As the winter school holidays give way to the third term across South Africa, Catch Up Kids is encouraging families to treat the mid-year break as a chance to steady young learners rather than simply pause. The Johannesburg-based practice provides specialised one-on-one tutoring for children with ADHD, learning difficulties and developmental delays, working with them at home and at its centres, and July has become one of the busiest points on its calendar as parents look ahead to the second half of the school year.

The reasoning is straightforward. The foundation phase, running from the earliest school years through Grade 3, is where reading, writing and number sense take root. When a child in these grades falls behind, the gap rarely closes on its own, and each new term layers fresh content on top of skills that were never quite secured. The quieter weeks around the holidays and the fresh start of a new term give families room to identify where a child is struggling and to put focused support in place before the pressure of assessments builds again.

Catch Up Kids works with children who have ADHD, Attention Deficit Disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder, and a range of learning difficulties and developmental delays. Rather than general homework help, the practice targets the specific foundational skills a child has missed, meeting each learner where they are and building upward from there. Its ADHD Tutors are used to working with children whose attention wanders, who lose focus partway through a task, or who need instruction paced and structured differently from a busy mainstream classroom.

A central part of the approach is that it complements, rather than replaces, the other professionals in a child's life. The practice positions its Remedial Tutors alongside teachers and therapists, coordinating with school teams so that the support a child receives at home or at a centre reinforces what is happening in the classroom and in therapy. The aim is not to pull a child out of mainstream education but to give them the foundational skills they need to stay in it and succeed there, without the assumption that a remedial school placement is the only route.

Support is delivered in whatever way suits the family. Some children are tutored in their own homes, where they are most comfortable and where routines are already established. Others attend sessions at one of the practice's centres, and for families who cannot easily travel, sessions can run remotely over Zoom. That flexibility matters most for children who find new environments unsettling, and it means distance need not decide whether a child gets help.

Catch Up Kids operates across several of South Africa's largest cities. In Johannesburg it runs centres in Waverley, Highlands North and Douglasdale. It has a presence in Durban North, in Pretoria, and in Cape Town at Sea Point. That spread lets the practice reach families in the country's main metropolitan areas while keeping the one-on-one, in-person model that sits at the heart of what it does.

For parents who suspect something is holding their child back but are not sure what, the practice offers an initial developmental consultation and an ADHD checklist tool to help make sense of the early signs. These are starting points rather than diagnoses, giving a family a clearer picture of where a child sits and what kind of support might help. Working this out early, rather than waiting for a pattern of struggle to settle in, is often what makes the difference over a school year.

The wider context gives this work its urgency. Foundation phase literacy and numeracy have been a long-standing concern in South African education, and children who reach the end of the early grades without secure reading and number skills tend to carry that shortfall forward. For a child who also has ADHD or a developmental delay, the ordinary demands of a full classroom can make it even harder to catch up unaided. Focused, individual attention from Special Needs Tutors who understand how these children learn is one of the more practical responses available to families.

Catch Up Kids frames the third term as a moment to be proactive. Reports from the first half of the year have landed, patterns from the previous terms are visible, and there is still enough of the school year left for steady, consistent support to change a child's trajectory. Acting in July, rather than waiting for year-end results, gives a child the runway to consolidate skills before the next round of assessments.

The practice keeps its message measured. It does not promise overnight transformation. What it offers is patient, structured, individual work that meets a child at their level and builds the foundations they need, term by term, in partnership with the family and the school. For many children with ADHD, learning difficulties or developmental delays, that steady bridging of gaps is exactly what has been missing.

Parents who want to understand how the practice works, where its centres are, and how to arrange an initial consultation can find full details on the Catch Up Kids website at https://catchupkids.co.za/.

About Catch Up Kids

Catch Up Kids provides specialised one-on-one tutoring for children with ADHD, learning difficulties and developmental delays. Focusing on the foundation phase, the practice targets the specific skills a child has missed and works alongside teachers and therapists to help children succeed in mainstream classrooms. Support is offered in the home, at centres in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban North and Cape Town, and remotely over Zoom.

Media Contact
Catch Up Kids
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +27 11 440 1666
Website: https://catchupkids.co.za/