---

It’s that time of year…. Parent-Teacher Conferences. Some parents love hearing about their child’s successes, but some parents don’t have that experience. Instead they receive a troubling report.

If you’re reading this, you probably sat in the tiny chair in front of your child’s teacher and absorbed the classroom your child occupies five days a week.  You scoured the walls looking for your child’s artwork and reminisced on your own school days for a minute.

You were a little excited and a little nervous to get the scoop on how your brilliant child is excelling in school, but the teacher spent about 30 seconds on your child’s strengths and the rest was about how he’s struggling.

Struggling to grasp academic concepts…
Struggling to stay focused…
Disrupting the class…
Not performing well on tests…
Or even struggling socially…

Struggling just enough to be cause for concern and just enough to not make sense. You know your child is brilliant and you experience it at home, but your child’s teacher isn’t quite accessing it. It can feel like your child’s brain is turned off at school or amped up so high that they can’t learn.

Regardless of the teacher’s feedback you left the conversation puzzled and not really understanding how to get your child up to speed. Maybe this type of parent teacher conference isn’t new to you, but you’re not seeing changes and you weren’t given any direction on how to create change.

Here’s some valuable information for you to look into. Many children are experiencing sensory challenges that are going unidentified in schools or are being incorrectly diagnosed as behavioral issues, ADHD, or even autism spectrum disorder. Sensory challenges are 5 times more likely than autism spectrum disorder yet most professionals your child is encountering are not trained to spot it.

Sensory challenges just mean that a child’s brain responds to sensory input differently and some sensations may create an over-responsive action, like hitting back when being lightly touched. Other times a sensation like touch or someone trying to get the child’s attention may go unnoticed because the brain is under-responsive. There are many other variations of sensory challenges that can prevent your child from entering “the learning zone”.

Sensory challenges show up differently in each individual and most doctors are trained to respond to sensory concerns from parents as if the child will “grow out of it”.  Teachers are rarely trained to understand what sensory challenges are so they are often looked at as behavioral issues or laziness. For many children, the sensory challenges continue and even get worse without treatment as they grow.

Once a sensory issue is identified, the child can receive the direction they need to enter “the learning zone” they haven’t been able to access at school.

If you think your child may be experiencing a sensory challenge check out the Symptoms Checklist and the Understanding SPD informational page. STAR Institute for SPD is equipped to assess children who are experiencing sensory challenges so you can be clear on how to get your child in the learning zone.