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Home success, school failure paradox

This skill paralysis fits a paradoxical story that many parents tell me.  Parents will work with the child to develop his skills in math, spelling, reading or whatever. After much practice the child can perform well for the parent.  They can recite their multiplication tables, get their spelling lists accurate or read articulately.
 

When they go to school it is a very different proposition.  They get reports home from the teacher that the child does not know their multiplication tables, they fail their spelling test and the child is put in a remedial reading program. However, the child in this predicament clearly has the skills because they have demonstrated them to the parent.

This is very puzzling and frustrating for both child and parent. This happens because of the difference in emotional arousal between the successful and unsuccessful situations, like in the argument example above.

The problem is not lack of skills, but the inability to access them in the school situation. The child is not able to access the skills for emotional reasons. So, much of the parent’s hard work is wasted because the child cannot make use of the skills at school that they demonstrate at home.  In this kind of situation there is no point in the parent continuing to work hard to develop even more skills that the child cannot access at school. It is only the skills that the child can access in the academic situation that makes a difference. The rest is just the huddle before the play.

As we talked about earlier, both the arousal and the child’s efforts to control the arousal use up mental resources, so that little is left to do the school work, homework or take tests. Many children who valiantly continue to struggle to do their work, while trying to control their emotional arousal, are diagnosed with Learning Disabilities rather than ADHD. Unlike the ADHD child, Learning Disabilities child’s quiet emotional struggle may not be detected.

Something more than continuing to rehearse, practice and develop skills is necessary. Until the arousal in the non-performing situation is extinguished there is no point, and it can even be counterproductive, to keep forcing the child into these emotionally frustrating experiences.

The obstacles to the child using the skills in the school situation must be dealt with. Until these bad feelings are gone, skills development is an uphill battle. However, when school work feels good, learning disabilities disappear and skills development is most often easy and quick.

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