Suggestions on how to teach a child with LD

What are his areas of difficulty? What are his strengths? Is he visual or auditory? These questions and probably more ned to be answered before anyone is going to be able to give you any meaningful advice.

If homework is already difficult - and taking up time - where will you find the time to do additional instruction with him? I think I’d say concentrate on getting the homework done and when that’s no longer difficult - or in the summer - then it’s time to think about giving him extra instruction.

Until then, don’t hesitate to do whatever necessary to make the homework go better for both of you and certainly to have it be more smooth and less time consuming. You don’t say what his issues are but if writing is hard for him, you could let him dictate his assignments to you while you type them up. If the reading comes hard, you could take turns reading.

Good luck.

Good programs to consider for summer are Audiblox (http://www.audiblox2000.com ) or PACE (http://www.processingskills.com ). However, these programs work best when underlying deficits have been reduced as much as possible with appropriate therapies. Commonly undiagnosed problems are developmental vision delays (see http://www.childrensvision.com ) and/or auditory processing disorders (http://pages.cthome.net/cbristol/ ).

Nancy

There’s a fine line on homework difficulties.
If the child is coping somewhat and can follow most of the work with help, yes, then it’s worth the time to go through the homework and help him keep up with his class.
On the other hand, if you are trying to help him with his homework and he responds with a blank stare for the fiftieth time, and you end up reading him *all* the questions, telling him the answers, and telling him where and how to write the answers, time to back off and ask yourself who is gaining what out of all this effort. He isn’t learning and retaining, you aren’t improving your relationship with him or helping him in any real way, and the teacher is just mechanically pushing papers around without really helping the kid.
Again this is a judgement call and takes some serious self-examination.

If you decide he really is getting nothing out of the homework, don’t do it. Write to the teacher and the principal and the director of special education and say politely that he not yet at a point where he can gain from this instruction, and rather than doing it for him, you are requesting modified assignments at a level where he can succeed. If he has an IEP you should be able to get somehting put into it to cover this.
Then get a tutor and/or some instruction on doing your own home tutoring, and start at the beginning and spend that homework time teaching him skills that he needs in order to get back on track. He needs to be able to read independently so he can do his own work, and over 90% of the time that means students need better phonics instruction. He needs to go to the beginning and learn number skills. These are far more important than filling in yet another incomprehensible homework sheet.

If you do decide he can go on with the schol work for now, look seriously at basic skills tutoring in the summer.

There are many resources available for this, and I will be happy to send you my own rough notes if you email me at [email protected]

As a mom who suffered through years of homework with my son I would suggest a meeting with his teacher. You need to agree, together, about ways you can help. Examples might be, taking dictation from him instaed of making him write , reading passages to him instead of having him read them (if reading is an issue). There are many ways to modify homework so that it is still meaningful , but not torture for an LD child.