Web Site Helps Parents Identify Learning Difficulties (NAPSA)—Each year, hundreds of thousands of 4-year-old children across the country go from their pre-K and early-care settings to kindergarten or first grade. For parents, this is a time of hope and great expectation that their young children are ready for school and prepared for academic and social success. However, some of these parents already know that their child is experiencing difficulties with learning. Similarly, often teachers and earlycare providers of these 4-year-olds have sensed the samething. Early Warning Signs All too often, both parents and providers ignore or dismiss the early warning signs of learning difficulties, failing to give these young children the extra support that will help them to be successful in school. They hope that the young child will “grow out of it.” Or they say that the child is immature and will “catch up” later in school. But the science says otherwise. How can a parent or a provider identify potential learning difficulties in a young child? What can be done to address the needs of these youngchildren? These questions were posed by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation to a diverse group of researchers, policymakers, administrators and practitioners. Led by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the groupis in the process of creating a new approach to addressing the needs of all young children called Recognition & Response. Appropriate Responses For Parents That Help This new approach, modeled after Response to Intervention models being used in grades K-12, helps to identify learning difficulties in young children and recommends appropriate responses for both parents and providers in early-care and pre-K settings. The appropriate response can help parents address the needs of young children with learning difficulties. Visit the Recognition & Response Web site at www.recog nitionandresponse.org and learn more about how this approach can be beneficial to your child. The Web site offers dozens of free informational products, links to online resources and a way to subscribe to the free Recognition & Response newsletter. The Recognition & Response Web site can also be accessed through the National Center for Learning Disabilities Web site, www.LD.org, which provides information about early literacy, early warning signs of LD, parent advocacy and much more.
