How Can Tutoring Help Your Neurodivergent Child Thrive?
Is your child struggling to sound out basic words? Do they have difficulty comprehending material that
they read, expressing their thoughts on paper when writing, or solving math problems? If so, your child
may be neurodivergent, meaning their brain functions different than those of other children.
Neurodiversity can be used to describe children who have learning disabilities, ADHD, or autism.
Tutoring can provide immense benefits to your neurodivergent child and can help them develop
stronger skills in several academic areas.
Phonics
Beginning in kindergarten, children are usually expected to learn the names of the letters and their
corresponding sounds. From there, they learn to blend these sounds together to read and write basic
words. As students progress through school, the word patterns become more complex; children need to
learn how to read and spell words with blends, r-controlled sounds, vowel digraphs, silent e patterns,
multi-syllabic words, and many other word patterns. Some children are able to grasp these new skills
with ease. Others, however, especially neurodivergent children, may struggle with these basic concepts.
Don’t wait until your neurodivergent child is struggling to seek support for them. If you notice your child is having difficulties with reading, take action and help them with one-on-one tutoring. The Orton
Gillingham method and Orton Gillingham tutoring can help neurodivergent children to significantly
strengthen their core reading and spelling skills.
Learn more about Orton Gillingham tutoring at What is Orton Gillingham Tutoring? - EBL Coaching
Reading Comprehension
As students progress through elementary school, there is typically a transition from learning to read to
reading to learn. Developing strong reading comprehension skills becomes increasingly important.
Students need to be able to read a passage and grasp the topic, main idea, important details, make
predictions, and draw conclusions from what they read, amongst other key comprehension skills. For
some students, comprehending language can be a real challenge, especially for those who are
neurodivergent. Reading tutoring can help your neurodivergent child become a more active reader; they may learn to identify the topic and highlight it in blue, find the main idea and highlight it in green, and identify the important details and highlight them in yellow. With reading tutoring, neurodivergent children can also learn to create 1-2 line summaries of what they read, make inferences, and come upwith predictions about what may happen next in a story. These skills are all very important for success in school.
Writing
With writing, students need to learn how to write a well-constructed sentence, expand their sentences, and then move on to more complex writing. As children move through school, they will need to be able to write simple paragraphs, expanded paragraphs, and eventually five paragraph essays and research papers. Some children may learn how to write effectively with ease, but for others, especially for neurodiverse children, writing can be such a struggle that they often shut down at the thought of even starting a writing assignment. If your neurodivergent child is demonstrating difficulties with writing, tutoring can help. With writing tutoring, they can learn how to brainstorm, write, and self-check their ideas in an organized fashion and can develop much stronger writing skills.
Math
As students move through school, math concepts build upon themselves. Students must grasp
foundational concepts such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in order to understand
how to complete more complex math problems. They must also learn how to break down math word
problems and move from language to arithmetic and back to language to solve the problems accurately.
Some students, including neurodivergent students, may excel with one aspect of math, such as
computation, but might struggle with word problems, often due to language or reading challenges.
Math tutoring can help your neurodivergent child develop stronger foundational skills and excel as the
math demands at school increase.
As your child moves through school, the reading, writing, and math demands will continue to increase.
EBL Coaching specializes in research-based, multi-sensory tutoring that can help your neurodivergent child thrive. This type of one-on-one tutoring can help your child feel confident and successful in school.
