School Issues and Education Support

Public school is not serving your child.

You aren’t feeling the love from the public school system. You and your neighbors agree that your district is mediocre, despite its reputation for awarding many nationally ranked “Distinguished Schools.”

It’s hard to understand what determines a “stellar school,” especially since one (or more) of your kids continues to agonize over “below proficient” results and poor grades.

A private school feels like an option, but tuitions rival the skyrocketing college costs (which are ri-donck-ulous). You haven’t yet saved nearly enough for one college education, let alone one for each of your children.

The school administration is no help.

Every year, you’ve hired multiple academic tutors and coaches (ahem, also expensive!) to help your child keep up. You collaborated closely with all teachers to keep your child(ren) on track and even met with the administration team to voice your concerns.

Whenever you ask for help, the school responds with unaccommodating and dissonant solutions. You know that a regular “backpack check/dump group” or the rarely offered “organizational skills” and “time-management” workshops won’t cut it.

Your child(ren)’s confidence is gone, their mental health suffers, and they act out more to get noticed. You keep pulling your hair out, trying to help at home, but your relationship with your child also suffers.

The experience makes you ask, “Aren’t schools designed to cooperate with families and help support children to learn and do well in school?”

YOU KNOW your child needs real educational intervention to achieve average grades. You are desperate for help but see no real supportive action on their part. It is maddening, but you know something more is affecting your child(ren)’s ability to learn.

I get it!

My children struggled in school and didn’t get the support they needed until I got very loud and squeaky. I felt desperate and infuriated. The thing is, I’ve spent many years of my professional career working as a mental health clinician and guidance counselor on local campuses in the public school system.

I am intimately familiar with how the system operates, so I had the inside track to navigate to the resources that would accommodate my children with the real help they needed.

Most students and parents don’t know how to access this support. The messages they receive about their children may not even be accurate, so suggested solutions worsen the situation at home and school.

When frustrations mount, acting out becomes the norm, risky behaviors increase, and the problem becomes less about school and safety. Let’s look under the hood at what is happening because that hot radiator cap needs pliers, not a hammer.

One size does not fit all.

Every student is unique. Many students perform at their peak intellectual levels but cannot keep pace with the current unrealistic academic standards.

I specialize in supporting adolescents and their families by helping them restore balance, become equipped with practical coping strategies, and find the true purpose possibly lost in striving to excel.

Students with ADHD, Learning Disabilities, Special Needs, mental health concerns, etc. require additional, specialized support. These students have intellectual, cognitive, and/or physical challenges that can interfere with access to public school curriculum standards, making keeping up with academics laborious.

Using my intimate knowledge of available school resources, I can help you obtain the appropriate educational support to offer your child additional resources in the classroom. I can also provide scaffolded supports that complement the resources you may already receive from the schools.

The education experience has become a pressure cooker!

There are pressures from all sides, including academic performance, over-scheduling, social and media distractions, parental expectations, peer pressures and competition, and a distorted definition of success.

As a direct result, teens are now experiencing increased anxiety, depression, burnout, panic attacks, self-injury, substance use, and other debilitating conditions to attempt to cope with impossible expectations. Inherently, adolescence is a challenging season where children transform into adults – from caterpillars to butterflies.

Whether you now realize that your child has struggles or you’ve been battling for some time, I can help you navigate the maze of public education and mental health priority.

Obstacles to learning can impact academic performance and learning. Whether the distraction is social, behavioral, or psychological, your student needs emotional resources to call upon when the campus experience gets overwhelming.

If you find yourself wrestling with the niggling feeling that something isn’t quite right and are ready to flip your child’s script from surviving to thriving, call me at 530.208.9424 or email me at lisaolsonmft@gmail.com.