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 Reading and Math are Emotionally Fragile 

Both math and reading depend upon steady, continuous attention.  If one's mind wanders during reading or math, it is very difficult to learn much or demonstrate what you know.  This makes both of these skills very vulnerable to emotionally driven attentional avoidance or overload. And, this is a reason so many children struggle with these skills.
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These attentional breaks make reading and math more difficult and frustrating.  And, the more difficult and frustrating reading and math are, the more likely it is that the child will develop attentional avoidance of these unpleasant feelings.  This sets up a self defeating feedback loop in which performance is inhibited  which increases negative feeling towards these task, which causes further performance decrements, which builds into a downward spiraling loop.

Oral reading

We really do not teach reading, we teach oral reading. This puts constant priority on performance evaluation and feedback.  This public display of tentative and unsure skills is risky. Most oral reading consists of someone pointing out errors in identifying words, sounding out words, pronunciation etc. as the child reads.  No matter how delicately you phrase it, the message is clear, “you got it wrong.” By its very nature, it is inclined to be a negative process. This generates social anxiety which are of course inhibits any intellectual performance.  None of us feel good when we get constant negative feedback, no matter how gently it is phrased.

If is often better to praise positive performance and be less diligent about pointing out all but the most blatant errors. It is better for children to feel successful than to put too much focus on errors. Most reading mistakes will rectify themselves over time.

Math Struggles

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ADHD:
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