Teacher thinks my daughter is lazy

wondering if it ever occured to this teacher,that your daughter is so smart that when pointed out she knows when that her mind screwed things up for her again?
Amazes me these rocket scientists. Always did this to me and my younger son. Forver we were reversing the d’s and b’s. when they pointed it out and said,”what’s wrong with this d? Well hell it can only go two differnt ways,we just simply fixed it.Duh…

I would request another revealuation now. You don’t have to wait for the IEP,you can request one anytime you want.

Lazy is in the eye of the lazier,if you ask my opinion.

I agree with socks, it takes one to know one (the teacher I mean, not socks!) I am so tired of hearing this from my two son’s teachers. Just had a meeting this week with my 1st grader’s teacher who is convinced he has ADD even though he is showing same deficits as his brother who is dyslexic. Couldn’t posssibly be that. He’s just lazy, he can do it WHEN HE WANTS TO. Tried to use the “the most prevelant thing about dyslexics is that they are consistently inconsistent. Nope, they’re not biting. I know this to be the truth, so we work around them. There’s no sense beating a dead horse. You know your child, do you feel she tries her best or is she lazy? I know that my son’s are not lazy. I see the agony as they go through, it is not laziness. The sad thing is, I am not an LD teacher. I don’t really know to help them, and the school is certainly giving me a run for my money.

How recently was she tested? If she met the gate for emotional disability then there should be a fairly comprehensive discussion in her report about how her emotional issues impact her daily functioning- including performance in school. So one alternative would be to bring this report to the teacher’s attention AGAIN- since I expect you have before.

More testing? I only hesitate- though it is absolutely within your right to request- because I am not clear what you are looking to show. She may in fact have okay achievement- which will only validate the teacher BTW- but it is her ability to perform daily that is hampered by her emotional issues.

I suspect that the teacher is frustrated with the on again off again performance issue- and it is very hard to understand. Most folks are not able to distinguish between intentional behavior- which is the laziness part- and the impact of the very real internal conflicts ED kiddoes have. Sounds like your teacher has worked well with you and your daughter this year for the most part- maybe this was a lapse?
Robin

Are you sure she isn’t bored?

My son understands everything yet occasionally messes up because the work is presented in a very rote fashion. Things like write these words 5 times is like nails on a chalkboard to a creative child.

My son needs to find meaning in all he does. Repetitive tasks sends his mind toward the door faster than anything.

I actually refused to make him do certain homework such as write repetitively spelling words over and over.

Instead I went over the phonemic sound pictures in each word. He usually got it after the first round of instruction.

So the homework went undone and he got 100 on almost every test.

Lazy,hmmmm, I hate to hear that from a teacher. But sadly enough, that’s how most teachers who are clueless about LD describe an LD child. I hear it all the time, “he doesn’t try, he’s lazy”. Grrrrrrr. Anyway, today my “lazy” son, worked out in the yard for 2 hours, weedeating, mowing (without even being ask to do this), then went to ball practice for 4 hours and came home and worked in the yard for another hour. Not a bad day’s work for a lazy kid, huh? I might also mention that he amazes his coaches in football and baseball. They can’t believe how he always seems to know what’s going on on the entire field. I guess that’s one of the good points of being dyslexic. If only the teachers would give him a chance.

I don’t understand why teachers who aren’t trained in LD, but have LD kids in their class, don’t take it upon themselves to try and research and try to find out how to understand and help those LD kids. Now, before I get a ton of responses from teachers about how busy they are. Let me say this, I work in the medical field and when we see a patient with an strange diagnosis that I’ve not see before, I research it on my own time, just because I’m interested, and I want to know what those patients are going through. Oh well, I’ve gotten off the subject, guess I’m just venting.

I just want to say….stay on your daughters side, chances are….she’s not “lazy”.

Haven’t you heard? LD stands for lazy and dumb. Don’t expect to get meaningful test results from evaluators paid for by your child’s school. They are “gate keepers.” Thier job is to limit the number of children who qualify for services that will cost the school money. Get private testing.

