My Child Is Smart, So Why Are They Struggling in School?
You know your child is smart.
They can talk to you about something they love in incredible detail. They understand humor. They make connections that surprise you. They may even get good grades.
But school is harder than it should be.
You ask what they learned and get, “I don’t know.” They read a chapter but cannot tell you what it was about. A teacher gives several directions and they only remember the first one. Writing a paragraph takes an hour because they cannot figure out how to organize what they want to say.
Maybe you have already had testing done. You might have heard ADHD, dyslexia, executive functioning, anxiety, or learning disability. Maybe the testing came back with mostly average scores.
But you are still looking for an answer because something does not quite fit.
Language processing may be one of the pieces that has not been fully explored.
Language is more than talking
Most parents hear “speech language pathologist” and think about speech sounds or children who are late to talk.
That is part of what we do, but language is much bigger than that.
Think about what a student has to do during a typical school day.
They listen to a teacher while deciding what information is important. They follow directions that may contain four or five steps. They learn new vocabulary. They read information and connect it to something they learned last week. They answer questions, explain their reasoning, make inferences, take notes, organize their thoughts, and turn those thoughts into writing.
That is a lot of language.
And a child can be very verbal and still have difficulty with it.
This is one reason language processing difficulties can be missed. A student may sound completely typical in conversation. They have friends. They tell stories. They have a good vocabulary.
Then you ask them to explain the main idea of something they just read and everything falls apart.
What does a language processing difficulty look like?
It does not look the same in every child.
Some students have trouble following longer directions. Others understand information but cannot hold onto it long enough to use it. Some know exactly what they want to say but struggle to organize their thoughts into a clear response.
Parents might notice:
difficulty following complex directions
forgetting information that was just presented
trouble explaining what they learned
difficulty summarizing a story or chapter
disorganized verbal or written responses
trouble making inferences
difficulty figuring out what information is important
becoming overwhelmed by writing assignments
trouble taking notes while listening
needing much more time than expected for homework
difficulty getting started on assignments
inconsistent school performance
Sometimes these students do fairly well in elementary school.
Then middle school hits.
There are more teachers, longer assignments, more reading, more writing, and much less support for keeping track of everything. The student who managed before suddenly cannot keep up.
The problem may look new, but the underlying difficulties may have been there for years.
What does executive functioning have to do with language?
Quite a bit.
Language processing and executive functioning are not the same thing, but they work together all day long.
Imagine a teacher says, “Finish the last three questions, put your paper in the blue bin, grab your Chromebook, and open the assignment from yesterday.”
First, the student has to understand the direction.
Then they have to remember it.
They have to figure out what to do first, shift from one task to another, ignore everything happening around them, and notice if they forgot a step.
If the student does not complete the direction, we need to know why.
Did they understand all of it?
Did they understand it but forget part of it?
Did they remember it but have trouble organizing the steps?
Did they know exactly what to do but could not get started?
From the outside, all four students may look like they “didn’t follow directions.”
Those are very different problems.
What if my child has already been tested?
That is actually pretty common for the students who need this type of evaluation.
You may already have a neuropsychological evaluation, school testing, dyslexia testing, an ADHD diagnosis, an IEP, or a 504 plan.
That information is useful. We use all that information.
We want to look at what is already known and figure out what questions are still unanswered.
Different evaluations look at different things.
A neuropsychological evaluation may give you valuable information about cognition, memory, attention, learning, and executive functioning. School testing helps a team determine educational needs and eligibility for services. Dyslexia testing takes a closer look at reading and related skills.
A comprehensive language evaluation looks closely at how a student understands and uses language.
Sometimes that is the missing piece.
This is not an evaluation designed to get your child into weekly therapy
That distinction matters to us.
At Darling Pediatric Therapy, our comprehensive Language Processing and Executive Functioning Assessment is meant to answer a question.
Why is this student struggling?
We look at the areas that make sense for that individual student. That may include receptive and expressive language, higher level language, following complex directions, verbal working memory, narrative skills, inferencing, problem solving, organization of ideas, and executive functioning.
We also want to know what has already been tried.
Previous evaluations, IEPs, 504 plans, school reports, teacher concerns, and information from other professionals can help us see the bigger picture.
At the end, families receive a comprehensive written report that explains what we found and what to do with that information.
What happens after the evaluation?
It depends.
Some students may benefit from therapy. Some will not.
Your child may already have a great tutor, therapist, psychologist, executive functioning coach, or school team. We are not looking to replace people who are already helping your child.
Sometimes the most useful thing we can do is give those people better information.
The recommendations from an evaluation may help a school team understand what accommodations are appropriate. They may identify areas that should be targeted in tutoring or therapy. They may help parents understand why homework takes three hours every night.
They may also tell us that another professional needs to take a closer look at something.
The point is not to collect another diagnosis.
The point is to understand the child.
When should you consider a language processing evaluation?
You may want to look more closely at language processing if your child is bright but their school performance does not match what you know they can do.
Maybe complex directions are difficult. Writing and organization are a constant struggle. They have trouble retaining information. Dyslexia explains some things, but not everything.
Or maybe your child has already had quite a bit of testing and you still have questions.
We also see students after a neuropsychologist, school team, psychologist, tutor, or another provider recommends a more detailed look at language.
You do not need to know exactly what is wrong before asking for an evaluation.
Figuring that out is part of the process.
Language Processing and Executive Functioning Evaluations in Naperville
Darling Pediatric Therapy provides comprehensive Language Processing and Executive Functioning Assessments for school age children and adolescents in Naperville, Illinois.
We are interested in more than whether a score falls above or below a cutoff.
We want to know where things start getting hard.
What happens when the directions get longer? When the reading becomes more complex? When your child has to organize several ideas at once? When they have to remember information while doing something else?
And just as importantly, what helps?
A good evaluation should leave you knowing more about your child than you did before you walked in.
It should also give you somewhere to go next.
If you have been trying to figure out why your child is struggling and feel like you still do not have the whole picture, we can help you take a closer look.
Contact Darling Pediatric Therapy in Naperville to learn more about our comprehensive Language Processing and Executive Functioning Assessment or to schedule an evaluation.
Email hello@darlingpediatrictherapy.com or call 331-207-4350
