When School Help Hurts: Is Your Child Receiving Too Much Assistance?

My tweenager gets pulled out of class in school at least six times per week for academic assistance due to a classification of ADHD and a learning disorder.

Now believe me, I’m all for the help. I truly believe all this support and intervention has had an enormously positive impact on her understanding of concepts, cognition and her ability to learn. However, another service was recently added – Speech. Now, they want to pull her out of class another three times per week for that. She can barely keep up with the fast moving pace of third grade as it is and now they want to pull her out of class more? I say no to Speech.

I don’t mean to just shut the door on Speech; I realize she has some definite deficits in that arena. However, as she’s getting older she’s becoming more aware of how she is perceived by her school peers. Yesterday, she was rather despondent that some of her fellow students were teasing her about having one-on-one help in the class for math. I spent a great deal of time reassuring her that everyone needs help from time to time. But even she asked, “Mom, when is all this help going to end?”

Whatever she misses in class is added to her homework, and she is missing key lessons about concepts integral to the class syllabus. I find that I have to teach her most of her coursework after school…and that is just not working. Not only am I highly unqualified to teach, I really don’t have the patience for it. By the time homework time rolls around, I’m already spent from working and I’m a single mom. There’s no one else here to turn to for a little relief…it’s all me…and I’m kind of fried. She’s not my only child; I also have a very attitude-y 14 year-old daughter who keeps me on my toes. So between the two I’m ready for a little extra help. My hat is off to the SAHMs...I really don't know how they do it.

I’m going to pull her principal out of school and ask for help from the district. If they want to keep pulling her out of class then maybe they can provide a tutor after school to help her keep up with lessons….as I really can’t afford that myself.

What do you think? Does your child receive help through ‘related services’ in school? How do you strike a balance between receiving and not receiving academic intervention? How do you stop the helpers from going overboard?