Helping your child learn and succeed in school

William B. Svoboda, MD, is a retired pediatric neurologist. He is the founder and former Director of Via Christi Epilepsy Center of Wichita, Kansas.

This series of articles about the effects of epilepsy on children's lives and personalities, and how parents can help their child achieve a happy, independent life, is based mostly on an interview with Dr. Svoboda that was conducted by Shawna Cutting, a writer for epilepsy.com.

Are teachers knowledgeable about children's seizure disorders?
I find that when teachers first encounter a child with epilepsy, they often begin with false images and beliefs. They may be overly tolerant of the child's behavior because they think it is appropriate for someone with seizures. They may believe that the child will not be able to learn. They may blame poor performance on the behavior or the pills and overlook learning problems caused by the epilepsy itself.

But if the parents and child share information with the teacher, very often the same teacher that started with serious reservations about the child's chances for success will become an avid champion of what kids with epilepsy can do. This is what we're facing—trying to reach out to the teachers and help them learn that there is more to epilepsy than medicine.

Are there environments or teaching styles that could help a child who has problems with attention and memory?
I like to teach the parents a simple word: "Why?" If the school says the child is not doing too well, then the parents keep saying "Why?" to the teachers until something is done to find out why.

The environment can be very important. Most kids with complex partial seizures in the left side (the dominant side, where language is handled) have problems in a noisy environment. So if you move them into a quieter place, they can calm down and be more attentive. (But there are some kids with left-sided complex partial seizures who are more attentive and calmer when it's noisy.) Kids with seizures from the right hemisphere tend to be distracted by an environment with a lot of things to look at. They often do better in a setting like a study booth or a desk facing a wall. Yet these suggestions are just temporary—life is full of noise and distraction. So you want to desensitize the child and train him or her to be able to cope better.

You also need to consider whether problems happen only at certain times of the day or in certain classes. If they happen only at certain times of the day, the medicine may be peaking at that time. If it's certain classes, maybe the child has a learning disability that needs to be checked out. In general, kids with seizures typically don't do well in timed tests. They do best if they can take their time.

The teacher needs to be able to teach in different ways. Teaching with an auditory style [by lecturing] is not a good fit for a child who does best by looking—a visual learner. With kids who have learning problems and seizures, it's nice if the teachers and the parents can unite in a common approach. This doesn't mean that the child should have more spelling tests or practices at home just like the ones at school. But if the child has poor auditory memory, for example, the parents can play games with the child at home that develop auditory memory skills without competing with what the teacher is doing.

Many parents learn using the same style their children use.
Children tend to imitate their families. When I look at kids I look at the parents too. As I'm explaining something, it helps to know how the parent learns. Parents' learning styles also affect what they do with the child. If a mother is ashamed of her own learning style, she will not be very tolerant of the same style in the child. She wants the child to learn from her experience. Sometimes, though, the kid knows how to use that style successfully.

How about homework? How should parents work with their kids?
Usually, I vote for doing things as normally as possible. If the homework is just busywork, the parents may have to figure out how much homework will help the child learn. Monitoring the homework can make it a teaching experience. If kids learn to break it up into smaller segments, to take breaks, they learn to attack homework in a better style.

Some students with left-hemisphere seizure disorders will get stuck on details. Mom and Dad should try to make sure the child gets the whole picture and not just a few details. Kids with right temporal or parietal seizures tend to rush things. They overlook details. Those kids have to be slowed down. Parents can work with them to pick out some of the key details.

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and watch out for the area in between. You should always emphasize what a child can do. Even if the seizures are not well controlled, the child still has plenty of learning time between seizures.