Often the smartest children struggle in school. There are many reasons for this. And there are things that parents can do.
Is your child intelligent in some areas but struggles in others? Reading, math, or writing doesn’t seem to click? Do they get bored or frustrated?
Or they have a hard time paying attention. Especially when the subject matter isn’t interesting?
As a parent, this is frustrating. You may feel like you’ve done everything you can. You’ve consulted with the school and teachers. They’ve assigned extra work. Spent extra time. Or made some sort of accommodations. Yet it still feels like one step forward and two steps back.
It can be very frustrating to watch a child work harder than other children for less reward. Especially when you know your child is smart and you’ve tried everything.
The first thing to realize is this is not your fault. Smart children often perform poorly in the school system.
The second thing to realize is that there are some simple steps parents can do.
There’s a very easy process that will unleash your child’s true potential. This process will bring out your child’s brilliance. Once your child’s true brilliance is embraced they often surpass their peers.
Here’s how:
Step 1 – Task Analysis
When a child struggles there is always a problem with the fundamentals. They may have missed out on certain academic skills. But there’s an underlying reason for that. It’s often because some learning micro-skills were not fully developed. Both can be fixed with a process and a big part of that process is task analysis.
Task analysis is a very simple concept. It simply means breaking learning down to its smallest component parts. Yet as simple as that sounds, it takes some skills to figure out how to do that. And unfortunately, these skills are not taught to general education teachers.
Task analysis is used in remedial classes to help the most challenged of students. Task analysis is also used in higher education. It is a tool to help the most intelligent learners to take on the most extreme learning challenges. It works for the best and the worst learners. Yet, for some reason, it doesn’t get used in general education. Those that struggle but are not extreme miss out.
Learning anything efficiently is a process. That process is twofold. Building the basics and creating small challenges. Going back and forth between the two. Work the basics. Work through a small challenge. Repeat.
A student should be slightly challenged. The challenge exposes what needs work. Then go back to the fundamentals to build. Once a student practices the fundamentals again then challenge them again.
This time, when they are challenged, they will be better at the task. They’ll realize it. You’ll realize it. And you’ll both be quite happy.
This small success then inspires the student to do more. To continue to get better. Small success build-up to big successes.
It is this process of challenging the student, then working on the basics, that helps a student grow in skills very quickly.
Anyone who has mastered anything at a very high level knows that this is the way to do it. For example. A skilled jazz musician will practice the scales as a daily practice. He will also cut loose and jam. Both are necessary for skill development.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happens in school. Children are challenged when they have not built up the fundamentals. This causes them to feel as if they are stupid. When that happens things can spiral out of control.
Emotions then come into play and things can go from bad to worse.
Emotions and Behavior
Have you ever had a hard time getting your child to do homework? Do they throw tantrums, procrastinate, or find all sorts of little tasks to do first? Children can become incredibly creative in finding ways to avoid homework?
Maybe your child even has some special tricks?
Do you feel like homework takes so much more time than it should? Do you feel that both you and your child could be doing so many other things if homework didn’t take so long? Maybe you’ve even stayed up way too late to get homework done?
Frustrating isn’t it?
These are all a sign that your child is losing confidence.
When a child struggles in school they quickly lose confidence in themselves. They start to feel as if they are stupid. Even though that’s not true at all.
And all they want to do is hide it. They don’t want anyone to know. So they will use various tactics to hide their struggle.
Even worse. When a child gets into this emotional state they are actually under a lot of stress. Just like adults with chronic hypertension. Stress affects children in very bad ways as well.
One of the worst things it does is stops them from being able to learn. Stress actually shuts off the learning centers of the brain. That’s because it puts them into fight or flight mode. Learning is impossible in fight or flight mode.
So they actually do lose intelligence. And if they stay in this mode long enough that becomes chronic. They lose much of their learning potential.
Building Confidence
There is a solution. That solution is building confidence in your child. Building confidence reverses the downward spiral and turns it into a virtuous cycle. Once a child develops confidence they are then willing to take on any learning challenge and win.
When a child becomes confident in themselves many good things happen.
- Homework takes far less time because they stop procrastinating
- Everyone is happier because negative attitudes and tantrums go away
- Learning happens faster because the child is no longer in fight or flight mode
A lot of research has been done around confidence building. There are easy, scientifically-backed strategies that build confidence in children.
Parents can easily learn these simple strategies. Those parents help their children succeed in everything they do.
Children who develop confidence surpass their peers. Not only getting better grades than their peers but also excelling in all areas of life.
How would it feel to watch your child excel?
Good Teachers, Bad Teachers
I bet you can remember back and think of a teacher that inspired you. Did that teacher make your life a little better?
Teachers can be awesome. They can light a fire under a student. A fire that can burn for a lifetime. I know I had a few of those and I am grateful for them.
