Knowing when a Child Needs Tutoring
Taking a look at a few areas in your child’s life, you will be able to easily ascertain if your child needs the assistance of a tutor. While these are only a few of the warning signs that your child needs help, these provide a good starting point for parents.
How is Homework time?
If homework time is a fight, this can be an indicator that your child struggles in school, needs a little extra help with a particular subject or doesn’t understand how to do what is asked of him.
If your child never seems to have homework, you need to contact the child’s teacher and find out what is going on. It may be that your child really doesn’t have homework, but the likelihood of this is slim. By not bringing homework home, your child may be avoiding a fight or simply avoiding work that the child does not understand or think that he can complete successfully.
Bad Report Card?
A report card with one or two bad grades may not be much to worry about, but if you see a consistently poor grade in one subject or an unusual bad grade in a subject area, it is important to follow up on that grade. It may be that your child needs help in that area.
If you cannot remember what your child’s report card looked like, that may also be an indication that your child needs additional help in school. While some parents may simply have too much going on to remember specific grades, many parents will “forget” about a report card and hope that the problems simply go away.
Conferencing with the Teacher
If the teacher indicates that your child is frequently distracted in one particular class, this can be a sign that your child is struggling in that area. Children who struggle to understand a subject or topic of study may choose to disengage and become distracted by any number of things in order to not show their inability because it makes them feel stupid.
Likewise, if your child is consistently not turning homework in, this may be a method of not exposing an area of weakness, indicating that the child needs additional help.
Finding out the root cause for any problem you see at school is important. Keep asking questions until you get to the bottom of whatever is going on, and try not to jump to conclusions before you have all the answers.
Finally, trust your child’s teacher. If the teacher comes to you and suggests that you get your child a tutor, it may be time to look into some extra help.
Read more about hiring a private tutor.
