Have you ever thought that your child was lazy, not interested in working, unmotivated? Many parents have. So they tell their child to work harder, they complain about the poor grades they are getting, maybe insist that their child does more homework.
But it doesn’t help. Their child does not do more work, remains unmotivated, and resents what you are making them do.
The problem is that you are trying to fix the symptom, not the cause, of their learning difficulty.
The cause of your child’s learning problem might be that he or she does not understand the amount of effort they have to put into learning something. The symptoms, or signs, of their lack of understanding may be any or all of the following;
1. Leaves work until the last minute and then panics at what he has to do.
If a child has no understanding of the amount of time and effort it will take to do something there is no way he can schedule in the work that has to be done. Most children (and many adults!) underestimate the time and effort they need to spend doing something. As a result they don’t do the work until they feel that they have to, usually the night before a big project is due. When they start doing the work they suddenly realize that it is going to take much longer than they thought. Then they start to panic. They have no idea how they will finish the work on time and either get you to do it for them, work through the night (not recommended) or quickly throw together some work that is really bad and does not reflect their abilities.
Have you ever been there, and had to handle a child who is panicking about getting work finished on time? Telling your child that he or she should have thought of this earlier is not the solution. Your child did not know he should have thought about it earlier, he had no idea how long the work would take. It isn’t a scheduling issues it is an issue of lack of understanding the effort that would be required to do the work.
2. Seems uninterested and unmotivated to do work.
Homework is finished in record time, or there is no homework because your child says he has done all the work in class, finished work is untidy and hastily done? These are all signs that your child has no idea that he has to put more effort into doing his work. The cause of your child’s learning problem is not lack of motivation, or lack of interest. These are the symptoms of a learning difficulty, the cause is that your child lacks a basic understanding of the amount of effort he has to use to do the work. (Lack of motivation and lack of interest can be caused by lack of other basic learning skills too).
3. Does poorly on tests or in exams.
Your child does the work, thinks he knows what he needs to know, and goes off to take the test or exam full of confidence that he will do well. After the exam he is a little concerned that he might not have dome as well as he expected to do. When he gets the results he finds that he has not done well at all. He is upset because he doesn’t know why. You are upset too because you know that your child is bright and seemed to prepare for the exam.
Your child did the work he thought was necessary to prepare for the exam. The problem was that he did not know what work he had to do, he underestimated the amount of effort he had to spend getting ready for the exam.
Doing badly on tests and exams is a symptom of lack of understanding of hoe effort leads to success.
4. Doesn’t know why their marks are so low.
This is almost the same as #3 above, but this time it refers to regular classwork. Your child does not understand the amount of effort he has to put into doing his work.
I understand that students cannot put all their effort into all their work all the time. They need to understand what work requires all their effort and what work they can do quickly. I have seen students labor over work that was unimportant, not giving themselves time to do important work well.
5. Starts to lose confidence in their ability to learn
Just imagine, yo think that yo have done everything you need to do to get something right, and then you find out that the results are now what you expected, in fact, they are much worse than you expected. You start to doubt your ability to do what is needed.
This happens with children all the time when they do not understand the amount of effort they need to expend on doing work. They THINK they are working hard, and they probably are working hard, but they are not working hard enough, or hard enough at doing the right thing, to make a difference to the final result.
If this happens over and over again the child is going to think that no matter what he does he is never going to be able to get things right. Therefore he must be unable to learn, he must be stupid. When children start to think this they stop trying to learn and this compounds the learning problems they have.
To help children overcome learning hurdles you need to find the CAUSE of the problem and treat that. Only treating the SYMPTOM leads to frustration and confusion.
The five signs above could all have a different cause. But more of that later.
About PatriciaPorter
Follow Me!