What happens when a child is too dependent on the parent, or an adult to help them with many things?
In all my years of assessing and dealing with families who had children that were not doing well at school, or had been diagnosed with some or other disorder, I noted that they had some common characteristics, which included the following:
- Only do what they enjoy doing
- Lack of perseverance
- Avoidance of challenges
- Fear of failure and afraid to risk
- Very dependent
- Low self-esteem and low self-confidence
Characteristics of Learned Helplessness
They only do what they enjoy doing and tend to get bored quite easily, usually giving up when the task at hand becomes too difficult. They may start a jigsaw puzzle, but then will ask a parent to come and help them if they have too much difficulty in finding the right pieces.
They lack perseverance, and as a result, they tend to avoid challenges if they are unsure of the outcome. They might not want to swim a race because they don’t want to come last, they might not want to play a game in case they lose.
Maths is a challenging subject, and in many cases, a child often does not enjoy the challenge that maths presents. As a result, many kids will request help from a parent with their maths before attempting a maths exercise.
They tend to have a fear of failure and don’t see the point of studying, because no matter how hard they try, they never seem to succeed.
As they get older, this fear of failure manifests into a high level of anxiety before an exam, resulting in the child often giving up before they even start.
They are afraid to risk and try anything on their own.
So, it is the little things that we need to focus on, the pleases and the thank yous, and what they can do for themselves, they must do for themselves. Children are not born with manners, and so few young kids have manners these days. They are totally dependent on the parent to instil the correct values and morals into them.
So, what is the common thread? It’s the fact that these children are very dependent on somebody always being there to help them. It seems that few if any professionals have observed. As a result, and without our awareness, we are actually encouraging children to become helpless.
Dependent children have low self-esteem, low self-confidence, and lack of self-discipline. They may often have difficulty appropriately dealing with their world. This is pure as a result of ineffective parenting.
Symptoms of Learned Helplessness
- With learned helplessness children competence is almost entirely destroyed
- They lose confidence within themselves because they experience failures leading them to believe that they are failures
- They may feel competent about something at first, but if they fail in that activity they won’t bother to try it for fear of failure
- Autonomy also hardly exists in a learned helpless learner’s life
- They feel as though they have no control over their environment because no matter how hard they tried in the past, they never succeed
During my research, I also came across a term coined by psychologist Martin Seligman, called learned helplessness. I suggest that you google this word and have a look at the research that’s been done on learned helplessness in children.
The symptoms include all the characteristics mentioned above. Without us being aware we are giving children the tacit message that if they can’t understand the work at school, there will be someone to help them when they get home, be it mom, dad, an Au-pair, or maybe extra lessons.
It is quite mind-boggling to see how many schools are offering extra lessons to Grade 1’s! Every healthy child can read if they want to and certainly can add up 1 + 1. And if they can add up one plus one, they can add up 6 + 2 with effort.
The effort a child puts into their work or their life is up to the parent to know how to instil the motivation in their child to try his best.
With learned helplessness a child’s competence is almost entirely destroyed.
- They lack confidence in themselves because they experience failures leading them to believe that they are failures.
- They may feel competent about something at first, but if they fail in that activity, they won’t bother to try it for the fear of failure.
- Autonomy also hardly exists in the learned helpless learner’s life.
- They feel as though they have no control over their environment because no matter how hard they tried in the past, they never succeed.
In Conclusion
This phenomenon of learned helplessness can be overcome through the support and guidance of the educator in making tasks more manageable while helping learners to link their success to their abilities, rather than external factors, thereby enhancing their self-efficacy and self-esteem.
As a consequence, these learners may become more motivated and energised to learn with a new spirit of interest and enthusiasm. When concrete effort is praised by educators, the learners begin to believe that they can meet the challenges of the curriculum.
