6 Ways to build Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance in your child at home

Over the last few days, I have received numerous phone calls, emails, and private messages via my Facebook pages (The DragonflyForest, Forest Alliance Coaching, & Decoding Dyslexia OH).  The post on Learned Helplessness resonated with so many people.  There was a general consensus that the primary source of a student developing learned helplessness is in the school environment and that is the primary environment that needs to be changed.  The most frequently asked questions related to how, as a parent, can we help our children survive; build grit, tenacity, & perseverance; and heal the wounds that are already established.  This post will provide some insight into what a parent can do at home.

Here are some tips I give parents when helping coach them on raising a child with a learning disability:

Grit is “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” 

1~Praise children for their effort, not the end product or results.  For example, when learning something say things like “Wow, I like how hard you worked on that problem,” “I enjoyed watching you put so much effort into your project,” or “You did a great job sticking to the problem after not being able to solve it.”  Your child needs to hear you say… “We all fail and make mistakes what matters most is getting back up and trying again with new lessons learned.”

2~   Discuss how life is about learning all types of lessons, and the goal isn’t to get good grades it is to learn, develop, grow, improve, and change.  When your child fails, focus on what lessons were learned from the failure and how to prevent these from happening again.  Remind your child about how Thomas Edison didn’t fail thousands of times before he successfully invented the light bulb he learned a thousand ways his inventions didn’t work, but he persevered and finally found had success.

3~  Watch movies that demonstrate tenacity such as: "Rudy," "A Bugs Life," "Finding Nemo," "True Grit," "Karate Kid," "The Pursuit Of Happyness," "Little Giants," "The Rookie," "Remember the Titans"…. Geez just about any movie because they all follow the 'Hero’s Journey.'  

4~    When watching these movies (or eye/ear reading books) point out the theme of the 'Hero’s Journey.'  Remind your child that they too are on their own 'Hero’s Journey.'  Point out how on every journey the hero must experience a variety of trials and tribulations.  Although they are not pleasant to experience, these obstacles make the hero stronger and better .  Help your child see how his/her own life is on the Hero’s journey path in all different areas.  If your child has a character from a movie or book, they admire point out how this character perseveres and “keeps swimming.”  (Dory from Finding Nemo is one I admire!).  In therapy sessions and when coaching clients, I frequently teach Joseph Campbell’s' Hero’s Journey' and help clients see how it relates to real life.

5~    Be a good role model for your child and point out times you want(ed) to give up but persevered. This shows how you have/had grit and tenacity. 

6~    Finally, allow them to express their feelings.  Children will be frustrated when they go through their own trials and tribulations so they will want to vent these frustrations.  When your child does vent he/she may not do so in a productive way.  Your child may throw a tantrum, stomp around, or display a bad attitude.  Ignore these behaviors for the most part (don’t allow holes to be punched into walls) because you don’t want to focus on the anger.  Instead, you want to focus on how despite feeling frustrated your child is trying.  Yes, stomping and banging the table while doing math problems is trying.  Focus on how much you appreciate the effort.  When your child is in the heat of venting emotions is not the time to discuss more appropriate behaviors.  Give your child some space and once your child is calm and more relaxed thank them for the effort to make some progress.  Remind your child it is not about a final destination but the journey and how he/she has made some progress on the journey.  

These are just a few examples of ways I work with parents on helping their child develop tenacity.   Another key to helping your child is to finding something, anything that he/she does well.  Every child needs to be actively involved in things they CAN do, so help your child find things he/she is good at doing.  Every person is good at something – if you need help in this area please feel free to contact me and I’ll help you figure out what your child may be good at doing. 

The importance of changing Learned Helplessness in students with disabilities

RE-SHARING!!!  This is so important to understand please pass-along to anyone who works with kids!

