What To Do When Your Child Gets Frustrated In School

girl-504315_1920

Even involved, engaged parents can be surprised when bad grades start showing up on their child’s report cards. As far as they knew, everything was fine.

Bad grades are the last sign of a child struggling in school. By then, their levels of frustration and futility might have reached a point of no return. The trick is figuring out that your child needs help before the disappointing grades start arriving.

Here are some signs to do just that:

Mood swings just before or after school

Just like adults heading to the DMV, children get irritable when faced with an unpleasant experience. If that moodiness is coming just before or just after school, that unpleasant experience is school itself. If you notice this pattern, try to get them to open up about why they’re upset. Hopefully you can get specific about what’s troubling them at school. It might be academic struggling or something even more serious, like being bullied. Just know that it might take more than one attempt to get them to open up.

Avoidance of school discussion

On the best days, children aren’t exactly conversational masters. “How was school today?” is often met with “Fine”. It takes the highly trained ear of a parent to discern whether they are actually avoiding talking about school, but if they are, it’s a sure sign of struggle. Keep pressing, as casually as possible, getting increasingly specific as you go. If you suspect something, start talking to teachers and looking up your child’s grades online.

Changes in friends or activities

Is your child not interested in basketball anymore, even though they were obsessed with it last month? Do they talk about new friends whose names you’ve never heard before? Any drastic changes in behavior usually have root causes and you want to rule out any of the serious ones, including underperformance in school, bullying, or drug use. That’s not to say that students can’t try new things or meet new people, but listen to your parental radar. If something doesn’t add up, start finding the underlying cause.

Listen to the teacher

If you’ve established a good, open relationship with your child’s teachers, they should feel free to drop you an email when they see something amiss. Their motivation in reaching out to you is not just to enlist your help in addressing any problem behaviors, but also to give you a heads-up that changes are afoot. They see your child in a completely different environment than you do and can tell when a good kid is starting to go south—and can usually tell you why.

The Next Level

Did your child exhibit these signs or others before you realized they needed academic help? What happened? Educate us in the comments below.

If you thought this article brought up some valuable points, please share it among your social networks using the buttons.

And if you feel your child needs a little more help to succeed in school, please find out more about Athena’s services and how they can help you using this link.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *