The 3 Biggest Back To School Mistakes That Can Lower Your Child’s Grades

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By Pat Wyman

My niece was visiting last week, and when we played a board game, I noticed she was making lots of mistakes that virtually proved she had a vision problem.

I knew, if they did not get it fixed right away, it could hurt her grades or even have her labeled as ADD/ ADHD.

She was going back to school the following week, so I asked her lots of questions and quickly discovered she could barely see the calendar on the wall 10 feet away, and held her book right up to her nose when she read.

Since your child, along with millions of others, is going back to school soon, you’ll want to pay attention to these 3 things, or you can unintentionally create lower grades and lower self-esteem, and low test scores.

1. You Do Not Know How The World Looks Through Your Child’s Eyes

The ability to read is key to learning. Your child’s vision changes when reading increases, so if you don’t know how the world looks through your child’s eyes, your child may become an at risk student, simply because he may think everybody else sees things the same distorted way.

The Solution: Eye doctors say to make sure your child has a thorough eye exam before school starts every year.

That one size fits all school vision distance eye chart has nothing to do with reading a book.

Two former U.S. Presidents had kids or grandkids with vision problems that went unnoticed until serious problems showed up.

Follow their lead with an eye exam that’s related to learning as well as being able to see clearly.

2. You Don’t Know Whether There Is A Mis-Match Between Your Child’s Learning Style And The School’s Written Testing Style

Kids learn in many ways, but schools test in only one.

If your child happens to be a visual learner, who thinks in pictures, they are likely to get the highest grades, because it fits how they are tested.

Kids who learn more by hearing or kinesthetically, through movement, are often labeled with ADD or ADHD, and need to know how to add some visual learning strategies so they can learn faster and be at, or even above grade level.

The Solution: Find a personal learning styles inventory that you can take online for free and it will tell you how you and your child learns best.

3. You Can’t Tell Whether Your Child Knows The Memory Strategies Needed To Get High Grades and Test Scores.

Teachers are overworked and don’t have time to give your child the one on one attention she needs to learn the memory strategies that A+ students already know.

Practice time tested memory techniques with your child so he or she is ready to remember everything on any test.

Author Description

Pat Wyman is America’s Most Trusted Learning Expert, best selling author of Learning vs Testing and founder of http://www.HowToLearn.com. Her Instant Learning strategies improve grades for children with ADD. Pat is a frequent media guest, and e-mails weekly newsletters to 250,000 people worldwide.

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September 21 2007 11:20 pm | Child Development and Child Education and Child Health

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