Teachers and Dr’s, do not know every thing about L.D. and A.D.D. though they think they do. Have her tested for sevral thing and your P.C.P. can recomend it. If they say no then call the D.O.H. or look them up on_line and they will help. Just don’t ever give up!

Dear Margo,
My first question is, “What kind of errors is your child making that she is able to correct after her teacher makes her aware of them?” Could the problem be visual? Does she just get in a hurry and rush through the work? If she finds the work boring, she may be just trying to get through it? If it is a case of her rushing through the work, you and the teacher may need to set up some penalities for that. I suggest that you sit down with her folder and look carefully at her test scores and what the school psychologist has written. Has she shown any signs of dylexia or dysgraphia? What does her classroom work look like? Is she on-level academically? I have always been told that a child’s IEP must contain both emotional/behavioral goals and academic goals if that child is diagnosed as having an emotional/behavioral disability.If she is diagnosed as having emotional disabilities then there should be some goals and objectives responding to this area of concern as well as her academic performance.

As a parent, I would continue to work with my child’s teacher. I would ask her to send me copies of my child’s work. This would include some of her excellent work samples and some things that I and my child can work together on in the evening and on weekends. Since you’re not getting homework, you could use the evening and weekend time to work daily on those things that are causing her problems. If nothing else, she may start paying more attention in the classroom in order to avoid using her evenings up reviewing her previous work problems. How she spends her evenings and weekends could be somewhat her choice pending how her class work went during the day. A good day equals a free evening or weekend.

Your daughter should have had her vision eliminated as a problem prior to her other testing but if you are in doubt about this then you might think about having her see an optometrist or an optomologist. When I was in school, I had pretty bad vision and it made me miss important details. As a child, I didn’t even know how bad my vision was until I received glasses. It had always been that way and I had compensated for it by sitting close to the tv or holding a book close to my face. Later, when I went to school, I found that I couldn’t always do that. The blackboard could be 10-15 feet away from my desk. The visual tests that they did in school were so simple that I was able to fake my way through them.

I don’t think that the teacher meant to suggest that your daughter was lazy. She is probably a little perplexed herself and knows that it is not a question of your daughter’s intellectual ability.

If its not too late, contact your daughter’s teacher and ask her for some suggestions as to the subject areas that you and your daughter can work on during the summer. As a teacher myself,I have even sent work sheets and study material home for some of my parents, suggesting areas that I thought would be helpful for them to review over the summer.

As a parent, I set some pretty strict limits for my daughter concerning tv watching, bedtime and such. We go to the library every two weeks to select books. I may sound extreme, but I programmed the cartoon channels off of my television. They were too much of a distraction and totally useless. My daughter’s bedtime is set at 8:00p.m. She can stay up until 9:00p.m. if she wants to read a book in bed. I don’t allow any tv in the evening until her work is completed. She leaves her homework for me to look over every night. If its not done well, she knows that she will be gotten up early the next morning to redo it. If I get a chance to look at it before her bedtime, she knows that if its done poorly, then she will spend the remainder of her night redoing it. Its her choice. She can sleep until 6:00am or have me get her up at 5:00am to do what she should have done properly the night before. I use these logical consequences with her. My husband and I also get reports on her grades and test scores each week. Her weekend activities depend on how she performed during the week. School is her job. It comes first, before everything else. If she wants to go to the movies with her friends, then she must have gotten her work in on time and received acceptable grades on it. Her grades are recorded in a school notebook that we must initial each week indicating that we have reviewed her work performance and that we are aware of up-coming school projects.

