Tuning in to signs of learning challenges in kids

Learning challenges in kids can be really tricky to spot.

It can be hard to tell whether your child can’t do something, or if they just won’t. And sometimes it’s not clear what’s an in-the-moment challenge and what’s a pattern. 

On this episode of Parenting Behavior, host Dr. Andy Kahn will explain how to spot what might be a learning difference in your child. 

We’d love to hear from you. You can email us at ParentingBehavior@understood.org.

Related resources

• What are learning and thinking differences?

• The difference between learning disorder and learning disability

• Learning disabilities: What they are and aren’t

• Kids with multiple learning and thinking differences: What you need to know   

Timestamps

(0:53) How to gather good data

(1:57) Looking for patterns

(3:09) Using homework to find clues

(5:37) How to spot motor or physical difficulties

(7:29) Why frustration can be a good thing

Episode transcript

Andy: Learning challenges in kids can be really tricky to spot. Identifying whether your child can do something or they can't do something, or actually in the cases where your kid just won't do something, can be really challenging. Differentiating between what's happening in the moment or what are things that are more long-standing patterns.

 Today, we're going to focus on differentiating between what might be happening in the moment versus what's a pattern of your child's learning that we need to pay more attention to. 

This is "Parenting Behavior with Dr. Andy Kahn." That's me. I'm your host. I'm a parent, and I'm also a licensed psychologist with over 20 years experience working with families on managing challenging behaviors. Our focus today is going to be identifying learning differences in kids. 

(0:53) How to gather good data

First, I want to reiterate that behavior is a form of communication. And as parents, I'm always talking to you folks about "Let's be a scientist here. How can we be objective and look at the little factoids that are going to give us evidence of what's going on with your kid?" 

So, think about things like when something's happening. Is your child showing challenges getting ready for school in the morning? Are they showing you difficulties on a certain day of the week that might be evidence of things like, "Oh, I've got math class that day," or "I have a certain test that day"? 

Thinking about things like, "Oh, are we talking about report cards or is it homework time?" Certain big points in the day where children might show big emotions. Keep in mind that your child is avoiding things and when they avoid, we have to consider what the barrier may be. Something like time of day. Are they struggling with certain skills? 

And also, keep in mind your child is a great source of direct information. Don't be afraid to ask them, "Hey, what's going on? What are you feeling right now?" Or you know "What's making you frustrated?" You might be surprised at the kind of things your kids will tell you. 

(1:57) Looking for patterns

Learning and thinking differences can be hard to spot sometimes. If we think about looking at our kids and their behavior, we have to think that maybe something that's a challenge one day might not be a challenge the next. What we're really going to look for are patterns, things that tend to happen consistently over time or happen more often than not. 

If we think about where this information is going to come from, there's one important source that we never want to forget, which is the teachers. Don't be afraid to reach out to teachers. They may be able to give you the early signs and symptoms of things that are affecting your child. You might see the patterns better, particularly with homework or after school, and the teacher will give you little clues. 

Remember, as a scientist, we have to gather information. Ask good questions. Write down information so you don't forget. Because when we do all of this gathering of information with big emotions, you're not going to remember. Very, very typical. 

And finally, think about asking specific questions. The "W" questions: Who's present when these things are going on? What activities are they doing and when in the time of day might this be happening? These clues may be really great for you as a parent/scientist, so to speak, to gather information. When you get objective data, you become a better scientist and ultimately a better parent. 

(3:09) Using homework to find clues

Back to the scientist theme here. Remember to consider all the evidence. Let's use homework as an example. When we're doing homework with our child, and if you have the time to do this, you may notice some things that sort of get stuck in your head, which is if your child is fighting you over doing homework on a regular basis, and they're not understanding and learning of the day, that maybe is a bad homework assignment for them. 

What does that mean? It means that homework is all about practicing a skill that they've already learned. Homework time is not time for relearning. Homework time is very specifically the time for your child to practice activities they learned already during the school day. 

Now, parents really try to help their kids in all ways. If you're sitting at a table with your child and you're reteaching them something, or teaching them a method that you used for when you were in school, and I'll tell you, they're not using that method anymore. You're going to have an argument with your kid. If that's what's happening to you day after day. Stop. Write a note to the teacher, send an email. Homework time is not relearning time. It is practicing things that they already know. 

And if your child is struggling with specific topics, this is an opportunity to start looking for that pattern. How do we know if it's a learning challenge? Look for the pattern day after day. Is math always a problem? Is reading always a problem? When you see those patterns, that's the time to reach out, gather that data, and use your time to start to say, "OK, maybe I'm on to something with what my child needs right now. 

When you're trying to figure out what's going on with your kid, there's other kinds of evidence that might be a little more subtle. Thinking about why your kid is struggling and how they're struggling, there are certain things you might hear: "Math is boring. My teacher's always telling me I'm disorganized about this." Or, you know, "Doing math is hard. It's not fun anymore." 

