Simple Steps for Dealing with School Issues

© Mira Katja Watson, Sep 2011

 

How to help your child cope with school

There are two main issues that often come up with the school system. One is finding the lessons boring, or not being interested in most of what is taught. The other is too much homework. Both are common problems, and don’t meant that your child necessarily has to be taken out of school, but rather that you may need to work with your child and/or the school to make the necessary adaptations, and if the school proves too inflexible, you may need to find a new school for your child. The most important thing to understand is that your child is not at fault, your child is not wrong, they are just not finding ways to deal with what is being asked of them because it doesn’t suit them. All children want to do what is asked essence, and if your child is struggling with school, it is most likely that it is really problematic for them and they don’t know what to do. So please consider putting aside your own feelings of frustration, embarassment, shame, fear etc. and rather than making your child feel even worse, try to get to the bottom of the problem step by step.

 

The following steps and examples will help you approach the issue and figure out with your child what needs to happen. The important thing is to remember there are no right or wrong answers, but you can find solutions if you take things slowly and allow your child’s intelligence to dictate what is required. Given enough space and time, and approached with the right attitude, even small children will be able to say what they need and indicate what feels good and acceptable to them. Nothing else will provide a long term solution that supports your child’s confidence and self-esteem.

 

The homework issue

It’s not surprising, given the normal western school hours from 9-4pm that when most children get home they are exhausted and ready to collapse. This is especially stressful for highly sensitive children who need more down time in peace away from other people for their nervous systems to recover. Such children normally can’t cope with any more stiumaltion after they get home from school, so doing homework is especially tough for them.

 

When children become upset and tearful about doing homework its often not just the actual homework that is the problem, but the mental stress associated with it. Since they are often given two or three subjects to do per night, a conscientious child may feel completely overwhelmed. They may want to do the homework properly, but since each subject can take them over an hour, they simply cant get it done. They know they will be told off or punished for not having done the other subjects, and get understandably stressed by the internal conflict that they can’t verbalise or resolve. So talking it through and figuring out practical solutions really helps.

 

Before you try to work out options for how to take the anguish out of homework, you need to guage accurately what kind of a child you are dealing with. An adult might come up with the solution of doing the homework fast and badly but at least getting it done. This may instill terror in highly sensitive or insecure children who are dependent on their teacher’s approval, so such suggestions may need to be introduced slowly and with a lot of emotional support.

 

Before you even start asking your child what the matter is, check that you are calm, in your own centre, and feeling your feet. When you talk to them, try to be gentle, and not to dominate or overwhelm them with your energy and your concern to get the issue sorted out. If it’s tough and emotional for the child, then to get any sense out of them, you will have to be calm, understanding, and patient, as well as open, and holding space for them. Otherwise you are not likely to achieve much at all…

 

You can start by asking the child in an open-ended, exploratory manner what the problem is. Is the homework too long? Is it too hard? Is it boring? What would they rather be doing instead? Try to have a conversation, and listen to the answers. Let them sink in. Without answering straight back or trying to fix anything. Let your child have the emotions of frustration and overwhelm if they come up. Don’t judge them, just be there and acknowledge them, giving the child the sense that they are right.

 

There will probably be a range of answers that indicate what your next question could be. You can ask how long each subject takes and see if there is actually time in an evening to get it done. If you wouldn’t fancy doing that much, chances are its way too much for your child. Children need at least one if not two hours to relax and wind down before their sleep time or their brains are too full and busy to let them sleep well. Children often find this kind of practical approach very helpful because then they can understand that their inability to meet the demands is not their fault, and this lessens their guilt and pain at not coping. (Why the school systems demand the impossible is another question altogether…)

 

Most children will be very shy of your talking to the teachers at school to ask for things to be changed, especially to make an exception for them. So this is best as a last resort and only with your child’s consent.

 

If children are bored with the homework, you can suggest picking one subject each night to do well, and the others to do fast and badly, without much effort. The important thing is to let the child know that you will stand by them when they get bad marks, and that it doesn’t matter. Its about jumping through the hoops and getting by, and that this is a useful skill to learn in life. Some children may actually find it fun and empowering to see how fast they can do the schoolwork. You can even challenge them to see if they can fail everything for a week, just to get out of their fear of disapproval. This is a drastic method but it tend to do the trick once and for all.

 

Many of the angst issues surrounding homework will be resolved in these kind of discussions. Often children’s peace of mind returns when you have agreed a certain number of hours – for example 2 – of homework that need to be done every night, after which they can rest and play. The main thing is that they need to know that you support and back them, and love them no matter what the teacher says. They then learn over time that they can back themselves and the teacher doesn’t have the authority to make them feel bad about themselves, no matter what. If you as the parent trust them to do their best, they also learn to set their own realistic standards rather than to be constantly upset and stressed at targets they can’t meet, which is so undermining and pointless. Then they may feel safe enough to relax around this issue.

 

In some cases it can be easier fot the child to relax if the parent is willing to talk to the teachers and negotiate that the child is given some subjects less as homework to do each week. This reduces the sense of being a failure. In the first instance this can help take the pressure off a very distressed child who is falling to pieces. Often it’s more the principle of the oppression and lack of free will to do what is best for themselves that stresses the child beyond breaking point, rather than the homework itself. If it does feel necessary to talk to the school, make sure you include your child in the process of which teacher you will speak to, and what you will ask for. This gives the child a sense of being in control and involved, and a sensitive child may have a lot of useful information about their teacher and the way the school runs to assist you. It also reduces the amount of shame for the child, which may be considerable.

