Is It Time to Hire a Tutor
For Your Middle-Schooler?
Hiring a qualified tutor to help your child with academics may be the best investment you make—especially during the middle-school years when you and your adolescent will find plenty of reasons to battle other than homework.
By the time a child with LD is in middle school, many parents find they’ve fought the good fight long enough. Not only are assignments becoming more complex, and therefore more frustrating, but the struggles are escalating as preteens naturally look for ways to assert their independence.
Weary of being the lightning rod for schoolwork frustration, yet knowing their children still need hands-on guidance, some parents find the answer
in a tutor—ideally one with experience teaching children with LD.
A qualified tutor will likely come with a few tricks up his sleeve to make the learning process less painful. But even if your child continues to harbor some of the same feelings of anger and resentment that characterized your sessions, he’ll be less likely to act on them with a paid professional—and even if he does, the tutor has enough emotional distance not to take it personally.
Be the Hero
With someone you trust cracking the homework whip, you’re then free to focus your energy on the more significant role of emotional cheerleader. Any qualified person can help your child learn to write a coherent paragraph or figure out word problems, but who, besides you, can he turn to for TLC and moral support when he’s struggling to write that paragraph or solve that math equation? If you and he are battling over homework, he has no one to help repair his injured self-esteem.
In trying to fulfill both roles—primary support giver and homework helper—one is likely to be compromised. Which are you willing to sacrifice?