r/BeAmazed • u/ReesesNightmare • 23h ago

Science Learned Helplessness

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1.6k Upvotes

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14

u/mrweatherbeef 22h ago

Is it weird this made me cry? Think how often this actually plays out in real life.

33

u/BaoBunny44 21h ago

When I taught preschool I had a kid struggle to write his name. And every adult kept telling him it should be easy and refused to give him extra help. So every time we practiced names (reading and writing them) he immediately gave up and would cry. I decided to take him aside and work with him one on one and he figured it out within a week or so. He just needed a little more help and a little confidence. After that he loved learning new words and writing them. I wonder what would have happened without intervention.

19

u/mrweatherbeef 20h ago

Bad things. Exactly this. Catch a kid at the wrong time in their development with one bad teacher or less-than-patient authority figure and it can just snowball. Scary and sad.

11

u/anonfortherapy 19h ago

I was tutoring a 2nd grader in reading when I was in college. Sweet girl. She broke down crying one day because her friends were all reading chapter books and she wasn't there yet.

I scoured the library and found the EASIEST chapter book I could find. It was in essence a longer non chapter book at low reading level and had a 'chapter' about every 3 pages. We read it together and she was so excited. Boosted her confidence a whole bunch. When she older her mom, they checked out the whole series for her to read lol

3

u/Altruistic_Pitch_157 18h ago

Bless you for that.