Hello everyone. I hope everyone is having a great holiday season! Throughout 2019 I’ve seen my mother work very hard with Anjali in order to improve her performance in school, and specifically in the subjects of Mathematics and Reading. This has resulted in Anjali scoring 99% on a mathematics diagnostic test. The journey to this accomplishment by Anjali is what I want to share through this post. Every child is different Aryan, therefore what could you possibly tell us that would help improve every special needs child? This might be a question you have regarding this post and something that I had to consider as well. It is true that Anjali’s academic journey has and will be completely different from that of any other special needs child you may know, but I believe there is an important lesson from Anjali’s experience that could help anyone else in her position.
I’ll start from the beginning. My mother was working very hard with Anjali at home and helping her work through old arithmetic and phonics books I used to solve as a kid. Writing with a pencil was even a goal for Anjali in her school’s IEP. Therefore it is clear that a lot of effort was being put in to improve Anjali academically, but her progress eventually plateaued just like her swim lessons (make sure to check out that post). This frustrated my mother, as her effort towards this cause had stopped producing results for quite a while. Due to this, my mom decided to turn to outside help.

This is when Anjali started Kumon lessons. This post is not sponsored or an endorsement for Kumon or any tutoring company. Many families with special needs children may not be able to afford such lessons, and it is absolutely not needed to pay for one. An idea that I think can be taken away from my mother switching Anjali over to Kumon is that any parent or guardian helping their special needs child learn may need to reconsider a different direction or method of teaching at some point in time. This is exactly what my mother did, and a two-person support system, one being my mother’s teaching at home and the other being of the Kumon tutor, helped Anjali elevate her learning significantly ahead of what was being taught in school. This was also the point where she scored 99% in the math diagnostic tests I was talking about earlier.

What’s the next step? This is a question a parent tutoring their special needs child at home will have to ask after they see a large jump in progress. In the context of Anjali, the answer to that question would be continuing work with her reading skills. This brings me to a conclusion of these thoughts. With my mother’s hard work with Anjali as an example, I would like to say that every special needs child has potential not only academically, but in any activity in general. The key to helping them progress in that field is to be patient, be persistent, and find a balance between those two ideas. A change of direction or academic system, like Anjali’s switch to Kumon, may also be needed. Even after all of this, there will always be room to improve, with Anjali’s weakness in reading/writing skills as an example, but the key for academic progress with a special needs child will always involve hard work, patience, and support.