Why do some students with learning disabilities (LD) succeed while others appear unmotivated, fail, or drop out?  The answer is quite simple.  The LD students who are more successful have grit – tenacity.  The LD students who are not achieving academic success have developed learned helplessness.  Students do not develop learned helplessness because teachers and/or parents coddle the students, do things for them, or make things too easy.  Learned helplessness is a condition in which the student has come to believe that he/she is helpless in a situation and events are out of his/her control. Learned helplessness is so damaging to a student and is the reason many quit rather than try harder, procrastinate, and even experience emotional problems. As an Educational Coach, Therapist, and Psycho-educational Diagnostician I will enlighten you on learned helplessness and changes that need to be made to help all LD students. 

BACKGROUND:

Decades ago, a psychologist, Martin Seligman, performed some experiments on dogs. Here’s the abridged version.  The researchers put dogs into different situations where they were placed in cages (shutter boxes).  Some dogs were placed in a cage where they received an electric shock but were able to end the shock by pressing a lever, while other dogs were placed in a cage where they experienced random shocks but had NO ability to make the shock stop or escape.  The dogs who had some control over their negative experiences recovered quickly but the dogs who could not escape or stop the pain learned to be helpless, gave up, and displayed clinical depressive symptoms.   Later the dogs were placed 

in another box and only needed to jump over to the other side to escape the pain.  The dogs who learned they could control their environment jumped over the small barrier quickly.  The dogs who had no control over their situation continued to display helpless behaviors and instead of escaping the situation they just laid down and whined; they didn’t even try.   Would we call these dogs lazy, unmotivated, or coddled?  No, we would not, the dogs had learned to be helpless.  No matter what, they could not change their environment or situation even if they had a desire to change– they were stuck. 

HOW THIS RELATES TO STUDENTS WITH LD:

More research has occurred over the past decades focused on learned helplessness and we have discovered that it happens in humans as well.   We are now able to understand why kidnap victims do not seize the opportunity to escape or why a battered spouse stays in an abusive relationship.  We also now understand why some students with LD give up.  

When students attend school, they are stuck.  The law says that a student MUST be in school and unless you are homeschooled you cannot just leave when you are feeling scared, vulnerable, stupid, or sometimes even sick.   Classroom management techniques are designed to assure that the teacher has all the power so students are controlled.  Granted, these classroom management techniques are often necessary but think about how similar they are to the cage the dogs were stuck in – quite similar in fact but with windows and more people.  

Now, some of these students will experience a great deal of negative pain while in these classrooms because they have LD.  They will watch other students grasp concepts and ideas quicker and with ease while they struggle.  These students with LD will also watch teachers praise and give positive attention to students who are being academically successful but they themselves cannot seem to achieve this academic success no matter how hard they try.  Often despite trying exceptionally hard, teachers send clear messages to these students that they are perceived as lazy, unmotivated, not working hard enough, not working up to their potential…  Wow, more shocking pain that they cannot escape and these LD students experience intense shame (Shaming needs to stop post).   

Students with LD often have the intellectual capabilities to be academically successful but have a false perception that they lack these abilities and have learned that trying hard or putting in effort has no positive effect.  Remember, a student’s perception is his/her reality.  So, even if they are gifted and LD they may still experience learned helplessness.  Learned helplessness undermines the student’s motivation to learn, reduces the student’s ability to learn, establishes ineffective learning strategies, and deteriorates school performance.

Over time these students with LD end up just giving up and accepting their fate that they are stupid, will never learn, or will always fail anyway so why try.  This is why there is a high dropout rate by the way!  And let’s not forget that with these feelings of learned helplessness are other problems such as anxiety, depression, stress, suicide…   Which is why I work hard to help teachers understand that students should never be labeled as a student with a behavior problem or lazy – the behaviors are a symptom of a deeper issue and behaviors often stems from learned helplessness and shame. 

FIXING THE PROBLEM:

Studies have provided evidence that the teacher-student dynamic is a major factor that contributes to the development and maintenance of learned helplessness.   This is not because teachers intend to create this environment for students but because when the student struggles and displays learned helplessness behaviors, positive reinforcements and support seldom occur.   An LD student experiencing learned helplessness will not be motivated to do better by receiving bad grades which often is frustrating for the teacher who in turn give up on trying to even help the student.  Let’s face it, teaching students who are motivated is much easier than teaching students who struggle and display self-defeating behaviors.

