Sometimes the press writes about foster kids with really difficult backgrounds accomplishing amazing things in school. Those kids probably exist, but there are very few of them, and I have no idea how they do it. It’s much more likely that your kid will have some kind of trouble in school at some point. So let’s continue under that assumption, which seems more realistic to me. (If not, just skip reading this post.)

What kind of trouble? For young kids, it could be “does not play nice”, or “does not obey instructions”, or “talks all the time” or even “walks out of the classroom when he pleases” or “throws a tantrum at the teacher twice a day”. Later, it will be “rarely turns in homework”, “is far behind in math and spelling”,  “is disruptive and keeps others from working”, “seems to have no interest in school”, “pays attention to everything except the teacher” and “does not do the required work at the required level.” In high school, it might be cutting school on a regular basis.

From what I can tell, none of this has anything to do with how intelligent your kid is. Your kid might be the smartest person in school, teachers included, and still fail at what looks like the simplest tasks. Why that is might be a big mystery. If you ask your kid, they might not be able to answer either. If they have an answer, it might be that they don’t do the work because they hate school and school is pointless (because … <<insert some implausible reasoning here, like, say, they are going to join the Foreign Legion>>). If so, don’t believe that for a second. Instead, it likely is that the school provides a kind of environment for learning that works for most kids, but that happens to be the opposite of what your kid needs. So your task as a parent is to change your kid’s learning environment into something that’s more suitable for them.

If the opportunitiy exists, try to find a school that knows how to make kids with a difficult past successful. I’m told that such schools exist, but from what I can tell, they are extremely rare (and likely too far away and possibly unaffordable). If you can’t find a school like that, do the second-best thing, which is to attempt to get your local school to provide the most suitable environment for your kid that they possibly can. It will most definitely make a difference. But that is easier said than done.

If you are residing in the United States, you are in luck, because the law in on your side. (I don’t know about other countries.) The Americans With Disabilities Act requires schools to provide what they call “accommodations” so that disabled kids can have a school experience that is as close as the one of a non-disabled kid. That’s why they have wheel chair ramps everywhere. But your kid is not in a wheel chair, you say? The good news is that doesn’t matter! The law talks about any kind of disability, including a mental or emotional one. This means that if your kid sees a therapist on a regular basis, bingo, the school has to provide “accommodations”.

(A word about the term “disability” is in order. I don’t think of my kids having any kind of “disability”. They have had a difficult past that reaches out to them almost every day, and still makes their lives harder almost every day. But I don’t think of it as a disability. However, I do go to their school and wave the word “disability” around. Why? Because the law says “we shall call this and that by the name ‘disability'”, and when I talk to the teachers, I use the word “disability” like it is typically used with the Americans with Disabilities Act. I would have used a different words if I had written that law, but I didn’t. So if you say “disability” with your school that does not mean you think your kid is “disabled”, only that this law applies to your kid.)

But regardless what some law or other says, there is got to be a will by the school to implement it for your kid. Otherwise you will have to sue, and you really don’t want to do this, because you won’t get what you want anyway before your kid gets too old, the teachers and principals will hate you and your kid even if you win, and you much rather focus your time and attention on your kid instead of lawsuits.

The trick is to build a “working alliance” with your kid’s teachers. Almost all teachers originally got into teaching because they actually want to do something good for kids, so even if a teacher has become old and cynical, that desire likely is still there somewhere. It is your task to find it, connect to it, be very specific about what help you think your kid needs, and then help the teachers provide it. As unlikely as it sounds, most teachers do not understand the first thing about kids with a difficult past (judging from the dozens of teachers we have interacted with over the years in several different schools). So you need to teach them, and hold their hand if needed once they try out this new thing that they have never done before. Another reason why “working alliance” works much better than a confrontational approach.

In the next post, I’ll be specific about how to do this.