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Helping with Reading and Math
Helping kids with their reading and math is a difficult struggle for both children and their families. Because the efforts to break the cycle focus on the child's academic skills and completing reading and math assignments, rather than the emotional interaction between parent or teacher and child, the process continues to escalate. Until the emotions involved in this interaction are dealt with, efforts at skill development and task completion are likely to be counter productive.
The ongoing conflict over reading and math can be the source of more general family disruption. Many parents I work with describe reading and math practice sessions in emotionally wrenching terms. Though doing math and reading assignments should be part of any child’s normal daily routine, when they become a point of contention between children and parents, it can trigger escalating emotions including anger, cussing, yelling, stomping, breaking things, physical violence, and running away. This, in turn, precipitates more pressure by parents and thus more arousal and less attention in the child. Parents’ efforts to get the reading and math done, though well meant, often backfire.
This emotional intensity is driven by an emotional feedback loop between parent and child. As the child becomes upset, this triggers emotions in the parent, which in turn triggers more negative feelings in the child. Night after night, the same pattern is repeated. In spite of best efforts and intense emotions, often few assignments are completed and parents feel helpless, angry and frustrated; and the child often receives poor grades.
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Impact on rest of family
This ongoing conflict can be detrimental to other family members as well. The other children may feel neglected because of all the attention that the child commands. In order to compete for parental attention, siblings may emulate the child’s behavior. Parents often argue about the appropriate way to deal with the child, which may cause marital stress and conflict. A once happy family may become a distressed family.
