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| (Photo by jimpetr) |
Reason 2: ADHD. If your child has been labeled with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, his teacher is basically saying that your child cannot sit still long enough in the classroom to learn and to let others learn.
Without getting into an argument about the validity of such diagnoses or whether such a disorder really exists in the first place, allow me to propose that if your child is unable to sit still in school, then for his own good, he should not be there.
(And I say this with my Special Education degree from the state university to back my words.)
Let's digress a little and talk about eating styles for a second. Some people, like my friend Sampy, like to eat their food in a specific order: they finish up their cheeseburger, then they eat up their fries, then they dig into their sundae, then they wash it all down with a glass of Coke.
If Sampy learned like that too, she would fit very well in school.
But some people don't eat like that. I take a bite of my cheeseburger, then follow it with a few sticks of fries, then I take another bite from my cheeseburger, followed by more fries or maybe a spoonful of sundae. Now and then, I would have a sip of Coke.
Fortunately, I don't learn like that, which is probably why I did okay in elementary school (where there were no bullies to distract me).
But some children do learn like that -- they like their lessons in random bits and pieces.
If your child is one of these children and you forced him to finish 45 minutes of science before touching grammar or math, he would be heartily sick of science at the end of five minutes, in the same way that he would be sick of cheeseburger after ten consecutive bites uninterrupted by the taste of fries!
If you were homeschooling your child and you knew that he learned like this, you could set in front of him all the material he needs to finish for the day and let him go at it in his own sporadic fashion. All you have to do is sit beside him to answer questions and make sure he's studying instead of having his third snack that afternoon. (Yes, even in homeschool, kids like to play truant.)
Will your kid learn this way? I can assure you, he will learn more in this manner than he will learn in school -- and he will enjoy it more too.