Ways the system needs to change:

Teach and embrace differences.  Many schools have been willing to focus on cultural and racial diversities yet few focus on learning diversities as a whole.  Some teachers are educating their students in their own classrooms about learning differences and the importance of accepting how everyone learns but this is hardly done at a district level.  School districts are focused on Academic Excellence- praising and rewarding students and teachers who are high achievers.  Yes, we want students to be achieving but school districts are “doing it wrong.”  Success in school should not be defined in regards to high scores but instead, success should be defined as progress and improvement.  Improving the academic knowledge and self-esteem of students should be the focus of all education.  School districts also need to eliminate the shaming – discussed here: Stop the shaming post.        

School districts need to stop being afraid of the numbers (amount of students in special education) and just do what is right for all students!  I’m frequently in school meetings where I hear principals, school psychologists, or special education directors tell parents that their child doesn’t qualify for services.  This is often because the student “fits in the box” of average and therefore does not need the extra support services, accommodations, or intervention programs the parents (and myself since I diagnosed the student with a disability) believe are necessary.  We are not wanting arbitrary services and supports.  We see the struggles the child is dealing with.  We are standing outside the cage watching the child disintegrating from the pain and are trying to prevent learned helplessness.  It can be extremely frustrating watching the school district continue to press the shock button over and over and refusing to help stop the pain.  By the way, I have never met a parent who has asked the school for help when the child did not need the help but I have experienced many school district refuse to provide help when it is explicitly clear what needs to be done. 

Teachers need to stop using red ink all over the papers!   When teachers focus on errors, they are teaching students that failing is wrong/bad and that it isn’t okay to make mistakes.  In reality we really do learn more from the mistakes we make than the things we get right so we need to help students embrace errors.  The score at the top of the paper should be the number the student received correct.  The answers the students got wrong should be identified and the students should be taught how to go back over their mistakes, relearn (or be retaught) the material, and correct the mistakes. This technique should be taught as early as kindergarten and continue until the student graduates cause the goal is for students to learn, isn’t it?   Some students will need to be re-taught the material they missed in a different way because what the errors (poor grades) tells us is the student has failed to learn the information.   Sometimes teachers have gotten into the habit of thinking that the F means that the student has failed to study, or the student failed to listen, or the student has failed to apply him/herself, or the parents failed to do their part… 

This leads me to the next important thing that needs changed - blame.  To learn everyone needs to participate, the students, parents, and most importantly the teachers.  The teachers are the leaders here and if a student is not progressing and improving in their learning most of this responsibility needs to fall on the teachers shoulders.  I have heard many teachers place blame on the students and/or parents.  When a student struggles with learned helplessness the teacher needs to add specific strategies to help guide the student out of their perceived electric cage.  Most students with learned helplessness require a teacher to be explicit in their instructions and take time to meet with the student one-on-one to provide assistance.  Remember, an LD student hears comments such as “Your written response is sloppy and poorly written” as criticism (an electric shock) so focus on positive constructive comments such as “Let’s think of another way to answer this problem.”  This demonstrates that you, as the teacher, really do care and are willing to help alleviate the pain.  This does not mean that you as the teacher are doing the work.  You are guiding the student on how to do the work, rewarding them for their effort, and providing the student an opportunity to feel success. 

Remember that students with learned helplessness have learned to just give up so they may be resistant to help.  Think of them as a traumatized dog that just left the cage and the shocks were conditioned with human contact – the dogs will then avoid humans.  So when interacting with these students focus on the things the student does well and avoid focusing on what they are doing wrong or it will only make them more resistant and have increased avoidance.  I coach many LD students with learned helplessness and know that they do not want to have failing grades, they don’t want to feel stupid.  These students really just want the pain to stop but have no idea how.  Parents often try to help but they often have to spend their evenings trying to glue pieces of their child’s shattered self-esteem back together (these students frequently come home and let out all their anxiety, fears, and frustrations).  Teachers can help alleviate this pain.  One of the common themes in LD students with grit, is they had at least one teacher/mentor who believed in them so they in turn started to believe in themselves.  They had teachers/mentors who never gave up on them even when the times got tough and helped teach them that failing doesn’t make them a failure.  We all need people in our lives to help instill motivation, especially these students with learned helplessness.

