Returning to School after Brain Injury

School Re-Entry After Brain Injury is Different from other Disabilities

The child may have been out of school for months while in the hospital working with therapists to regain what they lost.

• The child will feel a sense of lost of oneself, much anxiety, grief and disorder.
• The child’s parents feel a sense of urgency for rehab while recovery is still promising.
• The child and the parents feel out of control because of the circumstances of the accident and the hospitalization.
• The child may and the parents feel that there are no supports once out of the hospital. May be expecting the school to provide a program to return to normalcy; school staff may promise that but they are setting the family and child up for frustration.
• The child assessment test may not have revealed any deficits whereas the neuropsychological deficits are very much the issue.
• The child may change rapidly and inconsistently. They may need home schooling, interdisciplinary coordination and updates of Individualized Educational Plan (IEP).
• The child may have combination of needs not usually seen at that age (no longer able to tell time, unable to find his way around, reading and math are good for what he had learn but cannot learn new stuff), resulting in teachers questioning placement.
• The child may look worse over time because of deficits in memory, cognition and metacognition which become apparent with new demands and new learning.