Chances are your daughter just needs to be taught to attend. Attention and concentration are learned skills. Students often appear as being lazy or having attention problems when in reality they do have attention problems because this skill has never been developed. It can be learned!Kathytoo wrote:
>
> Lazy,hmmmm, I hate to hear that from a teacher. But sadly
> enough, that’s how most teachers who are clueless about LD
> describe an LD child. I hear it all the time, “he doesn’t
> try, he’s lazy”. Grrrrrrr. Anyway, today my “lazy” son,
> worked out in the yard for 2 hours, weedeating, mowing
> (without even being ask to do this), then went to ball
> practice for 4 hours and came home and worked in the yard for
> another hour. Not a bad day’s work for a lazy kid, huh? I
> might also mention that he amazes his coaches in football and
> baseball. They can’t believe how he always seems to know
> what’s going on on the entire field. I guess that’s one of
> the good points of being dyslexic. If only the teachers would
> give him a chance.
>
> I don’t understand why teachers who aren’t trained in LD, but
> have LD kids in their class, don’t take it upon themselves to
> try and research and try to find out how to understand and
> help those LD kids. Now, before I get a ton of responses from
> teachers about how busy they are. Let me say this, I work in
> the medical field and when we see a patient with an strange
> diagnosis that I’ve not see before, I research it on my own
> time, just because I’m interested, and I want to know what
> those patients are going through. Oh well, I’ve gotten off
> the subject, guess I’m just venting.
>
> I just want to say….stay on your daughters side, chances
> are….she’s not “lazy”.

The saddest thing to hear is “your kid is lazy” It is very irritating, yet what other way could it be described? If it’s suggested that our child has a learning disability, we become defensive. If we’re told they aren’t working up to their potential, we become defensive. If we’re told that they’re a nice kid, but………….., we become defensive. I guess my point is, what do we want the teachers to tell us?
I cried when I figured out that there was something “wrong” with my children and the way they learned or didn’t learn. I decided to look at it this way. If a teacher cares enough to let me know—in whatever words they come up with– that there is a problem or that something is done right—I thank God that my kid is in their class, because we’ve been in so many that don’t even notice that there is an issue.
You know your child—use the ill fated words to your advantage and get the help that’s needed— either by you providing it, the school system or an outside source. JUST keep advocatring for your kid!!
By the way Kathytoo—I agree that teachers should research LD and many do—but the are many other “differences too” How can they know which way is the best waY?—sensitivity to the problem is probably the best ‘way’ they can handle the situation. Because each of us think that our own little Susie or Johnny are the only ones in the classroom and that teacher better damn well fix them. It’s just not going to happen and we need to accept that—get as much help as possible and as the parent keep on trudging—it’s a steep hill for all of us!!
Also, a tid bit of information, I’ve become friends with a few LD teachers—they are not taught how to deal with all of our kids’ “differences”. They also, are not given a curriculum to follow—they need to pull “curriculum” out of their behinds……….How’s that for a great school sysytem………

If all teachers had parents who are supportive of the best needs for their children, the teacher’s role would be much easier. Not that we teachers want anything to come EASY to us, but you have an AWESOME evening schedule for your daughter and more parents need to instill those ideas— even half of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Keep up the great work!

Out of curiousity, has add either with or without hyperactivity been ruled out?
My son is add/inattentive, he has had difficulty with paying attention to details like the operation signs in math, especially in a timed situation, but knows how to add and subtract. He forgot the angle signs in geometry before putting the line names down. He knows how to multiply but isn’t always able to carry over to a multi step problem like algebra. He has an impulse problem. Give him a multi choice test, he may choose the first one he sees or doesn’t read through the whole sentence to make the best choice. But, if those things are pointed out, he can correct them. His work has always been inconsistent, he may know something well one day and the next not have a clue what he is looking at. He is not lazy, in fact I have lots of progress reports that state how hard a worker he is in class. Your daughter may not be lazy at all, it would be worth investigating further I think to see just what is going on.