Finally, we need to change the structure of our educational system to include instructions on developing grit and tenacity.  To be straight forward here – schools should focus less on developing new curriculums like the “Common Core” and put more energy into developing programs to teach grit, tenacity, and perseverance.  To learn more about this read, Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21stCentury.  

Just think of how much better a school district would be if they could actually educate students to be successful in the world by having a positive self-esteem and grit.  I hypnotize that our prison population would decrease and we would have more productive high achieving citizens. 

Here is an activity that is similar to the one I do when teaching college classes and for professional development workshops for schools it's only a few minutes long and is a great example of how easy it is to develop learned helplessness. (if the video doesn't appear below click the link to get to the video)

Learned Helplessness link

(Image below: picture of an adult female sitting with her arm around a young male who is looking at a book and has a distressed look on his face.  A quote from Sutherland & Singh's book 'Learned Helplessness and Students with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders: Deprivation in the Classroom-' "Students who are repeatedly exposed to school failure are particularly at risk for the development of learned helplessness." Then my explanation of learned helplessness from the research - "How to know if a student is experiencing learned helplessness: *Takes little independent initiative * Prefers easy problems & avoids hard problems * Makes negative or degrading comments about own ability *If fails one part of a task is certain to fail entire task *Gives up easily *Stops trying or avoids difficult academic work *Does not respond with pride when talking about academics *Does poorly despite having ability)

References if you need them:

Schunk, D. H. (1984). Sequential attributional feedback and children's achievement behaviors. Journal of Educational Psychology 76(6), 1159–1169.

Seligman, M.E.P. (1975). Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death. San Francisco: W.H.Freeman.

Sutherland, K.S., & Singh, N.N. (2004). Learned Helplessness and Students with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders: Deprivation in the Classroom. Behavioral Disorders, 29(2), 169-181.

Tollefson, N. (2000). Classroom applications of cognitive theories of motivation. Educational Psychology Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 63-83.

Why Bill Gates is a Part of the Educational Problem

There’s an article going around the internet posted by Huffington Post titled: Gates Says Fixing Education Toughest Challenge.  In this article Gates is quoted as saying: "And the one thing we have a lot of in the United States is unmotivated students.”

Wow, this is not reality.  We do not have UNMOTIVATED students we have students who have not been educated appropriately and therefore they have developed Learned Helplessness. I wrote an article on The Importance of Changing Learned Helplessness in Students with Disabilities and would love for Mr. & Mrs. Gates to understand the reality of why students are not being successful.  I know of many very intelligent students who dropped out or failed out because of this Learned Helplessness experience.  This article was very popular and I received a number of emails from people who wanted to tell me their story because this was exactly what they were/had experienced. 

I later received emails and phone calls from parents who were frustrated because they took the Learned Helplessness article (or emailed it) to the school and the staff often disregarded the student developed learned helplessness and continued to blame it on being unmotivated and unwilling.  This prompted me to write another article: Why We Should Help Studentswith Learning Disabilities. 

We need to admit that we as a nation are doing it wrong when it comes to education.  We are rewarding the wrong behaviors, setting kids up for consistent failures, and using an arbitrary grading system (Grades, ACT/SAT, and Standardized Tests).  In a more recent article I address this topic: Students don’t Fail, the Education System is failing our Students!

So, what can we do about this?  We can admit that it is uncomfortable to face reality.  To look at ourselves in the mirror and see the naked truth.  Our education system is the problem.  If Mr. & Mrs. Gates want to make the world a better place than they need to put money into education research.  We need to educate our children and stop letting so many of them fall through the cracks as if these kids don’t matter.  Mr. & Mrs. Gates could help financially support programs that are evidence based such as making sure all schools have systematic, explicit, and phonic based reading approaches/programs.  If a student is not progressing at grade level then this student is to receive one-to-one tutoring until they are at or above grade level.  We need to stop allowing teachers to just pass a student on or fail these students. 

