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Why my child is failing in school?

Your child is not doing well in school. Homework does not get done, what is done is done poorly, or child hates the school. All of these situations are devastating for a family. Figuring out why child is not doing well can be a difficult process depending on the number and complexity of underlying causes.

There are generally five reasons why children do not do well in school;

1. Learning disabilities
2. ADHD
3. Physical or mental problems
4. Child abuse or neglect
5. Lack of proper teaching

Any one of these reasons, if present by itself is enough to cause failure in school, but often more than one of these reasons is involved. Most young patients in my practice have problems in the first three categories, which are the most common ones, however, over the years I have seen school failures steaming from the latter two as well. In this article I will address only the first cause, the LEARNING DISABILITIES.

Imagine a teacher telling children to bring some tools to school because the students will be building bookshelves. The following day, most children bring all the necessary tools, some bring only a few, and a handful do not bring any. The teacher gives the children instructions, and at the end of the class, most children finish their work on time, some finish partly, and a few make no progress at all. Interestingly, those who failed were not necessarily those who forgot to bring a full set of tools. For example, one student who forgot to bring glue used a hammer and nails with good results. That student's success with the task depended on his skillful and versatile use of the tools he had. Those who failed did so because of lack of some crucial tools and also their inability to use the tools they did have.

What tools do children need to do well in school?

a) Focusing
You have heard about ADHD. How many times have you said to your child, "Pay attention!" Attention supervises all new learning. Ability to initiate, maintain and shift attention is crucial in all activities but particularly important in school learning. So important, in fact, that failure in this vital function can be placed in a separate category called ADHD,

b) Memory
Memory can be divided in three types:

- Immediate Recall that deals with information which stays in our focus only for a very short period of time while the brain decides whether to let it perish or forward it for long term memory.

- Active Working Memory (AWM) that can be compared with the RAM (Rapid Access memory) in your computer. AWM keeps the information long enough to be used for ongoing tasks. It allows the user to get distracted for a short time to a different task and get back to the previous work without losing it. Examples might be a phone call that interrupts your reading of a mystery novel for a few minutes and when you return your memory still retains the plot.

- Long Term Memory preserves the information for a longer time periods. An example might be the name of your childhood friends, the color of your school team uniform, tune for the national anthem, smell of roses.

c) Language skills
Most of what children learn in school is presented in form of language. Language problems can affect not only their academic learning but also social functioning. Language skills are not limited to just vocabulary, but effect grammar and ability to converse and also to express oneself in writing.

d) Processing
Information enters the brain through two main pathways: Auditory (listening) and Visual (seeing). There are also minor pathways: tactile (touch), olfactory (smell), stereognosis (shapes), etc.
Auditory and Visual processing

The amount of information entering through Auditory (listening) pathways is limited to individual child's maturity and abilities. How much a chills can learn depends on the rate (speed at which information arrives at a processing "gate"), volume (amount of information given at one time), and complexity of the information. Once sum of all three factors reaches the threshold, the resulting clutter creates a bottleneck preventing new learning.

Visual (seeing) processing or pathway is usually divided into sequential (when precise order of data matters: an example will be the sequence of digits in a phone number vs. what numbers are there or arrangement or exact order of colors in a rainbow) and simultaneous when the big picture is much more important than particular details (e.g. how heavy the traffic is on the freeway vs. details on each individual car.) Visual processing is limited by the same factors as the auditory processing (rate, volume and complexity.)

e) Motor skills
There are gross motor (big muscles of the body movement, coordination, etc.) and fine motor skills (mostly handwriting skills) and motor (also known as procedural) memory to be considered.

Gross motor skills are not as important as fine motor skills in academics; nevertheless, poor eye-hand coordination or general clumsiness may have substantial impact on self esteem and social standing.

Fine motor skills are more important during the early years of schooling. With spread of computers, handwriting becomes less and less relevant for academic success.

f) Higher cognitive function (HCF)
Also called the filing system of the brain. Just as the filing system for books in a library, the HCF controls storage and retrieval of the necessary information. It tags new information under different categories creating multiple connections within the brain. HCF allows to label, prioritize, inter-connect and group independent pieces of information to bring it back from memory at will, answer indirect questions, or in order to solve a new problem. HOC is also important in planning, estimation, preparation for the tests and other complex tasks requiring advanced skills.

Different tasks in school require the ability to combine the various skills or tools we have just listed here. We understand that for reading (decoding, not comprehension) we employ attention, language, and visual processing skills; for copying from a black board - attention, visual sequential processing, short term visual memory and fine motor skills; for creative writing, a more complex task, - attention, planning, memory, language skills, fine motor skills, but not auditory or visual processing (e.g. children can still write with their eyes closed)

Deficiency of one particular tool will only affect tasks requiring this skill but not other tasks. Therefore, it is not unusual to have a child who can read above grade level but not able to write well.

How does knowing these help you? What do you do if your child is failing? Most parents are not able to separate out and identify their child's abilities and disabilities.

A qualified specialists can perform a psycho-educational evaluation which will help you identify the areas of strength and weaknesses. It can be done either privately or at the public school (where it is called the IEP evaluation.) The testers can administer an IQ test to check child's abilities and also achievement tests to see how well the child performs academically. They will arrange for speech and language tests if necessary, and collect information from parents and teachers to get a complete picture. Also, a medical specialist or a psychologist may need to be involved for diagnosis and treatment of ADHD or specific psychiatric disorders that cause the school failure.

Once you examine the child's abilities in this fashion, you will get a better picture of what the primary cause of your child's problem in school. Appropriate plan to help the child can then be formulated to specifically address his or her weak areas.

Michael Levin M.D.