But even the best of them only have a small influence. Nowhere near the influence parents have.
And that is why it is so important to remember that parents are a child’s first teacher. Not only the first teacher but the teacher that is there for a lifetime.
When a parent has a few simple skills they can have a profound impact on their child’s future. Skills such as
- Neuroscience based ways of building confidence
- Understanding how to optimize fundamental learning skills
- Recognizing why a child might be struggling and learning the simple techniques for fixing it.
I know so many parents are a little afraid of taking on these things. Parents are often fearful of taking on any of their child’s learning. Especially if they struggled themselves. I get it. It’s a big responsibility to raise a child.
But it’s always important to remember that you are your child’s first teacher. You are the only teacher that is going to be there every day. Day in and day out. Don’t you think it’s best to have a few simple tricks up your sleeve to make that easier?
Especially when they are so easy to learn.
Here’s one:
Let’s Get Moving!
Ever notice that some children have to move? They can’t sit still?
Don’t you wish you had that energy? It can be hard to keep up with right?
All that energy is a good thing
Study after study has shown the connections between movement and development of intelligence. Stifle the movement and you stifle the intelligence. This is exactly what is being done more and more in schools today.
Movement does several things for learning
It’s developmental. The moment babies are born their neurodevelopment begins. And it happens through movement. The stages of crawling are actually neurodevelopmental stages. The brain is wiring itself. And this doesn’t stop. Although it’s happening the fastest up to age seven, it can continue for a lifetime. If, and only if, we use movement to stimulate the brain. New and more complex movements keep the brain developing. This fact is what inspired us to create the Learning Success System. Over and over we saw how the complex movements we taught improved intelligence. We couldn’t keep that to ourselves. So we packaged it up and made it easy to do at home. The short of it is that learning how to control our bodies improves cognitive function.
Movement helps with focus. Some kids can’t focus if they are confined to a desk for too long. This is especially true of boys. Boys have to get enough movement. If they don’t they lose focus. Even kids with extreme ADHD learn to focus well if given the right movement stimulus.
It releases emotional energy. Ever heard the phrase “Shake it off”? It’s no coincidence that when we are emotionally upset we are told to use the body to release that emotion. Managing emotions is best done using the body. It’s our shortcut to our emotional centers. Not to mention, we also build emotional awareness through our bodies. We feel emotions in our bodies. A gut feeling. A heartache. Butterflies in the stomach. So it makes sense that if we become more body aware we become more emotionally aware.
Back in 2006, we had developed an app called Break Pal. It was a timer that went off every so often and played a three-minute exercise video. We presented it to the public school system. We offered to give it to them for free. It was met with enthusiasm. They agreed to try it out in the classrooms. But somebody dropped the ball. The good news is that now, 14 years later, the idea is taking off in some schools. They renamed it to Brain Breaks. It’s popular among some of the best teachers. That was a long time coming but at least it happened. I guess we were too far ahead of our time. Sigh.
Even better than any old movement is proprioceptive exercise. What most people call mindful exercise. Or mind-body exercise.
There are some huge advantages to mindful exercise.
1) It develops body awareness.
Body awareness and spatial awareness are linked. And both are correlated with intelligence. By building body awareness we are actually building very important brain centers. Especially the hippocampus. The hippocampus is where spatial awareness, spatial thinking, and logical reasoning happen. It is also tied to our emotions because it is a part of the limbic system.
2) Mindful exercise causes neurogenesis to happen.
Neurogenesis is when new neurons form in the brain. Actually growing the brain’s capacity.
3) Mindful exercise integrates our senses.
Our senses are all tied through our spatial sense. So when we develop our spatial sense we are also integrating our senses. More integrated senses have many benefits. One of which is vastly improved focus.
The Building Blocks of Learning
Have you ever seen a child not click with learning something? Or it seems like they are working harder than they should be?
You try different approaches but that frustrates the child more. Maybe you feel frustrated as well?
This is always because the fundamental building blocks of learning are not optimized. We call these building blocks the cognitive micro-skills.
When we learn there are actually many processes at play. These processes work together. The more optimized each process is the easier it is to learn. The more integrated each process is the easier it is to learn.
You can get a full list of these cognitive micro-skills here.
If there is a trouble spot in one or more. Or if they don’t work well together. Learning will be very difficult.
The good news is that you can strengthen each of these processes. And you can integrate them. It may sound complex but it’s not. It only takes very simple exercises. Children actually find them fun.
Because the brain has plasticity you can actually improve your child’s cognitive ability. You can improve your child’s intelligence. You can improve your child’s learning ability.
Which brings up an important point.
It doesn’t matter where a child starts. What’s important is daily consistent improvement. It’s the tortoise and the hare story. Improve a tiny bit each day then your child wins in the long run.
How would it feel to see your child win?
Find out more here!