We need to stop with the standardized testing and focus on educating these children.  A teacher can tell if a student is behind in the areas of reading, writing, and math.  We don’t need a standardized test to prove these students are behind.  Teachers should be allowed to identify these students so they can receive individualized support and the school district should pay for each student who is behind an individualized tutor until the student is at or above grade level.  Failure should NOT be an option.  We need to stop waiting until the standardized test scores come out to finally decide to help some of these students.  We need to stop waiting until the student is so far behind that it is almost impossible for them to catch up.  The school system is squishing the self-esteem of many children and causing students to develop learned helplessness. 

So here’s my final message to Mr. & Mrs. Gates.  Stop being a part of the problem.  Saying students are UNMOTIVATED is fueling the negative fire already in these children.  They are not UNWILLING they are UNABLE!  If I had the funds you have I would be making a difference in the way we educate our students, the way we motivate, and the way the culture & climates of the school are focused on competing against each other and not supporting each other for success.  I’d spend money educating the educators on EMPATHY because Empathy is the Antidote to bullying!  Honestly, education is not as challenging as Mr. & Mrs. Gates think, it will just take a while to see the positive changes once the discrimination stops.

Finally, if you want to know what discrimination does to a person watch: Dr. King &Lessons from A Class Divided. People with dyslexia and other learning disabilities are often discriminated against in the educational system.  There are rumors that Bill Gates himself is dyslexic but I do not believe that it true.  I believe if he was dyslexic then he would have empathy and stop blaming our children (here’s a great article by Pam Wright: The Blame Game!  Are SchoolProblems the Kids’ Fault?).  I do not believe that Mr. Gates knows what it is like to struggle or be discriminated against.  If this opinion is not true, then Mr. Gates can enlighten me but in the meantime, I have no evidence to prove he understands what it is really like in the shoes of someone who struggles.

Here's a picture & quote from a child who experienced only a couple of days feeling bad about himself. Think about what our current education system is doing to children and then tell me that kids are UNMOTIVATED Mr. Gates!  

Why are students failing if schools are required to provide a free and appropriate education?

I continue to struggle with the concept of allowing students to FAIL, especially students with disabilities. What I mean by fail is - failing to be taught, the student failing to learn, failing grades, failing to protect a student's self-esteem,  failing appropriate educational strategies/curriculum...  Parents should not have to be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for outside tutoring (this is very true - I have proof if people don't believe this).

I do NOT understand how people who work with students do not know what a 'free and appropriate education' means. I don't understand how educators and coaches can shame and blame children.  I was in a meeting once trying to explain what it is like to live in the learning disabled student's shoes (and parent's shoes) to educators.  They became very defensive claiming that they fully understand and took offense to my comments because this is what they do for a living.  

Well, I take offense to educators blaming and shaming students. When an educator puts in writing that a student with learning disabilities is "unmotivated" and "unwilling" that is proof these educators lack empathy and have no idea how hard it is for a student with disabilities to learn in a classroom setting where their limitations are ignored.   Yes, it can be frustrating for a teacher to have to explain the directions to a student 20 times, but if that is what is needed for the student to understand, then that is what they need to do. 

A 'free and appropriate education' (FAPE) means that every student who qualifies as a student with disabilities, regardless of the nature or severity of their disability, should be taught. Allowing a student to fail is not teaching them.  I have seen high schoolers who read at elementary school levels.  This is evidence that the school did not provide the student FAPE, especially if they did not qualify the student as a student with a disability.  I have evaluated some high school and college-aged students who had deficient reading skills that were never evaluated for a disability.  How could teachers, year after year, fail to teach these students to read?  Why were they passing a student who could not read (or write in some cases)?   Not one teacher or other educator noticed this child was struggling with academic skills?  If the student received any kind of support from the school, then that is enough evidence to think there might be a disability and therefore the school is legally required by law to evaluate that student to determine if the student does have a disability (Child Find Law).  Some students are not assessed because educators blame the student or parents for the child not learning.  

