*Flashback Friday*

*This post originally appeared on The PediaBlog on October 15, 2019.

 

The Need To Please

 

 

Practically every new thing humans do begins with a failure. Grit and tenacity help us learn from our mistakes so we can repeat and practice until we ultimately succeed. You can see it very early in life when an older infant or toddler first tries to walk: Stand up, one step, fall, push up to stand again, two steps, fall, back up again, determined to meet you on the other side of the room on two feet.

Every child wants to succeed. More than a desire to please themselves, they want to please their most important teachers and supporters — their parents. The drive to succeed and the need to please often intensify once elementary school begins. It is when school success is elusive that anxiety, negativity, and low self-esteem begins to set in. Lack of academic success is rarely a manifestation of simple laziness, says pediatrician Perri Klass, M.D.:

We aren’t talking here about a child who is doing O.K. — getting along fine, passing courses, but perhaps not getting the straight A’s parents might like. We’re talking about a child who is clearly struggling just to stay afloat. Sometimes it’s a child who was doing fine until something changed or went wrong in the school environment — a teacher mismatch, a terrible social situation with classmates. And sometimes it’s an issue with the child’s own learning profile or state of mind that comes to light as academic demands increase.

 

A new clinical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics calls on pediatricians to get more involved when school-age children are not progressing academically:

Pediatricians and other pediatric primary care providers may be consulted when families have concerns that their child is not making expected progress in school. Pediatricians care not only for an increasingly diverse population of children who may have behavioral, psychological, and learning difficulties but also for increasing numbers of children with complex and chronic medical problems that can affect the development of the central nervous system and can present with learning and academic concerns. In many instances, pediatric providers require additional information about the nature of cognitive, psychosocial, and educational difficulties that affect their school-aged patients.

 

As every pediatrician can attest, Klaus says that underlying problems — often complex medical, social, behavioral, or developmental conditions — often lead to student struggles and failure in school. We must not let these difficulties define them:

That does not mean that these are necessarily medical problems (though medical problems can certainly play a role). But it’s often said that a child’s job is to learn, and when something gets in the way of the child successfully doing that job, the child will often feel discouraged, unhappy and progressively disaffected.

“We’re leaving a huge sector of our population behind,” Dr. McGuinn said. “They’re told so many times how awful they are because the school measures them compared to kids who, neurologically, do it easily, and it destroys lives every day.”

She herself has two children with learning disabilities, she said, “very bright” children who struggle with reading. “You really have to be a great advocate and be brave as a parent to get what your child needs.

 

Pediatricians may need to rely on other specialists and providers in order to track down the reason or reasons why a student isn’t doing well in school. But whether we refer children to see a child psychologist or psychiatrist, a neuropsychologist, physical, occupational, or speech therapists, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician, or a child neurologist, parents should expect the evaluation to begin with the pediatrician.

If your child is struggling, really struggling in school (even in preschool), it’s a good reason — maybe a red flag — to pay us a visit.

 

(Google Images)

 

source http://www.thepediablog.com/2021/10/15/flashback-friday-176/