My daughter is lacking confidence & struggling at school!

Q. My daughter moved to an independent school two years ago when she was in year 3. Her previous school was not good and her reading ability was low compared to her contemporaries when she joined the new school. In her first year there her teacher insisted that she was dyslexic, which she is not.  In Year 4 I had her assessed by a independent tutor who says she has basically missed out ALL of year 1 & 2 work and her basic maths, number bonds, phonics and sentence structure is terrible.  She understands the Maths and English she learnt in recent years but the lack of basic skills means she is incredibly slow.  The whole situation has impacted her terribly and her confidence is very low.  She has a mental block against timetables believing she is too stupid (her words – not mine!) to learn them and hates reading as she battles with it (she tends to guess rather than sound words out). 

Although she seems very happy at school and people all comment on what a lovely happy child she is – she is almost always in tears when at home.  She says she cannot be herself in her current school (which is a wonderful school and is really like a big happy family) and when asked why she is crying her answer is simply ‘I don’t know’ – I am worried she is suffering from depression.

I spoke to her teacher last week and have been told that she will probably not get into the senior schools she wants to go to.  Although I understand that she has to go to the school best suited for her I really want her to have every opportunity and feel it is unfair that she should lose out because of a bad start. Do you have any advice on how I can build up her confidence and help her gain those basic skills without adding to the pressure and sadness?

A. Reading this, I am struck by the fact that there seems to be a mismatch between what all parties in the triangle – you, your daughter and the school – seem to feel about how your daughter is doing, what her abilities are, and what she needs to do in order to be successful and happy. I would strongly suggest that you access some external help to probe more deeply and to find some kind of hard evidence about your daughter, which will make it easier for everyone involved to establish a plan to build up her academic skills and her self-confidence. The first, most obvious step, is for her to be assessed by a qualified and reputable Educational Psychologist, who will do a range of tests to analyse her current academic levels and her underlying intelligences. The resulting report should identify categorically the areas of weakness, so that you can put in place additional tutoring if necessary to help fill in those early gaps. The report should also suggest the teaching and learning techniques from which your daughter will most benefit, and this should most definitely be shared with her teachers. In addition, you might want to consider child counselling – for your daughter to be so unhappy at home is unusual, and she may well benefit from a confidential trained ear to help her understand and manage her feelings.

One of the hardest things to realise as parents is that we cannot personally solve everything for our daughters, but be assured that there is focused help available out there, and if you can access it for your daughter, then you are doing the best you possibly can for her. If you can hide your anxiety from her, and give her unconditional loving permission to do and be herself (while putting in place the structures around her to delve more deeply and then to help resolve her issues), then she will be in the best position to benefit from what you are doing for her.