If the student is evaluated, often the student is not found eligible for special education services that will allow the student to receive specialized services to help them learn.  Again, the student and/or parents may be blamed. Also, students don't qualify because schools do not adequately acknowledge hidden disabilities and some outright ignore hidden disabilities.  A child doesn't have to have a severe discrepancy in scores to be eligible as a student with a disability. Yet, when the student doesn't have a discrepancy, the district uses this as proof the student doesn't need specialized educational support and therefore it is the student's fault.  Parents are then left to pay for outside tutoring and educational support while the student is left feeling helpless and stupid.  School districts are then creating a more significant problem - student Learned Helplessness (this post is critical to understand). 

If school districts really did care about making sure all students were educated, then they would not allow teachers to fail students.  Administrators would tell teachers that they MUST make sure the student is learning the curriculum - this means all students not just the ones that are easy to teach.  This means the students that are difficult to teach.  The ones who have difficulty staying focused in class, the ones who cannot read at grade level, the ones who cannot spell or write, the ones who have anxiety and therefore do not willingly participate.  

Students do not have the brain maturity to make adult decisions, so adults need to help guide them- no matter how long it takes.  Students do NOT want to fail but some students would rather people think they are 'lazy' and that is the reason they are failing because it is too painful to fail after putting in the effort (these students have spent years putting in effort & getting poor results). 

Students are not "unwilling" they are actually unable.  Students are not "unmotivated" they lack the skills necessary to do the work, so they are lost.  I just heard a parent say to me that even if his child was offered a million dollars to do the work the child still wouldn't be able to do the work - it's just too hard.    

Don't believe me?  Orlando Bloom, who is dyslexic once shared that his mother used to try to bribe him to read.  He wanted a motorbike really bad, and she told him if he would read 50 books she would get him that motorbike.  He never got that motorbike.  

So, the bottom line is - if educators really had empathy on what it is like for the student who has a disability they would NEVER allow them to be excluded from learning.  Educators are eliminating them by not providing them with an appropriate education & accommodations.  

This picture is an example of what is not appropriate, and I know most educators would NEVER do this, but they do it every day when they allow a student to leave their classroom without fully understanding the material they are expected to learn (such as knowing how to read).  They do it when they blame the student for not being prepared, for not studying, for not passing a test... Would you blame this boy for not being able to stand with his peers on the bleachers?  Is HE "unwilling" or "unmotivated" to join the group?   

Here's a picture that really resonated with people with disabilities- they said this is exactly what it is like.  Here's the blog post to go with the picture:  Why We Should Help Students With Learning Disabilities .  If teachers had empathy then no student would ever drown!   This is unacceptable! 

Why do we mistrust and distrust?

Why do we mistrust and distrust?   A better question is really- why do we trust at all?   

According to Erik Erikson, the most important period in a person's life is between birth and 18 months old, during the stage of trust vs. mistrust.  Children depend on their parents to protect and nurture them.   Unfortunately, not all parents can be trusted.  Some parents cause their children pain - intentional and unintentional.  This causes children to learn not to trust and yet they still have hope that the person who is put on this earth to take care of them will keep them safe and protected.  

What Erikson seems to miss is how this isn't the only time in a person's life that trust is a vital area of concern.  Yes, children who learn to mistrust during these very beginning years may continue to have trust issues throughout life.  This does not mean that children who develop strong trust during this stage will never encounter times where they struggle with trust. 

Another time in a person's life mistrust and distrust are formed is when a child attends school.  We trust that school districts will protect and educate our children.  We trust that teachers will have enough knowledge to teach each individual child. This trust is broken when the school does not protect children and cannot or choose not to educate children.  Yep, some school districts and teachers actually make a conscious decision to NOT provide a student with their free and appropriate education.  For some this trust is broken just once but for many each year is a repeated betrayal of trust.  Many of these children develop learned helplessness (check out my past article on this to fully understand). 

