'His teachers kept saying he could do better'

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My son Mikey, who's 7, is really bright but every parents' evening, his teacher said the same thing - that he'd do a lot better if he stopped daydreaming!

Apparently Mikey never finished anything because he was always 'miles away', either staring out the window or chatting with other kids. I tried talking to him about it but he said he tried his best and I didn't push it because I didn't want him to think I was cross in case it made things worse.

A friend of mine, who's a classroom assistant, suggested I try some games with Mikey where he had to concentrate for a set period of time. So I bought a five-minute egg timer and asked him to do as many sums as he could in that time.

We also practised writing for five minutes without stopping and I wrote little quizzes where Mikey had to answer all 10 questions.

Whenever he finished something, I put a star on his star chart and after a while, we moved on to doing things for 10 minutes and so on.

I told Mikey's teacher what I was doing and now she tries to set him work in short sharp bursts too. I'm hoping his next school report won't mention daydreaming at all.
Debbi Peterson, 38, from Bidston, Wirral

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By Debbi Peterson

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yvonne Traore, about 1 year

I was in similar situation whereby my 5 and a half years old daughter just started primary one this year and at the end of the trimester the teacher told me she very behind and seems not to be coping with the length of lessons. I know she has some problem retaining things that she has been taught before but she is not a loser and what really hurt me was the fact that she remove her from the front telling me that being at the front sometimes give my daughter the fear of being asked to participate. What could i do to help her.

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Tilly, about 1 year

Sometimes it also pay to have a child checked out healthwise - could be a type of epilepsy (petit mals) which could last just seconds but can distract the child from what they were doing.

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Shirley Lewis, about 1 year

I found the article very useful indeed. I will try the egg timer exercise

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