When they're talking about things being hard things being not fun, they're giving you signals. Something about that activity is more difficult than they want it to be. And this can happen for kids who have very good math skills. So, something that's going on like that, these are good scientist opportunities. Take those notes down and ask some good open-ended questions of the teacher. 

If we think about other ways that learning differences can show themselves, if your child is rushing through their work or making simple errors and you know they have solid math or reading skills, these may be examples of things like their emotions are dysregulated or they might have an attention deficit. 

We don't need to think about diagnoses now. We just need to highlight good questions about "These behaviors are sticking out. And these are the things I'm going to share with the teacher to try to figure this out together." 

(5:37) How to spot motor or physical difficulties

Let's talk about things that people aren't always aware of: Motor and physical difficulties. This is near and dear to my heart. See, as a young kid with ADHD, I had lots of challenges in getting my work done because I had fine motor challenges. When it comes to using things like a pencil, which requires your fingertips and small muscles, my body can't coordinate that naturally. So, when I would try to write as a kid, I'd be really messy or I'd refuse or write very small ideas and not really reflect the kind of learning and things that I had in my head. 

For many years, people thought that I couldn't write. When I got a computer for the first time and I was able to learn to type, made a huge difference. That motor difficulty confused people about what my skills were. 

For young kids, it's really important to think about "Do they need to be evaluated for things like physical therapy or occupational therapy?" Those are supports where we learn about how well kids coordinate their hands and their bodies in space, how well they can do the physical activities of learning. 

And those are things that can often be overlooked because kids who are frustrated and upset may throw the pencil, may throw the book, may flip the desk rather than show you that something's difficult, or they might be really messy and erase a lot of stuff, showing you confusion about what they're doing. So, it's something really important to keep in mind because it can be a very easily hidden area of learning challenge or functional challenge for your child. 

The other area to think about is that we live in a right-handed world. So, if your kid is left-handed, writing in a book that has a binding in the wrong place, writing where they're always dragging their hand across the material in front of them may make it really frustrating for them. So, just keep in mind that these differences may be things to keep an eye on. 

Motor and physical skills can be areas that are sort of invisible to see. We'll see a lot of behavior. We'll see a lot of other learning evidence. But never forget that if the motor skills are a challenge for your child, they're going to have all kinds of other difficulties in trying to express and show what they know. 

(7:29) Why frustration can be a good thing

All right, before we go, one thing I really want to bring up is that facing challenges is actually a good thing in the life of children, as well as us as adults. Why do I say this? Well, obviously, one of the things that I talked about in a prior episode is the idea that tolerating frustration is a necessary life skill. 

If you want your child to be successful in almost anything in life, they have to be able to face adversity. They have to be able to navigate if something goes wrong, and if they can work through that challenge and do something more difficult, they're going to have opportunities that far exceed what they would if they just gave up every time something got hard. 

So, the idea of navigating learning challenges is a lot about teaching your child. "Yeah, this is difficult. We understand it's difficult. And instead of avoiding and escaping it, we're going to try to work on strategies to help you be more successful. This is something that can be really hard to do but is super, super important. 

When I was working in schools for many years, one of the things that always happened was that as little kids would get nervous about things like presenting in front of the class or talking in public, parents would often say, "You know, maybe we can not have them speak in public or not have them speak in front of the group." Why was this? Because they were so anxious. 

I would ask parents, "Do you want to take your child out of the running for things like being a teacher, or being a manager of a company, or being an actor for that matter? You see, if your child is not asked to do things that make them anxious or not asked to do things that could affect a lot of other parts of their life when they're young, we take away opportunities from them." 

Navigating that frustration is such a crucial thing. And I think that in the moment, we want our kids to be comfortable. We don't want our kids to cry and be unhappy. But in the grand scheme of things, a little bit of discomfort navigated well can lead to much better achievements and outcomes for them. Really important to keep that in mind. 

The other part of this is engaging your children in something that we call a growth mindset, which is that if we want to do difficult things, we have to plan for failure. We have to navigate failure and be willing to keep working, understanding right from the word "go" that this is hard, I'm going to mess it up a bit, but that's going to make me better at it. 

These are the kind of things that if kids know in advance, they're much more willing to approach things that are hard. So, keep that in mind. What do we want? We want to build skills, growth, mindset, and self-confidence in kids, and it can be really painful in the process. But you can do it. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of "Parenting Behavior with Dr. Andy Kahn." We'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on the show. You can email us at ParentingBehavior@understood.org. I'll put that email in the show notes too, where you can also find more resources and links to anything we mentioned. 

"Parenting Behavior with Dr. Andy Kahn" is brought to you by Understood.org. It's produced and edited by Cody Nelson. Editorial guidance by Rae Jacobson. Music and mixing by Justin D. Wright. Ilana Millner is our supervising producer. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. 

For Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. 

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