Solving the Internal Issues: Helping Your Child’s Mental Blocks to Academic Excellence

It seems that the entire world is now playing catchup after the lockdowns have started to lift.

Mental blocks can prevent children from reaching their full potential academically. And going back to school may have thrown up a variety of emotions in our children.  

When our children are experiencing a variety of fluctuating emotions, this will have an impact on their abilities to learn. It is crucial that, whatever our children are experiencing in an emotional sense, we make sure that it doesn’t interrupt their abilities to learn effectively. But this is something that is easier said than done. However, our children may be experiencing emotions that hold them back in an academic sense. So, let’s incorporate appropriate strategies to help your children with learning obstacles caused by the emotions.  

The importance of setting reasonable expectations 

If your children are anxious, and they have trouble sleeping, their minds will start to close down. While great tutors will be able to do what they can to harness what remaining energy the children have, as a parent, you’ve got to create ways for them to feel better about their accomplishments.  

Sometimes, you need to step back from extracurricular activities and give them the opportunities to play. In addition, you must remember that your children react in certain ways because of how you react. If you are prone to falling apart, they will pick up on this. However, you can then start to set reasonable expectations for yourself.  

Teaching your child a can-do attitude if they are pessimistic 

Many children find it easier to say they cannot do something rather than taking steps to master it. As parents, this is where we must model resilience and perseverance. We have to remember to remind our children that anything worth doing will take time to master, no matter how small or big it is.  

Additionally, helping them recognise negative thought patterns or self-defeating statements in their minds gives them the opportunity to improve and change. If your child thinks that they didn’t do well at something because they are not clever, this cuts short any motivation. However, we must remember that mistakes are also opportunities. We can also incorporate problem-solving skills at this point. Rather than saying they can’t do something, helping them to replace “I cannot” with “I can if I get help” can give your children the ability to replace negative statements with something more proactive. 

Nurturing their strengths if they are frustrated  

We must remember that if our children are perfectionists, this could be manifested as procrastination. Your child may think that everything is a competition, which means that they start feeling overwhelmed. As a result, if they believe everything is a competition, they start delaying tasks and lose confidence. Your child may have troubles in certain subjects, but it is also important to give your child the opportunity to vent their frustrations and nurture their strengths.  

It’s important to remember that it’s not just about being good at maths or in English. But it’s about making sure that your child can vent in the right ways. Children learn best when they don’t have emotions at the centre of it. You could take the opportunity to go out the back garden with your child and kick a football around or play sport, while just talking the problem out. We all know that sometimes, inspiration can strike when we least expected. The same occurs when you have a problem. If we have a problem in life, listing the pros and cons before we go to sleep gives our subconscious the opportunity to solve it for us.  

Also, remember that your child can learn best when they explain their reasoning to someone else that is interested. Therefore, rather than use super again straight away with the answer, allowing your child to explain the issue gives them the opportunity to figure it out for themselves. 

Raising their social IQ is equally important as their actual IQ  

In fact, social IQ is far more important. We can find ourselves pressured by the schools based on those all-important results. We must remember that as a parent, IQ accounts for less than 25% of overall success in life. The remaining 75% comprises emotional intelligence.  

It’s so easy for our children to feel insecure in a learning environment because they may feel rejected by their classmates. But one of the benefits of social competence is academic success. When your child feels socially inept, it is crucial to help your child develop confidence in certain ways, especially if it is linked to certain social functions. For example, they may not feel they can work well in a team but is this because they are not able to communicate themselves effectively or gauge others’ tone of voice and infections? You can also help by giving your child at the outlets such as swimming, karate, and any extracurricular activities.  

Emotions are one of the things that may seem to be holding your child back, especially in an academic sense. But it is imperative to remember that it is always internal issues that can result in blockages.