As the parent of a special needs child, are you confused about the best way to go about teaching your child?
Each child is unique, and it can be daunting to give your special needs child the guidance they need to learn and thrive. As an educational tutoring professional who has worked with special needs students for more than 30 years, I’ve learned a few guidelines that can be useful to parents and caretakers:
1. Don’t insist that your special needs child do things the way you were taught. Sometimes children who learn differently need new information/materials presented in multiple ways in order for it to be understandable and accessible. This is important because learning foundational information is necessary for them to build on for the next step in learning.
Scaffolding is an educational practice that helps children build on basic concepts.
This is part of a process that’s known in education as ”scaffolding.” When children understand basic concepts, you slowly build on those concepts, gradually bringing children to higher and higher levels of learning and understanding. In a similar way, scaffolds are used to gradually construct buildings, floor upon floor.
As you do this, encourage your child by providing reminders or "clues" that lead your child to the retrieve the information they have trouble remembering.
2. Teach from a macro to micro mindset so your child can be taught how to categorize information for better retention and retrieval. This means starting a subject at the broadest base you can:
An example could be: all insects have six legs, and three body parts. Then you would teach about winged and non-winged insects. Then about insects that live alone and insects that live in colonies. Then maybe insects that are helpful to people, insects that are harmful to people, and insects that are neither helpful nor harmful. And so on, helping your child go from broad categories to smaller and smaller categories
This gives children a process to use to locate information, rather than just trying to remember random bits of information.
3. Be patient. Sometimes it may seem to parents that their special needs child takes one step forwards and two steps back. A concept your child finally seemed to grasp yesterday, may be gone today, and partially back the next day. It is just as frustrating for your child, especially as they grow older and see other children their age "get it" so much easier. Assure them – and yourself- that this is part of the learning process.
If you’d like more information on helping your special needs child learn, contact me for information on an upcoming parent workshop, Nancy.kachursky@rteseduc.org.
