Supporting Students with Learning Disabilities at Home

7/27/2026

Supporting students at home is a crucial way to encourage skill development over time. This work starts with an understanding of what skills are most important for children with learning differences to develop.

Learning Disabilities & Skills

Learning disabilities come in all different forms. They can impact many aspects of a child's life. From difficulty learning letter sounds to organizing their rooms and navigating conflicts with peers, children with learning differences might need extra support. One feature that all learning differences have in common is their direct impact on skills.

Social-Emotional Learning at Home

Parents can support learning at home for children with learning disabilities by reinforcing social-emotional skills. Research shows that for children with learning disabilities, social-emotional learning is a powerful tool. Social-emotional skills play a major role in helping children become more independent. It's not just about their academic performance; it's about long-term life success.

At Winston Prep, the Qualities of a Sustainable Independent Learner (QSIL) is our research-based framework. We use this to understand the specific social-emotional skills that are important for helping children with learning disabilities thrive in all areas of their lives. These life skills are: Self-Reflection, Resilience, Problem Solving, Communication & Social Skills, Time Management & Organization, Social Responsibility, Self-Advocacy, and Self-Regulation.

Developing these skills at home provides a foundation for learning, self-awareness, and independence. You can do this in a variety of ways:

Teach children to meet challenges with Resilience, turning day-to-day obstacles into learning experiences they can navigate.
Model Self-Advocacy as a starting point to asking for help.
Work on independent Time Management and Organization skills to help clear out the mental clutter.

Invite your children to set goals for themselves that make them excited and motivated. When children are provided with opportunities to engage and self-manage at home, what they are really learning to do is apply their skills and strategies to new contexts.

Strategies to Try at Home

Once you have identified and understood the roadblocks standing in your child’s way, there are a few key ways that you can help support learning and skill-building at home:

Modeling Behaviors & Skills

Modeling is one of the most valuable tools for helping young learners internalize new skills. You can model all kinds of skills by clearly explaining your thought processes and how your decisions and actions tie into your goals.

When you approach learning something new or challenging, model resilient patterns of thinking. Think of ways you might use advocacy skills to ask for help when you need it. Model open communication skills and openly discuss with your children how challenges and failures have helped you grow.

Cueing

Imagine you enter a situation that challenges you. Besides finding the courage to face it, you must remember how to approach the situation and what others might expect from you. If your child has a learning disability, this is an internal struggle they might face regularly. This is especially difficult for them in unstructured environments.

Cueing involves setting children up for success by previewing what is to come. Cueing also gives children thoughtful reminders for how they might navigate those experiences, which lightens the load of needing to recall information in the moment and frees your child up to focus on the task at hand.

To practice using cueing at home, try giving a short, digestible reminder before your child enters a situation that might be challenging them or present a difficult transition. This might sound like “Our family will be arriving for dinner in five minutes. I know it can be tough to stop what we are doing and switch to something else, so let’s talk about what we can do now to help us make that shift. Let’s start by setting a timer for one minute.”

Encouraging Self-Reflection

Create an environment of Self-Reflection any way that you can. Build Self-Reflection into routines and habits day-to-day. Have conversations at dinner with your family or have a quick share before bedtime. Remember to share your own self-reflective skills and what impact your decisions and actions made.

By creating mindful moments to pause and reflect, you are making time and space for self-reflection and problem-solving skills. Doing this will help integrate self-reflection into your children’s skillset.

Clear Feedback

Children do not always understand the feedback they receive from the world around them, including those they live with at home. Pointing out when your children use their skills and strategies helps them see what is going well. It also shows what they need to work on.

Although feedback matters, avoid too much praise or vague praise. This can be confusing for them to follow.

A home environment centered on parenting that models and supports learning provides invaluable support for your child’s development. Approach the above tips knowing your child’s needs change over time, which means the support they need might change too.

Developing the Skills that Matter Most

At Winston Prep, we understand that developing a solid base of transferable skills is essential for long-term success, both in life and learning. How have we determined what skills matter most? Read more from the Winston Innovation Lab.

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Winston Preparatory School is a leading school for students with learning disabilities, including dyslexia, executive functioning difficulties (ADHD), and non-verbal learning disorders (NVLD).

WPS does not discriminate against applicants and students on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin. The Winston Preparatory School provides programs and services and equal opportunity in the administration of its educational and admissions policies, financial aid programs, employment, and the selection of its governing board without regard to gender, race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability status, or any status recognized by federal, state and local civil rights and non-discrimination laws.