Ask HN: Educating a child who is severely behind

My stepfather did this, unconditionally taking on two young boys that were not his own. Give him your time and your love. He'll learn greedily if you don't push him. All children want to please their parents. He needs to make mistakes and let him take risks. Praise him for trying, rather than scolding him for failing. Every child is different.

The one thing I've learned from parenting is that you have to 'pivot' constantly. You have to adapt to child's brain that is constantly developing and adapting itself.

Enjoy yourself, leave your work at work. Young children are incredibly adept at picking up tiny signals. They know if you are tired and don't want to play with them or read them a story before bedtime. They will punish you for it!

After the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania, it was discovered that there were terrifying orphanages full of kids who had had almost no human contact for years and were in bad shape as a result. My aunt volunteered to go to Romania to help save as many of these kids as possible.

The relevant news for you is that kids who were only three at the time rescuers arrived almost all recovered without lasting harm. The thing that saved them was LOTS of daily human interaction.

Talk to that boy as much as you can. Hold him, sing to him (singing skill is optional), play with his hands, play "piggies" with his toes, work on naming parts of his face, play "head, shoulders, knees, and toes," play with blocks, talk about colors, have one of you make a funny face and the other one has to copy it then switch roles, and so on. (Don't read too much into it if he's really bad at some of these games. My sons had no developmental problems, and yet I could not BELIEVE how badly they did on some simple mental games: "See this green card, Buddy? It's green, isn't it?" "Yes." "What color is it?" "I don't know, Dada." "This color is green, okay?" "Okay." "So, what color is this GREEN card?" "I don't know, Dada." Yes, believe it or not, this is totally normal.)

Be a little careful not to overstimulate him with too much noise, wild motion, etc., because that can be hard for him to process until he's older, but lots of calm, happy, silly, giggly talking and playing should (slowly) bring him back to the path he would have been on without the early lack of attention.

Also, as others have suggested, do involve doctors in this to the extent you can. There might be more to the story than lack of attention, and "many eyes" are better for debugging problems early, right?

Talk to him a lot and ask questions with follow up why, where, when, etc. Also the more you expose him to, the more he learns, take him yo see a real train, a real truck, etc and explain what it is. Most importantly show love and give them fun. I love playing sports with my boys or just wrestling around. Every sat and sun we go for a 1 - 2 hr trip on a red wagon in the park, they throw sticks, rocks, etc. KISS

Relax about the potty training. Frequent reminders, sticker chart, and bigger milestone rewards are all you need. Kids are on their on timeline with this, and any anxiety you have around it won't help. Regarding speech, repeat back clearly what the boy says to you. A speech therapist helps. It is a long, gradual process. Facilitated play (i.e., guided by adult) with peers is huge.

"Your job is to get the little guy the services he needs and be prepared to be stubborn and insistent that he gets them."

My personal experience is the entire medical community seems to have an avoidance issue WRT food allergies. Oh who knows some kids are just like that. Thats just how some kids are, why don't you wait and see if he catches up. I'm sure that's not the case. Well some kids just develop at a different rate mentally and physically than others. They'd rather MRI my son for suspected stomach cancer than test for allergy antibodies (or was it just xray? It was awhile ago). Seriously. They had us all in suspected cancer mode before they broke down and tried allergy testing.

Eventually, after much arguing, the pediatrician ordered a blood test, referred him to a gastroenterologist, who did some crazy stomach wall tissue biopsy after draining about a quart for innumerable blood tests, and finally, they're like "yeah, he's severely allergic to gluten per both biopsy and blood tests, so stop eating that". And casein and soy.

I found it remarkable how hard you have to push to get tests done for a diagnosis like that. I believe in for profit industry, follow the money. The worst medical scenario for the patient or the parents is probably cancer or something awful like that. The worst medical scenario for the doctors and adminstrators is an illness that is treated by a "simple" diet change and requires no expensive pills, no expensive followups, no expensive surgery, diagnosis wasn't too expensive other than the tissue biopsy work... that's why you have to fight fight fight to even get tested because that diagnosis is a nightmare scenario for the docs.

The point of all this is his development rate skyrocketed once we got him proper food, and he's pretty near caught up to his peers, which is cool. So you'll have to fight extremely hard to test for food allergies, but it might (or might not) pay off. (edited to add there may be other financial nightmare scenarios for doctors which are hard to get tested. Hmm, how about vision testing? Can't learn to read if you can't see the page, but if you can avoid getting the kid glasses you can milk that cow for money for a long time WRT special needs reading classes and such. My daughter had that problem.)