“Help for ____________________”
(Insert your child’s name here.)
Insert in the space above the name of your child or student who is finding the classroom challenging. While this book’s title reads “Help for Billy,” it can also read “Help for Jessica” or “Help for Michael” or “Help for Brandon” or any other name that will make this book personal to your life.
Create your own custom title to this book so that it becomes very real for and applicable to the academic challenges you and your child or student face every day. School is supposed to be a wonderful experience for children, but for some children the exact opposite has become the norm.
School environments are designed for children who have their natural love for learning intact and for children whose systems are hardwired to be able to sit in a classroom and stay focused. But when a child comes along who does not fit this description, we have continued to expect this child to change and to fit into this predetermined mold, no matter how much he or she is unable.
In my work with parents and schools, I continually get the questions “Why can’t this child be like the other kids? and “Why can’t he just sit and behave and be normal?”
These comparative questions are reflective of how the mind works. To make sense of our world and of specific situations in our lives, we compare. We naturally compare by size, shape, color, and other attributes. And we, unfortunately, do it with children, even though we have been advised by psychology experts not to compare children, not to compare siblings in a household, and to allow each child his individuality.
In my trainings, I began comparing “Child A” with “Child B” to show why these two children are so different. However, the labels Child A and Child B seemed so impersonal. We are talking about real children, children with hearts and souls who are precious and tender beyond this world. So instead of treating this comparison as a sterile scientific data exchange, I named the two children. Child A became “Andy” and Child B became “Billy.” These two names were chosen because they can be gender neutral. Andy is short for both Andrew or Andrea. And we all are familiar with the famous female tennis player Billie Jean King, as well as Billy being short for William.
Andy is the child who fits the classic academic mold. Billy is the child who does not. This book is dedicated to giving understanding as to why Billy is different and what we can do to help him. It is not a book about how to make Billy be Andy.
This book will transform your entire paradigm about how we interact, support, and teach children like Billy—children who are square pegs we have been trying to force into round holes for far too long.
Help for Billy is designed for both parents and educators. There is not a separate book for parents and a separate book for educators. It’s the same book. We are all working with the same child. Thus, it is our responsibility to Billy to all work on the same team with the same understanding to best support him congruently.
The basis for the approach that I lay out in the following pages comes from the scientific evidence we now have regarding Billy and from the basic understanding of human needs. Yet, more importantly, it comes from the eyes and heart of Billy.
To truly understand someone, it takes a willingness to see life from the other person’s perspective; it takes getting outside of ourselves and our familiar reality. It takes courage to step into the other person’s world. That is how solutions that truly work can be formulated and that is where the chance to change a child’s academic failures to academic successes resides.
I invite you to read this book to discover how to find Help for [Your Child’s Name] and expand yourself into a brand new reality. Go beyond consequences, logic, and control and have fun seeing the world of your child from a whole new light and understanding!
Press on,
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW