I offered to take on a challenging student because I feel for this student. He is highly distracted, can be disrespectful, and appears to have extreme difficulty with reading. This could have been my son had he been in public school and not received proper instruction and parental support — key success factors. I hope that this student’s parents provide the structure that is needed for him to succeed.
My son was diagnosed with ADHD in the fifth grade. He was hyperactive, inattentive, and struggled with executive functioning. For years, therapists, school personnel, and “the books” advised us to put structure into place, make lists and teach organizational skills to keep him on track. I was unable to follow that advice, mainly because I have three kiddos and couldn’t keep tabs on everything, nor was that something I desired to do. My brain doesn’t have the capacity to project manage my children’s education and their entire lives.
The experts were right about one thing, that structure is important!
I have a vivid memory of sitting along in my first IEP meeting, surrounded by school personnel. Every one of them telling me, my son needs “structure.” I was young in mothering, and I didn’t understand what they meant by structure. He was four years old.
I’ve spent years following “expert” advice, websites, books, bounced around from doctor-to-doctor, shifting my parenting like the wind. We started with “attachment parenting” and it wasn’t till he was older, that we found some excellent doctors and settled on an authoritative parenting style. The five different parenting styles are explained in depth in Goodhousekeeping as well as authoritative parenting…
What is authoritative parenting?
Authoritative parenting is a little bit of everything: Parents set rules and boundaries that they enforce with consistency, but nurture kids so they can meet those standards.
The term was developed by psychologist Diana Baumrind, who studied preschoolers and found there were three types of parents who used one of three different parenting styles: authoritative parenting, authoritarian parenting, and permissive parenting. (A fourth style, neglectful parenting, was added to address severely uninvolved parents.)
Studies show that authoritative parents are likely to have children who are more well adjusted than those with authoritarian or permissive styles.
Consider assessing your parenting style and whether it’s working and tweaking.
It can be a ton more work to parent our kiddos. I don’t know if I’m doing it right and how it’ll impact them as adults, but am doing the best I can with the knowledge I carry. It’s far from perfect parenting, but we have peace in our household and that’s priceless.