I have to disagree. I want the cold hard facts. I do not want to play the guessing game. The sooner they can cut through the garbage the better and why try to spare my feelings? We are not talking about me, we are talking about helping my child. When your child is ill, you don’t want the sugar coated version of what is wrong with him. You want the diagnosis and the treatment to cure it. Why would we try to prolong the misery by telling mom and dad that the child is sick, but you are going to have to figure out what’s wrong with him because the doctor is afraid of telling the parents how ill he really is. That is absurd! We should expect the same direct approach from the professional educators. Supposedly this is their area of expertise. And, if they do not know more than the parents, we should insist that they do. We are wasting valuable time when we dance around the truth. Just say it, don’t give me the runaround, we don’t have time for that. Avoiding the truth is not helping my son. I’m so frustrated with the “we can’t really tell you what we think is going on because we could get sued.” In the meantime, I am playing the guessing game, does he have learning issues or is it something else? These educators should start speaking up or stop claiming to be professionals. It is been my experience so far that I know more about this than they do, except I am not collecting a paycheck for it.
It is my opinion that when a teacher says a child is lazy, he/she is admitting his/her ignorance of the world or learning differences. The definition of lazy is “resistance to work or exertion or other activity, sluggish or slow-moving.” Children are not lazy, lets find a better word to describe the behavior that teachers are observing in the classroom. Teachers, let’s be a little more creative and precise. Maybe reading up on LD’s would build the vocabulary bank.

in the universities. The coursework that is required for school teachers contains few courses on learning differences and how to treat them. It needs to start there. They are years behind on the best remediation techniques. Yes, parents may know more about learning differences than the teachers that are teaching their children. The important thing is that finger pointing should quit and we should get things changed and all work together for what is best for the kids. Isn’t that our job?

a,

Couldn’t agree with you more. My point was not about bragging or finger pointing, just shear frustration that parents have no where to go for help or advice within the school because, you are correct, teachers just are not required to have much training in LD to get their certificate.

And forget about the teachers who have been teaching for years. It has been my experience that trying to enlighten them about my son’s difficulties has fallen on deaf ears. I got the “well I’ve been teaching for 27 years and let me tell you …”

However, knowing that they will undoubtedly teach in an inclusive classroom, it is imperitive that they take the initiative to research this area themselves and keep current. There is not an “average” student anymore. I was able to do it in a very limited amount of time because I had to, no one else knew how to help us.

I was not trained in college for everything that I do in my job, I had to teach myself if I wanted to succeed and become a strong link to the rest of my team. This is just common sense. I would just think that teachers would want to know what they are dealing with, especially when they are handed a diagnosis.

My son’s teacher didn’t even read the one page report with everything she needed to know about my son. Instead she had a list of complaints for us at the first conference. All of the issues she rattled off could have been answered 2 months earlier had she bothered to open his folder. She didn’t even know that he had an IEP.

I may be way out in left field, but could your daughter be gifted? When I was in 3rd grade, I stopped doing my homework and would often hurry through my class work just to finish it. But given a chance to correct any mistakes, I could - without a problem. My parents didn’t know what to think and had me tested through the school.
After being tested, my parents were told that the reason I had a “lazy” attitude about my work in school was that I was bored! The work was monotonous and I sped through it so that I would have time to read quietly at my desk or do something more creative, such as the “mindteaser” worksheets that my teacher had for us when we finished our class work. I don’t know if your daughter’s testing included an IQ test as well, but this may be something to look into.
Reading your description of your daughter’s tendencies just struck a familiar chord with the way I was in elementary school. When you mentioned that she is doing well this year because her teacher doesn’t assign much homework, this also was familiar. After being “declared” gifted, I was put into a gifted classroom one day a week. It was wonderful!! We were rarley given homework, or even “busy work” to do during class time. We usually worked on creative projects and lots of group work- which was much more constructive for me. I could be completely wrong, but just thought I might make a suggestion.
It was wrong of the teacher to label her as “lazy.” You know if your daughter is lazy by how she behaves at home and outside school

I would strongly recommend that anyone who has a child labelled Emotionally Disabled at school seek a comprehensive outside evaluation. An educational psychologist is usually not a clinical psychologist and a child with this label (if correct) may need some type of outside therapy or medication. Please do not count on the school to fix something that is beyond their expertise. Her symptoms could be caused by so many things: a medical condition, ADD, gifted and bored, anxiety disorder, depression, etc. She may need counseling, medication, or both.

A teacher one time told me that my son was very unmotivated. He certainly was very smart and performed far below his potential. It turned out he had both an anxiety disorder and depression. I am just very sorry I did not recognize it much earlier.

Janis