“We found that students in the first grade who struggled academically with core subjects, including reading and math, later displayed negative self-perceptions and symptoms of depression in sixth and seventh grade, respectively,” said Keith Herman, associate professor of education, school and counseling psychology in the MU College of Education. “Often, children with poor academic skills believe they have less influence on important outcomes in their life. Poor academic skills can influence how children view themselves as students and as social beings.”

In the study, MU researchers examined the behaviors of 474 boys and girls in the first grade and re-examined the students when they entered middle school. Herman found that students who struggled academically with core subjects, such as reading and math, in the first grade later showed risk factors for negative self-beliefs and depressive symptoms as they entered sixth and seventh grade. Herman suggests that because differences in children’s learning will continue to exist even if all students are given effective instruction and support, parents and teachers should acknowledge student’s skills in other areas.

“One of the main ways children can get others to like them in school is by being good students. Children with poor academic skills may believe that they have one less method for influencing important social outcomes, which could lead to negative consequences later in life. Children’s individual differences will always exist in basic academic skills, so it is necessary to explore and emphasize other assets in students, especially those with lower academic skill relative to their peers,” Herman said. “Along with reading and math, teachers and parents should honor skills in other areas, such as interpersonal skills, non-core academic areas, athletics and music.”

The researchers also found the effect of academic proficiency on self-perceptions was significantly stronger for girls. Girls who did not advance academically believed that they had less control of important outcomes, a risk factor for symptoms of depression.

Journal reference:
1.    Herman et al. Low academic competence in first grade as a risk factor for depressive cognitions and symptoms in middle school.. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2008; 55 (3): 400 DOI: 10.1037/a0012654
Adapted from materials provided by University of Missouri-Columbia.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090108111425.htm

The Mystery of the Struggling Reader

1. How does your child learn best?

This is important. You need to know what it takes for your child to learn something, and this will be repeated throughout her life. She also needs to become an expert at this and know how to be in tune with her learning style. This is what we are here for, but there is plenty of research on the Internet and in books on learning styles. Throughout our lives, we may choose to learn in different ways, but we will also be forced to, but when we are learning and studying on our own, we are free to do what works best for us. There will be much more on this as the website develops, and feel free to ask me questions.

2. In what kind of environment does your child learn best?

Some of this is a result of our upbringing, and some of it is just the way we were born, but just as we can not all learn in the same way, we can not all learn in the same place. I am sure we all know someone who can study and learn while there is music playing, but there are some of us who need complete silence in order to be able to concentrate. This is important to know about your children because it is unfair to ask children who need silence to do their homework in a noisy room where there is a lot of activity. In the same way, if your child really does learn better by having soft music playing, let it happen, but we must know our children well enough to know if this will truly create a learning environment.

3. What does your child like or like to do?

What would your son really like to do in his spare time? Sometimes children have what seems like an obsession, and that’s okay. Let it play out. As long as homework, chores, piano practice, etc. are being completed thoroughly, let your child do what he really likes. If he seems to think about nothing but trains, let him use trains in his learning. Let him write about them, research them, interact with them. Let him be an expert! This might be a subject, such as tigers, or it might be a pastime such as skateboarding. No matter what it is, as long as it is appropriate for school, it can be given as much attention as he wants, and it may turn into a career or hobby, and it might go away or turn into something else. Especially if you have a child who says he doesn’t like a subject, let him learn about that subject through the lens of what he is most interested in. This will take some creativity, but if you and your child work together, you can come up with some great dialog and projects, and he will like what he is doing!

4. What is your child good at?

This does not need to be something academic. Know your child’s strengths. Everyone is good at something. Find at least one thing that your son or daughter really likes to do and is good at and nurture it. We all need to be successful in order to build our self confidence and find our place in the world. Sometimes this may not be the thing your child likes the most, and that is okay. It may open dialog for what she really wants to work on, but if you see a strength, point it out and use it as much as you can to help build the confidence in your child. Do not be tempted to offer empty praise, but when she really excels at something, point it out!

This is the psychology I would like you to have around learning. Learning is a difficult task. It does not come easily to most people, and even if it does, getting it right is difficult and time-consuming. By nature we have to learn most things because we are not born with an innate ability to figure out how we learn. If we were placed, at a young age, in a setting that allowed us to explore many different ways of learning, with no outside influences, we would probably figure it out, but that is not the case for most children in school. They are taught in a certain way, even if this is not the way they learn. The dominant deliveries in school are auditory and visual, not kinesthetic, and learning is very scripted. As a result of this, children need someone to guide them in the method of their learning, which will transfer into their study skills and other habits around education.

Learn How to Learn While You are Young

It is best if this ‘learning how to learn’ is done at a young age so that children can begin implementing it as early as possible and use it throughout their lives, in and out of school. Of course, as in the case of your car, it is never too late, but life is much easier for everyone involved if prevention and maintenance are put ahead of patching and rebuilding. Most often, parents call for a tutor (we call them Learning Partners) when their children begin struggling in school, but if children were taught how to learn while they are still eager learners, there would be much less of a need to get help later on, and if there were, it would be minor help. I am sure that you would much rather pay for new sparkplugs than a whole new engine.

