How We Can Help
Tutoring is expensive and there are no guaranteed results for the time and money you invest. It is better to know what and how you can directly help your child.
All services and products are based on research about the brain, developmental learning (theories and practices), and educational skills sequences. Our goal is to empower you to help your child improve his or her academic skills. The Functional Assessment profile of your child's skills includes extra time to talk with you about an intervention plan to improve your child's academics. Parent modules with video explanations target skills your child needs to improve his academic performance. A Functional Assessment is not necessary to purchase the parent modules.
How to know if your child can benefit
The best time to teach your child is when he is young and eager to please you as he learns new skills. It is never too late to teach a willing student of any age (including adults). Adults often think that children "have it easy", playing, learning and having no responsibilities all day. For some children, this is true. Others experience childhood as stressful and their behavior patterns either calm them or avoid the stressors.
If your child consistently demonstrates any of the following behavior patterns, your family could probably benefit from our modules and services:
- Preschool and kindergarten children may be unusually fearful of new activities or situations (such as learning to read or even attend school), cry very easily or become verbal and/or physical bullies to others.
- Primary students tend to have poor attention and/or at-seat behavior (resulting in poor and incomplete work), to have oral habits (thumb sucking, nail biting, chewing objects or clothing), to be socially withdrawn from others (being very quiet and afraid to make mistakes or volunteer information) and/or to have frequent absences from school. All these behaviors may continue throughout all grade levels.
- Elementary students become either more withdrawn or begin to disrupt the classroom and have frequent fights and/or arguments with others in the classroom or in free-time settings. Their work is frequently missing, incomplete or poor. They avoid doing homework by lying about assignments and grades.
- Middle school or junior high students, in addition to any of the above problems, must cope with hormonal changes that cause extreme mood swings. At this age, poor academic performance is often constant. Bullies are increasingly cruel to others, often those who are withdrawn. They may be unusually defiant towards adults and/or engage in early sexual activity and/or substance use (usually tobacco, marijuana and/or alcohol, but some will experiment with harder substances if they have money and accessibility).
- High school students have a wide variety of behaviors besides failing classes. They may withdraw even more from others or display acting out or self-destructive behaviors. They may engage in: delinquent behavior, violence, frequent and heavy substance abuse, and frequent sexual activity with many partners that may result in unwanted pregnancy. Dropping out of school is common as early as ninth grade.
Something to know
A little known fact that most parents might want to know: states predict how many prisons to build based on students' reading levels (usually in 6th grade). When children don't read above the 4th grade level, research and experience has shown those children are likely to spend time in the justice systems as teenagers and/or adults.
