Elementary school children experience learning in vastly different ways. Boys and girls develop at different rates and respond to school subjects differently. Yet we as a society tend to impose standard expectations on each year of school, which sometimes can leave you as a parent feeling as if your child lags behind his or her class. How can you be sure? Will your child simply grow out of it? Does your child have some more serious learning issue?
In the elementary school years, students develop what we call the fundamentals – they learn to read, principally at literal comprehension and moving to more advanced forms that involve inference and reflection; they learn to write, first sentences and later fully structured paragraphs; they learn arithmetic and move on to first-level problem solving techniques. If your child has difficulty with any of these areas – meaning he or she cannot meet class proficiency standards – you should consider some type of intervention, either through a tutoring program or perhaps a psycho-educational assessment.