Why Your Child Get Bad Grades and How to Help?
Why does my child get bad grades? This is one of the questions that we parents ask ourselves when facing our children’s failure at school. On many occasions, we’re not sure how to handle it. First of all, you need to figure out the real reason behind their performance. Most of the time, they’re not the result of laziness, as children desire to do well, but can’t.
Sometimes, little ones feel undervalued because of their grades. They think their parents’ love depends on their academic success. Therefore, it’s important to let them know that our love for them is unconditional, regardless of their grades.
Why does your child get bad grades?
The first thing we have to do is rule out that our children’s bad grades are due to dyslexia or dysorthography. In these cases, your child will require specialized attention.
Of course, in some cases, children just don’t want to make an effort. Yes, sometimes laziness can be a factor that we have to consider. However, it’s not often the cause of bad grades. Some of the most common “enemies” of school success can be the following:
- Intellectually precociousness
- Separation anxiety
- Inability to manage their emotions well, especially if they think they have to succeed all the time
Intellectually precocious children: Educating in effort
Children who have high intelligence or are precocious when it comes to acquiring knowledge have a great facility to comprehend what they read. They can do so with very little effort. However, there’s a problem: Learning isn’t the same as understanding.
Learning requires effort; understanding is easier. These precocious children don’t usually make an effort. Rather, they follow the law of minimum effort. Here, the important thing is to correct this lack of effort little by little, not only in school duties but also in sports or other tasks.
How can I help you?
A child who lacks education in effort may be very gifted intellectually but will obtain results that aren’t in accordance with their intelligence. In the end, they’ll end up becoming depressed and closed off to studies.
What you have to do is ask for a limited effort at the beginning and motivate your child. Offer them some sort of reward after you notice certain efforts and results. These rewards don’t have to be material. Rather, they can be a trip to the movies, an afternoon in the country, etc.
Your child gets bad grades because of separation anxiety
This usually occurs at an early age when children perceive separation from their mothers as something traumatic. Situations that can contribute to separation anxiety in children are the birth of a sibling, abrupt weaning, absence of the mother between the ages of 18 months and 2 years…
Children with separation anxiety problems, when they’re at school without their mother, experience permanent distress. This anguish paralyzes their cognitive functioning and they’re unable to follow the class and understand what they should understand according to their intellectual capacity.
What can I do?
If your child is in this situation, what you have to do is ask for help from a therapist who specializes in this type of problem. That way, your little one will be able to get out of this intellectual blockage and regain normality.
It’s not all about success, but about doing your best
We all have a need to feel successful in what we do, but sometimes, for children and some parents, this desire becomes all-consuming.
It’s then when success becomes an obligation and children suffer from anxiety and excessive tension in order to achieve success in their grades. And when this doesn’t happen and they don’t get the grades they expected, they lose self-confidence and feel unsatisfied. This, in turn, can lead to depression.
But what happens if they become depressed? Obviously, just the opposite of what we want: Their grades get worse rather than getting better.
How do I fix it?
Ask your children to do their best on tests and exercises, and don’t focus on the results. Rather, put your attention on their effort to do as well as they can.
We hope that this information will help answer the question that many parents ask themselves and that your child can say goodbye to their bad grades.
