The homework he'll do, and the one he won't

When a child avoids just one subject, he is telling you something.

Homework goes fine. Reading, done. Spelling, done. Then you slide the math worksheet across the table, and the whole evening changes. He slumps. He wanders off. He sharpens a pencil for five minutes. Suddenly he is exhausted, or starving, or has something very important to tell you about the dog.

Sound familiar?

Here is the trap almost every loving parent falls into at this moment. We reach for a verdict. "He's being lazy." "He's not even trying." "He just doesn't want to do it."

But look closer at what actually happened tonight. He did the reading. He did the spelling. He only fell apart at math. A child who was simply lazy would dodge all of it. A child who does everything except one subject is not lazy. He is telling you something, if we slow down long enough to listen.

For thirty years I have watched that one detail change everything. So here is the method I use to get underneath the behavior to the real why. Five steps.

1. Name the behavior plainly, with no verdict attached. Not "he's being difficult about math." Just: "He does his other homework, and he stalls on math." Strip off the story you have added and keep only what you actually saw. The verdict feels like an answer, but it stops you from looking.

2. Watch the pattern, not the one bad night. One rough evening is noise. If it is math every time, and only math, that is a signal with an arrow on it, pointing straight at where the trouble lives. The pattern is the clue.

3. Ask the question that changes everything: "What would have to be true for a child who wants to succeed to still avoid this?" This question assumes the best about your child instead of the worst. It forces you to go looking for an obstacle instead of an attitude. A child who happily does four subjects clearly can sit and work. So what is different about the fifth?

4. Look underneath for the real driver. This is where it gets interesting, and where math trips up so many bright children. Numbers have a rhythm and a logic to them, the way one quantity relates to another. Ideas we call simple, doubles and triples, more than and less than, are actually abstract relationships a child has to feel before he can use them. Some children do not pick that rhythm up just by being told. They need to touch it. They need concrete, hands-on materials, blocks, coins, things they can move with their fingers, instead of being asked to hold it all in their head. When a child cannot yet do that, math does not feel hard. It feels impossible. Avoiding the impossible is not laziness. It is self-protection. Here is the part parents miss most: the why is not the same for every child. For another child, the numbers themselves are fine. It is the words wrapped around them, the language buried in a story problem, that hides the math from view. Different why, same method. That is exactly why you look instead of guess.

5. Support the outcome while you build the skill. Once you know the why, you can help two ways at once. Bring the math down out of his head and onto the table where he can hold it. Let him count real objects, group them, line them up, until the rhythm starts to make sense in his hands. You are not lowering the bar. You are handing him the right tool to reach it, while the underlying skill grows.

Notice what we did not do. We never decided he was lazy. We never forced him to just try harder at the one thing that was breaking him. We got curious instead of frustrated, and curiosity is what led us to the help he actually needed.

This is the whole heart of it, and honestly it is the heart of everything I teach. The behavior a child shows you is never the whole story. It is the tip of something underneath. "He won't" is almost always "he can't, not yet, not this way." (Never assume. It really is the title of my first book for a reason.)

So here is my question for you this week. Think of the one thing your child reliably avoids. If you stopped reading it as won't and started reading it as can't yet, what might he be trying to tell you?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

Warmly,

Dr. Pat

Patricia McGuire, MD, FAAP

Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrician

P.S. This way of looking at your child, underneath the behavior to the need below it, is exactly what my first book is about. Never Assume: Getting to Know Children Before Labeling Them. If tonight's homework battle sounded like your kitchen table, that is where I would start.