What to Do When Your Child Isn’t Challenged in School
My four-year-old comes home full of stories and smiles about her day at school. She cries when there’s a holiday break because she misses school so much.
My eight-year-old, who not so long ago loved school, now bemoans Monday mornings.
At first, I was confused. Why did she no longer want to go to school?
I discovered the source of her reluctance. She’s not unmotivated, just not challenged.
Does your child say that school is boring, or even pointless? Do they complain about having to go?
That boredom can seap into other areas of their life, causing a general lack of motivation.
If you resonate with this, here are some ways to get ahead of the problem.
Is your child not challenged in school? (Here’s how to tell)
Here are some of the top ways to tell if your child isn’t challenged in school:
- Coursework is too easy - Can they get their homework done in a snap? Do they constantly tell you that school and homework are way too easy? If your child is actually doing the work and getting good grades with minimal investment, this means they’re coasting at a level that isn’t challenging enough.
- School isn’t interesting, fun, or engaging for them - Maybe your child complains that school is boring or pointless. Or maybe they say they don’t have a favorite subject. At the end of the weekend or a holiday break, you might notice your child mention that they don’t want to go to school the next day or wish that the break was longer. If school isn’t holding their interest, it’s probably because it’s not at the right level for them.
- Doesn’t feel seen or heard - Sometimes not being challenged in school isn’t just about easy or unrelatable coursework. Sometimes it’s a clash with a teacher who makes your child feel misunderstood or overlooked. Your child might be asking for more challenges in their own way, but the teacher can’t provide them for whatever reason.
- Worsening attitude or school performance - Behavior problems can crop up. While some bright children breeze through their coursework and continue to get good grades, others disengage, stop doing their work, and get confrontational with their teachers.
Every kid deserves a challenge
Without challenges, students can lose their motivation and struggle to move forward with their academic studies and personal goals.
“If students aren’t motivated, it is difficult, if not impossible, to improve their academic achievement, no matter how good the teacher, curriculum, or school is.” - Alexandra Usher and Nancy Kober, researchers for the Center on Education Policy
Challenges should keep students’ interests without making them feel incompetent. This doesn’t mean that we can’t give kids challenges that feel impossible. (At Synthesis, we’ve found that the magic of teamwork keeps kids engaged with tasks that they might otherwise bail out on.)
When kids are sufficiently challenged they are far more likely to:
- Be excited about their future
- Enjoy their lives, both at school and at home
- Set goals and dreams that matter to them
- Believe in their ability to achieve their personal goals
- Feel motivated to complete the necessary steps towards achieving their goals
Why isn’t school challenging?
For many kids, public schools simply don’t provide the educational experiences they crave.
Schools tend to teach complex subjects like trigonometry and algebra with no real-world applications.
Students are forced to stay in their seats, follow instructions, and are often encouraged not to speak up unless they have the right answer. Students wait to be told what to do, and rarely get to pursue their own imaginative ideas or projects.
This is not the right system to foster the kind of bold innovation and creativity kids will need in the future.
7 things to do if your child isn’t challenged in school
Motivating and challenging students isn’t just the work of schools, but parents and communities as well. That’s why we’ve offered tips that stretch across a variety of categories.
1. Ask your child for their input and ideas
"The teacher and the taught together create the teaching." - Eckhart Tolle
Here are some questions you might ask your child:
- What subjects do you need more challenges in?
- Do you have any ideas for projects or challenges in these subjects?
- Are there any cool projects on YouTube that you’ve seen that you want to try?
- Do you think it’s a good idea to ask your teacher for more challenging homework?
When people say “listen to your gut,” it’s not just a cliche. Science shows that our body has the ability to make decisions well before our analytical mind based on our reactions, perceptions, and subconscious processing.
When talking with your child, pay attention to their emotions and body language, and encourage them to trust these feelings (think not only with their mind, but also their body).
2. Support their personal interests
Creating more moments of excitement, fulfillment, and inspiration can fill their cup and help them appreciate and get more out of school.
To give your child a boost of motivation and engagement, all you need to do is raise their interest level. What do they love? What are they good at? Find ways to invest in these activities, whether that means signing up for a hiking club or practicing art one afternoon.
Group activities are especially great because they develop kids’ interpersonal skills, and the team aspect can actually help kids stay motivated to achieve difficult goals.
Synthesis cohorts can be a great way to challenge your child intellectually and socially.
Want your child to collaborate with other kids to solve real-world problems? Check out Synthesis.
3. Do hands-on learning projects at home
Sadly, hands-on learning opportunities in school can be few and far between. Supplement your child’s education with more applied learning opportunities by coming up with a cool project.
Monthly:
Try to tackle a hands-on learning activity every month.
You could help your child create a paper mache globe with clay mountain ranges, carve a wooden statue, put on a puppet show, or write their own short story.
During the summer:
Depending on where you live, your summer break might be anywhere from five to eight weeks long. That should be plenty of time to tackle a bigger project that will light your child up and give them a different learning experience.
