Three reasons why you may be wasting money on a tutor.

When parents want to help their children learn the first thing most of them do is hire a tutor, and, unfortunately, they may be wasting their money.

Now, as far as I know, the hourly cost for tutoring is between $25 (what a high school student might charge) and $60 (the amount a learning expert might charge). This means that the cost of hiring a tutor can be quite high, especially as the best tutors need to work with children at least twice a week.

But are you sure that this money is being well spent? Are you sure that your child needs a tutor? Are you sure that hiring a tutor is the best way to help your child learn?

Before you start spending money on tutoring for your child you need to be sure that hiring a tutor will be beneficial for your child, and for you.

Don’t get me wrong, hiring a tutor can be an excellent was of giving your child the learning support he or she needs to do well in school. There are some excellent tutors, and one of them might be able to offer just what your child needs to become a better learner. But before you start looking for a tutor, and paying for one, make sure that this is the type of support your child needs.

Here are three reasons why you could be wasting your money.

1. Your child needs help with more than one subject
Most tutors are subject specialists. They know their subject really well and have plenty of experience in helping children learn it. So, if your child is having trouble with one subject, then hiring a tutor to help him or her catch up could be a good idea.

BUT, if your child is struggling in more than one subject, for example, if he or she is behind in math and writing, then the chances are that tutoring is not be best way to help your child. Your child may need a different form of support, one that addresses his or her basic learning needs.

The rule of thumb is -
if your child is struggling to keep up in more than one subject, tutoring may not help-

2. Your child needs help with basic learning skills
Good tutors help children develop the strategies they need to be able to master a subject. For instance, a math tutor might help a child learn their multiplication tables, or how to understand written math problems; an English tutor might help a child to learn how to write an essay.

But what if the reason your child is struggling to learn is because he or she needs to develop some basic learning strategies, the learning strategies that underpin ALL learning?

If your child needs to develop basic learning strategies tutoring is not the best way to provide support for your child. You could end up paying for tutoring for many years, with limited results.

3. The way your child learns does not match the way the tutor teaches
This mismatch of teaching and learning style is a major reason why children find learning difficult. It is why your child can learn more from one teacher than from another. It is why your child will learn more from one tutor than another.

If you have decided that your child will benefit from having a tutor, the next thing you need to do is to make sure that the tutor teaches in a way that your child likes to learn. Otherwise you are spending money on a tutor who, at best, will not be making learning easy for your child, and at worst, may even be preventing your child from learning.

Before you waste money on tutoring be sure you know what help your child really needs.