoring. Tutoring can be an especially useful tool to help students better understand concepts and give them time and support to practice them. So, tutors can help students with learning challenges understand and practice academic skills such as phonics decoding or algebraic formulas.
However, parents of students with learning disabilities should not rely solely on tutoring. Tutoring benefits students with learning issues most when it is one part of a larger system of supports, such as those contained in an Individualized Education Program (IEP). The student’s IEP should also provide services such as:
- Executive-function coaching
- Counseling visits
- Behavior and emotional self-regulation coaching
- Assistance with planning assignments and homework
- Interventions to reduce emotional distress
- Modified assignments
- Help with breaking larger assignments into smaller pieces (“chunking”)
So, while tutoring alone often won’t be enough, when paired with the right modifications and accommodations, it can be an important supplemental tool that helps a student through their learning challenges.
What if a Student with Learning Disabilities Needs More Than Tutoring?
Because students with learning disabilities usually need significant support, pursuing an IEP is a good move. Even the best tutor won’t be able to help a student handle a noisy classroom, a distracted teacher, or other issues. An IEP can address these concerns.
However, parents are often dissatisfied with how traditional public schools implement the provisions of their child’s IEP. On the other hand, therapeutic schools are specifically designed to meet the unique needs of children with learning challenges. Rather than large, bright, noisy classrooms, therapeutic schools are structured to minimize sensory issues. Additionally, the teachers are trained not only to provide academic instruction but also to support social-emotional learning. Best of all, the class sizes at therapeutic schools are intentionally smaller. Smaller classes allow teachers to provide intensive instruction. Teachers can also more easily adapt their lessons to each student’s needs when required by an IEP. Additionally, fewer students mean that teachers at therapeutic schools are better able to monitor each student for signs of emotional distress and intervene before the child reaches emotional overwhelm.
If your child has a learning disability and you’re looking for school support that goes well beyond tutoring, consider Academics West. We’re a therapeutic school on New York City’s Upper West Side. Our teachers and staff are trained to help children with a variety of learning disabilities, and challenges take the “hero’s journey” to academic success. Learn more by watching our virtual tour. Then, call 212-580-0080 or use our online contact form to schedule an in-person visit.