Make sure the summer project…
- Is hands-on
- Appeals to their interests
- Is self-guided (allows for open-ended work, not just following instructions)
- Achieves something (solves a problem or adds functionality)
- Utilizes and develops multiple skill sets
A good larger project might be designing an outdoor garden, building planter boxes from scratch, and planting a few sturdy crops. This will require some space planning and hands-on work.
Or, you might encourage your child to set up their own fundraiser or canned food drive to support a local charity. This would require your child to organize an event, do some marketing, and get family members involved.
Founded by Janine Licare and Aislin Livingstone (when they were 9 years old) in 1999, Kids Saving the Rainforest helps kids get involved with conservation. Your child can sign up to volunteer at the rescue center in Costa Rica or raise money to build a new nursery for the baby animals.
Consider what organizations your child might be interested in, whether local or far away, and work together to come up with a project to help. These sorts of open-ended activities can spark a lot of excitement.
4. Check with your school for gifted education resources
While most high schools across the US offer honors programs and advanced placement (AP) classes, 32% of elementary and middle schools don’t offer gifted programming of any type.
Find out if your school offers a gifted education program. There might be a dedicated teacher who pulls kids out for more challenging work and focuses where they excel.
“Differentiating education for highly gifted kids in a traditional classroom setting can be logistically almost impossible. Most schools serve their gifted students best when they are treated similarly to special education students. To have a dedicated gifted/talented (G/T) teacher on the campus is ideal, because then students can be pulled out of class on a predictable schedule and have their needs met.
When a G/T teacher pulls students from their class, they can then further differentiate within that gifted population according to each child's area of strength. For example, gifted math kids may work with other math whizzes, even if they're not in the same grade level.” - Whitney Rancourt, certified G/T teacher
Beware of extra homework as the solution
Aim for in-class opportunities to do advanced work. Unsurprisingly, too much homework is associated with high stress levels, so tread lightly where extra homework is concerned.
Get better reading recommendations
Stop by your school library right after school and ask the librarian for book recommendations that match your child’s reading level. If the school is very large and the librarian doesn’t know each child individually, you can bring your child’s reading level score as proof if needed.
Offer advanced curriculum at home if you have to
Figure out which subjects they excel at and offer some advanced instruction. For example, if your child is great at math, you might spend an hour every Saturday practicing math skills that are a few grade levels ahead.
5. Help build your child’s confidence
With more confidence, your child will be willing to take on the activities and programs that interest them and challenge them.
Is there something they want to do but don’t feel confident in the ability to even get started? Is there an activity that they’re doing, but not full out?
Figure out where they’re lacking confidence and try to help boost it.
“Confidence is simply the willingness to try. When you feel insecure…you don’t lose your confidence. You’re just blocked from the feeling of your confidence. You are a confident person.” - Mel Robbins
Here are some ways to build their confidence:
- Offer more opportunities to practice that skill in a stress-free environment.
- Remind them that everyone fails and struggles. What matters is how you handle and what you do after a failure.
- Quell perfectionism by modeling the behavior you want your kids to do, such as not judging themselves too harshly or being willing to take feedback without taking things personally.
- Practice positive self-talk with your child. You might even try Mel Robbin’s technique of giving yourself a high-five in the mirror every morning, and encouraging your child to do the same.
- Don’t talk about confidence in a way that makes it sound like it’s something your child lacks. Instead, help them see that they always have it. They just need to tap into it. And to help them tap into it, rely on other strategies in this list, such as goal-setting and prioritizing their personal interests.
6. Help your child set and track personal goals
When kids have intrinsic goals, they can stay motivated during tough times. Help your child set personal goals for different areas of their life.
These goals can be a specific achievement, such as running a mile in a certain amount of time, or they can be an output metric, like doing advanced math once per week.
Help them tie these smaller goals to their bigger goals and desires. This will help them push themselves outside of school in whatever activity they’re engaged with.
Remember, goals can be changed if needed. Allowing kids to pivot is important, as this is essential for helping them discover what they truly want.
7. Practice self-reflection independent of grades
Grades aren’t an accurate reflection of a students’ abilities, talent, or potential. Many kids feel disconnected from their grades, or simply don’t care about them.
Help your child come up with a way of reflecting on their progress. For example, if your child is taking horseback riding lessons, you might talk with them after their last lesson of each month about what skills they improved upon, what they did well, and what they can do better next month. You can also have them set them up with their own metrics for success. Ask them what success would look like for a certain project or activity.
These strategies set them up with a growth mindset that will increase their confidence for tackling new challenges in multiple areas of their lives.
Embrace the chaos with Synthesis
Kids don’t want perfect, clear instructions.
They understand that life is complicated and messy. That’s what makes life interesting.
At Synthesis, kids have a blast working together to solve problems and tackle real-world simulations. We like to call this embracing the chaos.
See what kids have to say about Synthesis:
Back to my eight-year-old daughter, the one who had been sapped of all her motivation to go to school. Between Synthesis and being accepted into advanced math, her love of learning has returned! To see her excited to attend her Synthesis cohort every week makes me feel like a true hero.
Synthesis runs collaborative problem-solving cohorts for kids. Learn more.
