There is a different level of stress that comes when a parent has a struggling child. The report card comes home with poor grades, homework time is a battle every night, and that kid who once loved school now goes out of their way to avoid homework. Signs are easy to see, failing tests, incomplete assignments, comments from teachers at parent-teacher conferences. But what’s not easy to see is what to do about it.
Parents resort to the obvious answers. They help with homework, they limit screens, they create schedules for the day. And sometimes this works. When it doesn’t work, however, and all efforts seem futile, it’s clear that something more needs to change. This is when the idea of “getting a tutor” starts floating around the family discourse.
Deciding to Get a Tutor Before or After School Intervention
Many schools have after-school programs, summer sessions, extra help opportunities. These can be highly beneficial. At the same time, they’re beneficial for children in need, not children who are falling behind. A child missing basic elementary skills two years back isn’t suddenly going to become caught up by attending a general homework help hour for where the class is now.
This is also often the case, extra help for what needs to be done now, not the skills that help make potential work for tomorrow potential work that’s done independently. It’s the educational version of teaching someone how to catch a fish instead of helping them find a fish. Sure, in the moment, the situation is resolved. But the pattern continues down the road.
Yet parents must recognize what’s going on. If months of supplemental work with grades hasn’t helped bolster appeal and self-esteem, something needs to change. This is not necessarily the school’s fault; it merely means that the child in question requires a more tailored approach than group dynamics can offer.
How Tutoring Differs from Other Supplemental Help
Tutoring comes from a different level of educated input than that of a classroom teacher or a homework helper. The whole idea of a tutor is to provide tailored instruction. A good tutor will recognize what’s missing and formulate an overall plan to get it back on track.
This matters more than most realize. A child doesn’t struggle because they want to be left behind or because they’re lazy; they struggle because along the way, they missed out on a key principle that everything else down the line derives from. Whether it’s a math operation using fractions or algebraic thought or whether it’s an approach to reading comprehension or grammar rules, once gaps appear, the learning gets harder because everything else is based on an assumed knowledge that the student in question does not have.
A quality tutor can recognize these deficits and actively work to remedy them. For families who require structured help along the way, companies like No Nonsense Tutoring offer this highly strategic help that truly creates a difference as gaps are filled in instead of solving what’s due at school right now. The difference is noted when students are encouraged fast enough to prove they’re not bad students; they just need some extra help to come back to good and equipped with new ideas for confidence going forward.
What Qualities Matter Most in a Tutor
Parents focus on things like degrees, certifications, years of experience. While those all matter, there must also be more than merely paper credentials. There are excellent tutors who’ve graduated from the best programs but find it hard to connect with their students; conversely, there are average tutors with limited accomplishments, but who have breakthrough moments with students because they deliver their lesson in such a way that the ideas click.
The most important quality is a confidence of knowing gaps exist. It’s one thing to know the subject; it’s another to recognize how students think and where misunderstandings occur naturally. For instance, if a student is struggling with algebra but not because they’re struggling with fractions, then a tutor is wasting the parents’ time and money if she keeps hammering in formulas without addressing the one-number aspect. A tutor who recognizes the gap in operations saves the family months of extra hassle, and a child years of self-deprecation.
The communication style must also be in line; some students need strict, no-nonsense educators while others need patience. A brilliant tutor in calculus may be the wrong tutor for an eleven-year-old girl who thinks she’s “just bad at math.” The right fit comes from personalities and needs.
Flexibility is another underappreciated factor, tutors’ schedules should accommodate family life instead of the reverse. If a tutor can only meet when it’s inconvenient for the student and creates added stress (though no fault of the tutor), then even a four-star rated tutor isn’t worth time or energy.
Green Flags and Red Flags
Certain signs will make a tutoring experience successful. Green flags include tutors who take time to assess what’s going on before they dive in and who communicate with parents what seems to work or not work, as well as the ability to readjust if things come out of alignment with their methods for whatever reason. Tutors should be able to articulate how they knew what was applied based on their assessments in layman’s terms without sounding condescending.
Red flags go a long way as well. Watch out for tutors who boast significant increases in grades in seemingly impossible time frames or who state that their methods work for everyone 100% of the time. Pay attention to tutors who aren’t willing to work on what’s due now and failed to assess skills or who convey what’s going well or poorly as specifics.
Finally, assess how the student feels after the first one or two sessions. Some pushback is expected, nobody wants to admit they need help, but if a child dreads going every time or seems more anxious than ever about their performance after starting the sessions, then it’s not a good fit. Quality instruction may be uncomfortable, but it should welcome the challenge based on how the tutor can help.
The Cost of Tutoring Question
Tutors cost money, sometimes significant amounts depending on the firm or location. Therefore, it’s understandable for parents to want to know if the cost is worth it. If fit is found and commitment is made long enough for change to happen, then, yes, absolutely.
Gaps that are missed don’t fill themselves overnight. A struggling child has probably struggled for at least one quarter and needs at least as much time, at one session per week (or two) from initially getting accustomed to it, to rebuild confidence and skill. For significant time away, it’s more likely that sessions will run for multiple months. When children need help, if they can find a helping hand that connects for less money, that’s worth pursuing instead of multiple groups where expensive homework help can go a long way for other classrooms but no satisfaction for this struggling child.
Because if a child slips through academic cracks and gets transformed by emotional woes and a poor self-image, that’s going to cost much more down the line. Poor academic efforts don’t end with grades; they become associated with bad self-esteem ratings, unnatural stress levels, students who believe they’re not smart, and then these subsequent self-fulfilling prophecies develop over time and sink into other areas of children’s lives as well.
How to Make It Work After Making It
Once a tutor is selected, success depends on all parties involved. Parents need to be honest about what’s going on at school and at home; teachers should be kept in the loop for reinforcement for additional classroom performance commentary, and the student needs to understand that tutoring is not punishment but a potential path for making school easier as they go and not any more frustrating than it already is.
Consistency works better than intensity; two focused sessions a week over months will create better results than daily homework cramming for two sessions before report cards come home. Learning takes time, development, practice, reflection, and subsequent skill development efforts along the way.
Ideally, this shouldn’t turn into a crutch. Quality tutoring should empower once it’s clear enough improvements can gradually shift responsibility back toward the student so they can manage schoolwork on their own, now with the eye of detail and foundational skills at hand.
Getting the Right Tutor When Your Child Struggles at School Makes All the Difference.
It’s not making them struggle harder to make them continue to struggle; it’s getting them personalized instruction that finally bridges the gaps learned and gives them back their confidence of what they were always capable of doing. Quality input in a nuanced approach restores confidence for those students who finally know that it’s okay to challenge themselves since they know how to appropriately make challenging work.
Alex