Students in difficulty: 7 benevolent attitudes towards learning difficulties (parents and teachers)

When a child is struggling with education at school, tensions can arise in the student/parent/teacher triangle. However, a benevolent attitude allows the emergence of a constructive and positive dialogue concerned with the learning rhythm of the child or adolescent.

The following benevolent attitudes can serve as guides in seeking (and finding) solutions to learning difficulties.

1.Attitude of patience

To admit that understanding takes time and that the duration that a complete understanding requires varies greatly from one person to another depending on the circuits that he will have myelinated and the particular configuration that this myelination gives to his intelligence, it is to conceive that nothing in an apprenticeship justifies setting “deadlines for comprehension” or “deadlines for assimilation” which would justify forcing a learning process by trying to force it into a recalcitrant brain with a chisel. 

This attitude of patience is the pillar of the movement of slow education which invites to find the right time (sometimes faster for some children; sometimes slower).

2.Attitude of restraint

The precocity of an apprenticeship does not guarantee the level of performance in the medium and long term.

Once the skill is installed in the one for whom nothing has been forced, it is in fact both more solidly and more consistently. – Bruno Humbeeck

Thus, wanting to anticipate learning and teach it early (even if it means using punishments/rewards), means building it on a ground that is sometimes not ready to receive it (and risk generating stress for the learner).

3.Attitude of understanding in relation to false cognitive leads

Humbeeck reminds us that human intelligence is at the same time waiting, thinking, anticipating, making hypotheses, checking them (or not), changing ideas, enriching your knowledge, reversing, taking the forward step … You have to so follow intelligence everywhere, including in the “dead ends” to understand what led it there

This attitude is linked to the acceptance of error as a pillar of learning: the brain learns precisely thanks to error! It is also from errors that we can develop cognitive resistance, in other words, inhibition (in the sense of Olivier Houdé). Brain inhibition is the ability to control or block our intuitions, our habits, or spontaneous strategies. Inhibition is a process that takes place in the brain when groups of neurons release inhibitory hormones that interfere with the activation of other neurons. the region in question has a harder time activating or will not activate at all.

Believing that you know when you are wrong is worse than knowing that you don’t know. – Bruno Humbeeck

4. Skills transmission attitudes (educating is synonymous with teaching, not punishing)

It is the importance of transmitting a learning methodology for children and adolescents. It is useful to explain to children how the brain works, how it learns, what conditions are conducive to effective learning, what are the most effective methods for long-term memorization.

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