I don’t know why but the idea of “fixing kids” almost annoys me as much as the idea that kids achieve things “despite their disability”. No parent wants their child to fail in certain areas, however the idea that they want their child ‘fixed’ is almost as obnoxious as hearing that they want them to be more ‘normal’.

Recently, I dealt with a parent whose entire part in the IEP was asking how we were going to ‘fix’ their child’s reading comprehension abilities. “I understand they scored low in working memory and processing, but what are we doing to fix this?”  This child has a diagnosed neurological condition, and has behaviors in the classroom. They have an amazing level of fluency and expression while reading, but comprehension is, as the parents stated ‘something they had been dealing with since 1st grade’. Now I’m no neurologist, but I’m relatively certain that we cannot change a child’s neurology. Perhaps (and hear me out here) if we have not seen grade level progress for 8 years, it is because they are not capable of grade level progress. It is always a delicate balance attempting get parents to the point of realistic expectations for their child. We work daily on skills like inferencing, comprehension, fluency, expression, and hundreds of other aspects of learning. Progress is made quickly for some students, and slowly for others. We are not ignoring that your child has comprehension difficulties. On the contrary, we address it every day.

However, there is an aspect of the new Neurodiversity movement that states that we should not be focusing so much on what they struggle in, but what they are good at. Too many educators and parents feel that if their child is struggling at something, they should work on it everyday until they ‘get it’. Not only is this an unrealistic expectation of the child, I know that if I was forced to do something I knew I was bad at and probably hated every day for hours on end, I would act out too.  These children need to be taught how to deal with the hand that they were dealt. They need to be given the proper tools and assistance in order to be successful even with the difficulties they face. Instead of reading a page and closing the book and expecting a child with no working memory to remember what was on the page, perhaps we teach them skills like how to refer back to the text and pick words that help them answer your questions effectively and independently.

I understand that you are worried about your kid. I can’t imagine what you are going through. We are worried too. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t want to keep your child in Special Education forever, I want them to succeed. If I could fix their comprehension abilities at the drop of a hat, I would. But these things often don’t need to be fixed, they need to be accepted.