Instead, what happens is that a student begins to do poorly in a subject, so a parent calls a tutoring company or a specialist for help in that subject. What we usually discover is that the student in fact has troubles that are deeper than just that one subject, but as the stakes get higher in school, the problems become more apparent. A good tutor and tutoring company will be able to help with whatever the problem is, but it will take more time, which, as students get older, becomes less available. The tutor needs to not only help the student in that subject, s/he needs to help with learning styles and study skills – things that could have been taken care of in elementary school.

Hire Your Help Early

We need to think of hiring extra help for our children as a necessary expense of raising children. The teachers just can’t do it all, and parents who are not education experts often do not know where to begin. A good tutor or learning specialist will work with the parents, teachers, and student to ensure that everyone is working together in the best interest of the child. It may be an extra expense on top of school, but education is free in this country if we choose to send our children to public schools, so it is a small price to pay for a lifelong piece of education. Yes, we do pay for education out of our taxes, but our taxes pay for many services that we never use, and if the educational system is not giving us everything we need, we must find an alternative. This small, extra investment will pay off for the rest of our children’s lives as they learn how to be in charge of their own learning and stop being at the mercy of the teachers who may not teach to their learning style.

I see people spend their time trying to decide where to live based on the test scores of a school, as if that is somehow going to dictate whether or not their children will get a solid education. There is one very important factor in a child’s education, and it cannot be ignored: Parents (or guardians). Yes, you can get the best teacher for your child, and yes, you can try to find the best school. You can even try to spend the most money and live in the most affluent areas, but ultimately, if you are not willing to invest the time, energy, and values into your child’s education, your child will have a constant uphill battle.

The reason children in some areas have higher test scores is not because they have better teachers; it is because they have more attention given to them by their parents, and they have more opportunities for learning. Obviously this is not the case across the board because there are plenty of intelligent students in the schools that have low test scores, and there are plenty of children who get the needed attention from home, but in all geographic regions, there are also children who do not get the help they need at home, and we can not blame this on the school. The schools cannot be expected to educate children without the help of the families.

You will learn that I love analogies. Let’s look at one. Let’s say you want your child to be good at volleyball (or your child wants to be good at volleyball). This is one very small part of a child’s life, but the better you want her to be, or the better she wants to be, the more time she will have to spend doing it, so you put aside time for her to work exclusively on volleyball. She will not excel at volleyball simply by playing it in PE for an hour a day, so you will probably have to hire a private volleyball coach. Maybe that coach even works with her for an hour a day, 6 days a week, so now she gets 2 hours of volleyball a day if you include PE. She still won’t reach Olympic levels unless she practices on her own. If she is young, she can’t be expected to be self-motivated to that level on her own; she needs her parents to help her, practice with her, put time aside for her to work on her skills. This is how we should see education.

Somehow, though, we expect our children to be the top of the class simply by what they get in school, for an hour a day or less (per subject). We need to put ourselves in the teacher’s shoes. That teacher has 20-30 students at one time, at 20-30 different levels. He or she cannot be expected to make every child an expert. We need to consider that there is a pre-determined curriculum that teachers must follow, and much of that is spent on test preparation. We must also consider that the children who are at the bottom of the class take up the most energy, and the children at the top might get done fast and need more work, so the teacher has to arrange for that.

It is no secret that people excel with one-on-one attention, which is why people hire tutors and homeschool their children. Homeschooling may not be the right choice for everyone, but people are far more likely to learn from someone who is giving them absolute, individual attention. That leaves the parents and private tutors.

There is one caveat in there. We probably have all had individual instruction where we did not learn very much. For some reason, the partnership just wasn’t right. Oftentimes this nonworking arrangement is with our own parents or our own children. It is hard to say whether it is because children do not want to listen to their own parents, we often have overly-high expectations of our own family members, or whether the block is coming from the instructor or the instructee, but there needs to be an academic and emotional bond or the learning will not take place. It comes down to a communications issue, and if the communication isn’t working, then neither is the learning.

Let’s go back to the volleyball analogy for a minute. If a young child is learning volleyball, then it is likely that the parents could help with training, but if the parents are not volleyball players, then the children will at some point pass up the parents and need outside help. The important factor is that the parents offer all the assistance that they can and know when to ask for help. If the parents take part in the training sessions, they are going to learn enough about volleyball to stay ahead of the child for quite some time, but unless they are professional volleyball players, their children will eventually pass them in talent.

I hope I have made my point: Parents must take part in the education process. They can not send their children off to school and expect them to come back educated! First, if education is not a value in your house, your children will not be very likely to embrace it. Second, if you are not paying attention to what happens at school, you are not opening a dialog between you and your children, and third, your children need reinforcement at home. They need math charts hanging on the wall and dictionaries close by. They need a set of flash cards and plenty of paper and sharp pencils, but most importantly, they need you. Don’t be scared. You have been there, and even if you have not, you can now be there for your children.

We are also here for you and your children. We are the education experts, and we can help your children be successful. We can also help you help your children. Children need to learn how to learn, and they need to learn how they learn best. This is best done at an early age, but it is never too late. Do your research and invest in a learning partner for you and your children so that when a difficult subject is presented at school, it won’t be quite so hard. Once children know how to tackle their learning process, they can tackle anything the teacher sends their way!