 

 It may take a few attempts before you get things to a workable solution, but don’t be disauded. Many school teachers really care about the children they teach, and despite their own overload of work and pressure, are very willing to listen and support individual children. If you get a totally negative response you may take a gentle look at the whole school environment and see if your child would maybe feel more comfortable and supported somewhere else…

 

What to do if your child finds school boring

 

Many children find school excruciatingly boring and look forward to the breaks, sports lessons and art classes. The first thing to do with a child brave enough to express such sentiments is to accept them and listen. The fundamental problem with the school system is that it can’t cater to an individual child’s natural interest and learning curve because no two children are identical. It may also be that the things the child is being asked to learn simply don’t fit with their natural interests and they can’t understand why they have to spend so many hours doing things they don’t want to. Seen from this perspective, you may be able to listen and have a detailed conversation with your child about what bothers them, and what they enjoy. Just allowing your child to express their feelings and experiences in words may help them to accept their experience and stop feeling quite so bad about themselves for not really enjoying it.

 

You may be able to explain to your child that in the world we live in, writing and reading are basic forms of communicating, and required for learning exciting things on your own, as well as for sharing your ideas with other people. The trick is to tap into your child’s natural interests and show them ways in which the things they have to learn might be useful in supporting the things they love.

 

With some children, it just doesn’t work. I worked with one young child who had been labelled autistic, only he was actually pretty much a genius. When I discovered he liked dinosaurs and crystals I found the key to connecting with him, and also that he could name and identify way more dinosaurs than I could, and talk endlessely on their habits and favoured environments. The problem was that he had obviously been born with a very specific task in mind at a soul level, and was totally frustrated by not being allowed to pursue this. If children have such a clear tendency for what they want to do, then this must be supported. Anything else is not helpful, especially with a strong willed child. It also indicates a total disrespect of that child as an individual and undermines their identiy and self-confidence.

 

Why try to force a child to become generally familiar with a whole range of subjects and skills and suppress or ignore the one thing they are really naturally passionate about? Surely the intelligent thing would be to use their passion to teach them the other basic skills that might help them get by in modern society? Unfortunately due to pressure to teach the curriculum most school teachers don’t really seem to have the time or capacity to get to know their children to that extent, so as a parent it can help to make sure that your child’s key interests and impulses are supported by extra curricular activities.

 

No teacher is perfect, but there should be at least a few lessons at school that your child looks forward too, or there is something very wrong. It can help to make a joke out of the subjects that your child generally loathes or fails. It really doesn’t matter if your child isn’t brilliant at everything, and that kind of parental pressure can be very hard for them to handle too. As long as they are engaging with some subjects, and generally developing as humans, you can turn a blind eye on the odd academic imperfection. Learning to relate and be social are equally important skill, and not really focused on or taught at school. Yet they are the foundation of our later welfare and happiness. Getting good grades is not everything by a long way, and sometimes parents need to remember this when their own unfulfilled ambitions creep into their children’s lives unconsciously…

 

If your children can’t concentrate at school at all, then it may be worth taking them for a few craniosacral sessions to help ground them and calm the nervous system, and release any trauma that may be affecting them. Not being able to focus can be very frustrating for a child and its not the same as being bored. They may express it that way, but actually they don’t have the option of participating, and this is something that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.   Medication is definitely not a helpful option, no matter what the teacher suggests. Serious issues with children need to be solved at the root of the problem whether its physical, emotional or to do with the family relationships, and medication just covers over the problem rather than resotring the child to learn and thrive.

 

Some very sensitive children don’t do well in a school where there is a lack of integrity at the organisational level. Chaotic management, inconsistent policies and arguments amongst teachers have been felt by a number of children I have worked with, and have made it almost impossible for them to learn, because they felt responsible on some unconscious level for those problems. Such issues need to be taken care of at the management level obviously. But if your child starts expressing such concerns they will likely never be happy in that school, and don’t wait until the school system gets better – that’s equally unlikely. Move your child to a warm, consistent environment where the teachers and head are accountable, and you will see the visible relief in your child’s body posture, sleep and learning… Truthful, sensitive children really struggle to reconcile themselves with adult’s white lies and inconsistencies, and it can be a huge burden to their nervous systems which prevents useful learning. Even if you the parent don’t feel that way, please take your child seriously if they make such comments, because they have no reason to invent such stories, and such environments do not teach your child a positive message about how to conduct and upright life, in the long run.

 

One child I worked with had been given rose tinted spectacles (literally) to cure her eyesight and improve her reading. When I asked her what the problem was at school, she could only say that everything is so serious and adults don’t understand how to have any fun… She couldn’t grasp why people need to be so stressed and concerned and her eyesight was an indication of her desire to live in a manner more true to herself. Just explaining to her that she can be herself and have fun, and doesn’t have to become serious and boring was enough to start her healing process and create much relief. Children know what they need in essence, yet when faced with an entire system based on different values that don’t meet their own needs, its understandable why they find it hard to know where to start expressing the problems. However if given space and real listening, they can usually communicate very clearly… Please take the time to listen so your kids don’t have to repeat the same misery at school that you may have encountered…