How Your Child Can Benefit From At Home Learning

COVID-19 is a pandemic and, like all people, I am hoping that life returns to normal. I am so thankful to all of the health care workers, our governments and all community resources that are doing what they can to keep all of us as safe and as healthy as possible.

I know a lot of people are afraid. I’m scared too. My husband is immunosuppressed and we are taking drastic measures to keep him safe.

I always teach my students to focus on the positives. More so than other students, students with complex learning needs can truly benefit from this time.

Here is how this quarantine can be a benefit to students with learning issues:

1) Gaining Skills While Peers are Losing Skills. Every day I will be posting tasks on my Instagram that children can do to keep up their essential skills. Being able to shift from homework completion to skill development can improve their actual academic performance. They will be re-entering school feeling confident. Many of our clients are utilizing this time to see their tutor in one on one settings (with safety precautions, of course) and during these sessions we get to focus intensely on the exact areas your child is struggling.

2) Less Stress = Better Learning Environment. School is very stressful (read my other blog about what is going on in classrooms for perspective). This stress can make learning more difficult. Students that are anxious are less able to learn new skills. We should use this time to help them acquire as many new skills as pos

sible (better reading comprehension, better sentence construction and improved numeracy) during this time. These essential skills can be difficult for students to “take it” when they are so focused on just completing homework.

3) Learning to Entertain Oneself. Technology and its instant rewards can often make it so that chil

dren do not learn to entertain themselves. If, as parents, you provide children alone time that is not social and without screen time, they will learn to entertain themselves. Learning to entertain oneself improves emotional regulation and self soothing. They will be better able to tolerate boredom in the class.

4) Life skills. I will write about this in more detail in a subsequent post. Can your child cook, do laundry, complete chores on their own? This could be the time to help them learn to be more self-sufficient.