BY SUSANNA PINKUS
This is never about fixing the child.
Because they absolutely do not need fixing.
Rather, this is about understanding the world through the young person’s eyes and adapting their environment, often both at home and school.
This is about bringing exceptional strengths and passions into the light whilst gently and carefully scaffolding any challenges.
As educators, we need better and more informed ways of understanding why some of our young people struggle in school and be able to proactively address these issues with skill, compassion and flexibility.
When young people tell me about why they find school so difficult there are entirely understandable reasons – sensory overwhelm, disconnected learning, worries about attendance sanctions, overload of homework pressure when they have just about survived the day, misunderstood physical challenges often hyper mobility amongst many others, invisible learning difficulties, social overload and not feeling psychologically safe.
There is however often so much which can be done to help, and especially if caught early enough.
