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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here. Thank you for the detailed response. Yes, a lot of what you say as the parent of a kid who had brain cancer sounds familiar. My brain tumor kid has poor/slow processing, bad long term memory, and recall issues. He really wants to do well but, as he gets older, he realizes how much harder he has to work in the academic setting and he gets discouraged ...and needs outside motivation/support to get back in there. This individualized support is just not always practical/feasible in the classroom and at home. He just had a neuro-psych eval and looks like he is average intellectually (I don't see an IQ number). Yes, he has been in mathnasium since second grade and tutors here and there. He is actually really good at computing numbers in his head and enjoys math...he reads well...it's just the reading comprehension starting to kill us... i don't know...and his tumor messes with his metabolism so he gains weight easily and so he is in a lot of physical activity in the evenings... i don't know...they tell me to get a therapist and a tutor and exercise and exec functioning support and i'm just trying to prioritize and try to keep this tumor from taking more from him...and me[/quote]

Brain cancer mom again. So my other kid actually has profound ID. And I will tell you my biggest learning from both my kids is that you just cannot optimize everything. Doctors and therapists will give you a laundry lists of things you “must do” and really, you can’t. So take a breath, look at your time and finances, and what your other kids need. Then, you make a plan.

I will say this. My daughter has done much better with a 1:1 tutor from fusion for math than she did at mathnasium. The 3:1 ratio there just wasn’t working as she hit middle school. It might also help if you have a consistent male tutor since you have a son — whatever the subject.

I also understand the self worth thing. Middle
School was tough for my kid as she realized her other straight A friends were so much faster and everything came easier for them. She pushed through it and now does homework a lot with friends (at Starbucks, etc). I don’t know that boys socialize like this, but it is really helpful for her. She has one really gifted friend so that is her favorite person to study math with. But, she also likes to study with her friend with high functioning autism where my kid actually can help her with getting organized and staying on task. It gives my kid confidence when she can help someone else out. And both of them will ask me to help study for social studies and ELA. Any chance your kid has a studious friend that would want to come over and eat junk while they do homework together? I try to have fun food the kids like when they do this at our house.

Overall, I just had to be really frank but supportive “yep, it totally sucks you are missing a chunk of your brain which makes things take longer, but you are smart, work hard and care a lot. You also have better problem solving skills than some of the gifted kids.” Don’t try to gaslight your kid (not that I think you are).

For reading comprehension, I read to my kid a lot. I read out loud both assignment stuff and a sort chick lit murder mystery book at bedtime. We stop and try to give her time to catch up with the processing in her brain and I might summarize a few paragraphs with her after reading them. The bedtime stuff is a pain because it is 45 minutes at night when I’m tired myself. But, I do think it helps even when it is relatively junky reading - summarizing what happened and talking about new vocab words is always helpful. Is there anything he would like you to read to him?

Anyway, just a few ideas. But really, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And you cannot do it all.[/quote]

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