About US
Leveraging on more than 40 years of extensive experience in women’s and children’s health, Thomson Kids Specialised Learning and Thomson Counselling are key components of Thomson Medical’s ecosystem of synergistic services, where children’s developmental health and well-being are taken care of holistically.
Supported by psychologists, speech and language therapists and special needs trained teachers, Thomson Kids Specialised Learning is a learning centre for children with learning difficulties, through structured educational programmes derived from research-proven teaching methods.
Thomson Kids Specialised Learning is helmed by Ms Frances Yeo, a child psychologist with more than 20 years of clinical experience. For the past 5 years, Frances has also led a paediatric clinic specialising in psychology and counselling.
Our Curriculum
The ability to read and write is foundational for learning. Children with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, language delays and learning difficulties often struggle with basic literacy, which then holds back their learning, cognitive development and social interaction.
Through our specialised interventions, we help students with unique learning needs develop their listening, oracy, reading and writing skills.
Our English and Chinese Programmes are developed for students who may be struggling in mainstream schools.
We offer a differentiated curriculum based on MOE syllabus but taught using specialised material and teaching methods.
Our proprietary materials and structured learning programmes are developed by our highly experienced team, comprising experts in child psychology, curriculum writers and special needs teachers.
From our extensive experience from years of working with students with ADHD, Autism and learning difficulties, we have seen how students can thrive with an instructional approach based on these key principles:
Explore our Programmes
Specialised English Programme - GRIT
Dedicated teachers in our Orton-Gillingham inspired English programme (GRIT) make phonics, morphology, comprehension and writing strategies systematic, sequential and fun for your child. With practical and hands-on language activities in our curriculum, your child will not just acquire literacy concepts but also develop GRIT—to help them achieve and succeed in life.
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Specialised Chinese Programme - 铁棒磨成针
In our Chinese programme (铁棒磨成针), we see Chinese as more than an academic subject—the sharing of Chinese culture and values is key to promote resilience in your child. Your child will enjoy multisensory and hands-on language activities. Be it character recognition, stroke order, sentence structures, comprehension or writing, our teachers make Chinese interactive, systematic and fun.
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Meet our specialists
FRANCES YEO
“I see many children who struggle with learning. They are not confident because of hidden learning difficulties and struggle in schools. From working with these kids, I have seen many of them overcome their challenges if we can create the right environments for them. By making lessons engaging through multi-sensory activities, these children can do much better as compared to traditional classroom learning. We founded Thomson Kids to provide the appropriate learning environments based on insights from research and our collective clinical experience. “
LEE XIN YING
"Having both the 'heartware'—a passion for special needs—and the 'hardware'—training in special education, linguistics and psychology, I strive to empower children with special needs in their literacy journey. I enjoy learning and growing together with my students amidst beautiful struggles.”
ELIZABETH MUI YEE YEN
“I believe that children with special needs have endless potential. I enjoy celebrating wins – big and small. Supporting my students in meeting their therapy goals can be immensely motivating. Watching them achieve gains in communication skills fuels my drive to continuously provide effective interventions to help every child I meet learn to communicate with confidence“
SEE LAY YEN
"I find it fulfilling to support and help students with learning difficulties improve and grow in self-confidence. Students with learning difficulties can learn a second language through perseverance and systematic, multisensory instructional approach. I strive to help them reach their highest potential. ”
Hear From Our Clients
“Shane is my third child, so when I observed that he did not speak by age 2.5 years, could not point at anything, would not look me in the eyes or anyone else in our family, I found his behaviour weird. From age 2, he would always be lying down on his side and lining up trains in a straight line then staring at these trains from the corner of his eye. Such inappropriate play habits were a concern for me, but my biggest worry was "why can't my child say a word?"
“Heartfelt thanks for all you’ve done for my daughter’s life. We have seen gradual improvements and how she is trying her level best to realign herself again. She’s taking these steps voluntarily, but I know you are the key reason she is able to put in a lot of effort to bring herself up again. Our highest gratitude and appreciation. We are so grateful for you being there all the way, for our kind support and professionalism. Kudos Ms Frances!"
“I have two boys who were diagnosed with ASD and they are in mainstream school. They have been seeing Ms Frances for several years. Throughout the years, she has given us useful suggestions on how to deal with their learning and behavioural issues in school. With her help, the boys have been coping well and happy in mainstream.”
“I couldn’t read or understand much which affected my spelling. Whenever I had a composition exam, I couldn’t write anything. I would have a ton of great ideas but would not be able to pen it down. Ms Xin Ying’s lessons made it easier to remember how to spell certain words. I can read much better and faster now thanks to the flashcards (card drill) Ms Xin Ying made us do every lesson. Also, other than teaching using worksheets alone, Ms Xin Ying would include games like Kahoot! and reward us with sweets or little gifts whenever we got it right.”
“When Shoshanna was in K2, we sent her for English enrichment class as her teacher expressed concern that she isn’t quite on par with her peers. Through that, we found that her progress was slow and sent her for a psychological assessment. After we found out she is dyslexic, we got remediation right away. I strongly believe it is important for the child not to be affected by their challenges during their schooling journey; it isn’t about grades but their confidence and emotional well-being.
“I didn't find out I had dyslexia till I was Primary 5 and did a test. Before that, I didn’t even know what dyslexia was. I also have ADHD, which was discovered earlier, around kindergarten, because my teacher suspected I had that. Due to my ADHD, I had strong impulses and they were stronger if there were underlying emotions—they were really hard to control. I did whatever I wanted, without thinking. I get very distracted very easily, even if it’s a faint click in the room. I would stop everything I was doing. And I am also extremely forgetful. For me, a little stress helps me get in the mood to focus.”
“I found out that I am dyslexic through my former English tuition teacher when I was in Secondary 2. My mother often finds it incredibly frustrating that I could not get the spelling of the words correct, even after much practice memorising it. However, thanks to Ms Xin Ying's guidance, my spelling has improved by leaps and bounds. In fact, not only did my spelling improve, so did my reading. Now, I am not only able to read much quicker than before but with greater clarity too. What I enjoy the most during her lesson is how she makes learning fun. In many of her classes, she would incorporate many different small and fun activities to keep us engaged, making her lessons extremely enjoyable. In one of her lessons, she even had us baking cookies while teaching us writing concepts.”
“My frustrations as a dyslexic were mostly about not being able to read as fast and proficiently as everyone else in my class. I continuously would think that I was, and were, always going to be 2 steps behind my classmates and that I would never be able to catch up or even be lucky enough to be on the same level as them.
“We were unaware that Aysha had dyslexia until she started P1. As a child, she didn’t give us any reasons to cause concern as she had met her developmental milestones (was quick in learning how to talk / walk). She was quick to make friends, sociable and didn’t demonstrate any signs of having a learning difficulty or any developmental obstacles.
I am extremely grateful to Frances for helping my child in a critical year of her life (pre PSLE). I approached Frances for help because my child was showing a lack of motivation for school and interest in social interactions. It made for a fraught relationship as I found myself pushing her hard in the name of tough love. Frances firstly helped eliminate concerns around clinical conditions and then proceeded to peel the onion for us on how my child perceives the world and processes information.