We also have to trust in our relationship with others. We have all different types of relationships everyday - friends, coworkers, family, romantic...   A relationship with another person is often very tricky because it is not always congruent.  At times, one person is more vested in the relationship than the other person.  Humans are egocentric, so they engage in relations with others to get specific needs met and this requires us to trust that the other person is able to meet those needs.  There are many people who violate this trust.  You will encounter people in your life that will use you for their own benefit.  

What we have to understand is the importance of mistrust and distrust.  Mistrust is often a general sense of unease and apprehension while distrust is based on negative experiences or reliable information that a person is deceptive and their motives and intentions are harmful. 

Some distrust is functional and good for us so we do not get taken advantage of or our rights violated.  - here's a fun example of functional distrust: 

Distrust can also be dysfunctional.  High levels of distrust can cause a person to avoid being vulnerable with anyone and negatively impact relationships. The main reason for this is when a person expects they can trust someone and that trust is violated it causes more psychological damage than if a person was expecting to distrust someone and experienced trustworthiness instead.  

The insight I want you to get from this is that your mistrust and distrust are not necessarily negative thoughts you need to change.  They are there to keep you protected.  The more aware you are about your own levels of mistrust and distrust the better you will be able to know when you have crossed over into dysfunctional distrust.  

My goal is to be more aware of my own levels of trust, mistrust, and distrust so I can keep myself protected.  

We must remember that actions speak louder than words so if someone tells you that they can be trusted pay more attention to their actions.  

Important lesson to teach your child

One thing I know for sure~~  Life is NOT smooth sailing. We are doing our children a disservice if we teach them that everything will be easy.  We must teach them that life if full of rough spots and lessons we must learn.  

As parents we hate watching our children struggle and sometimes we want to rescue them from the pain and suffering.  We want to help make things easier but we must refrain.  We can guide them but they must learn how to handle problems on their own.  We can model for them how to deal with adversity and how to advocate for themselves but we cannot allow our children to believe that it will be easy or quick.  

When we have expectations and these expectations are not met then we feel disappointed and frustrated.  These negative feelings can lead to more negative feelings such as depression and anxiety. 

Parents often ask if they should exempt their child from the school's standardized assessments.  My question is "WHY?"  Why exempt the child from these tests?  Often I'm told it is because the child become anxious and stressed.  Hmm isn't a way to overcome anxiety and stress is to tackle the triggers and learn how to deal with them?  If the child is exempt from these assessments they will never learn how to take tests under negative emotional conditions. Also, these tests are more about grading the school district than the individual student (even if they threaten you that your child will not move on if they do not pass - they are using this psychological tactic to deflect attention that THEY are failing to teach your child).  If your child will perform poorly on a district standardized assessment than you WANT their score to reflect the terrible job the district is doing educating students.  Exempting the child from these tests only hides the reality that the district is failing our students.  So let your child take these district standardized assessments as practice for test taking.  

When your child is struggling with learning remind them that everyone struggles with something and the goal is to learn how to overcome an obstacle. Teach them that the key to success is knowing how to solve problems.  When your child is struggling with a school assignment ask them how they can solve the problem. Help them see ways to work smarter and not harder.  Listen to books on audio, type assignments/speech-to-text, use calculators, Google the question, review Cliff-notes, ask to see a finished product of what the project is supposed to look like, and ask questions.  These things are NOT cheating they are ways to solve problems!   

When students learn ways to solve problems they are less likely to experience learned helplessness (Click on the link - this is a must understand concept!!!).  

Remember that it is important to allow your child to struggle and help them learn that this is normal and we are learning ways to overcome obstacles so we can be successful!  We need to help our children understand the meaning of success - it does not mean money, wealth, status, material items....  Success is being able to overcome obstacles, solve problems, and learn lessons (so we don't keep repeating them).  Also read: 

6 Ways to build Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance in your child at home