Saturday 19 November 2016

...for the exceptional child

Every parents' dream is to have the model child;the child who excels in his academics.no parent ever wants to have or wishes for a child who is academically deficient hence when they have such a child,it comes as a huge shock.the question is "what do you do"? what do you do when you discover your child cannot perform like his classmates/age mates?what do you do when his teachers complain that he cannot read or write is usually absentminded in class?what is your reaction?do you scold him severely and threaten to deny him some privileges?do you compare him with his siblings who are excelling in their academics or do you simply fire the previous home tutor and hire a 'better' one? what exactly do you do?
        it is amusing that we have children and when they are of age enroll them in schools and yet we dont have a knowledge of  the learning process.unfortunately,even some teachers dont.but why leave your child's welfare to  the teacher alone?its your primary responsibility!
        my interest in children and learning disorder began the day i casually picked up The Guardian newspaper and turned to  my favorite column the girl whispherer. he wrote on dyslexia.though i could not fully comprehend all,i understood even to remember my primary school.primary 5 precisely.i remembered a classmate who couldn't do his sums,read nor write.i remember how our teacher would ask him to stand and read,i remembered the look of defeat on his face;without trying he already knew he had failed.our class teacher would flog him as though she was looking forward to it after all she never expected him to read it anyway.i remembered him taking his sit, head bowed and we the 'smart' ones will always exchange a giggle and read with flourish.i felt bad.how come no one made any special effort to help him?why didnt anyone care to discover why he couldnt perform like the rest of us?
   I got into the university of portharcourt to study mass communication but alas!,uniport combines it with linguistics.i wanted to work with a radio or Tv or magazine,i am going to be the Aisha Bello or Kehinde Young-Harry of my time what has linguistics got to be with any of that?i disliked linguistics without giving it a chance.the negative things my senior colleagues said about linguistic courses didnt help matters.It was pertinent that i did well in all my courses both linguistics and communication courses so i had to study hard and in the process,i began to like linguistics though i hated to admit  it.in my second year,i did courses on speech acquisition and learning disorders and i was taken back to that article in The Guardian newspaper and the flame was reignited and it has burned in an all consuming manner ever since.i cant control its intensity nor heat.after a whole lot of soul searching,anxiety,worries,questions and studies,i took the wobbly step of starting my blog.the aim of this blog is to provide insight on your child'`s learning process amongst other things such as speech acquisition,child psychology and solutions to challenges in learning your child may have.this blog is simply about your child.insights from scholarly articles will be used to further direct you.
      Every child deserves happiness.every child deserves a chance to lead a normal well balanced life.every child should stand a chance.the childhood stage is a very tender and formative period that influences greatly they kind of adult your child will be.may it never be said that your child was never happy,never excelled and regards his childhood as traumatic because you didnt have the necessary knowledge,because you failed to read...

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