When Doing Your Best Doesn’t Seem to Be Working

We often associate doing our best with achieving the same results, or better, every time.

Doing your best is not about results, it is about the effort applied to the task.

This seems very simple and obvious to say, but we are often upset when we put the same or more effort into an activity and the results do not meet our expectations.  As difficult as this is for an adult to accept, it is much more difficult for a child to accept, particularly a child with dyslexia or any other learning challenge.  Progress is not a straight line.  There are days that will have you pulling out your hair in frustration and wonder what is the point; you’re never going to reach your goal!

How do you manage those days?  How do you keep you and your child motivated to keep going?

Here are three simple strategies that I found helped me tremendously, particularly in the early days of reading. . .

 

1) Remind yourself that we all have good days and bad days.

Some days it is very difficult to concentrate, no matter how hard you try.

It could be due to insufficient sleep.  Just because your child had 10 hours of sleep, doesn’t mean they had enough for what their body needs.  They could be fighting an infection, growing, needing more brain recovery time due to excess stimulation, catching up from a busy day or week.  You can’t put a number on how many hours should be enough sleep, because none of us can see inside our bodies to know what they need.

Emotional challenges can also make it hard to concentrate.  Excitement, anticipation, disappointment, a rainy day, a sunny day, sibling frustrations, all can contribute to varying levels of emotional control.  Don’t forget about hormones!  Children as young as 8 can begin to experience hormonal swings.

Technology can be a problem for some people.  My one daughter was completely unable to concentrate on reading if she had had any screen time before reading.  It didn’t matter if it was recreational or an educational game.  Working on a screen seemed to change how she processed information, and we quickly learned that if she was to progress in reading then screen time always had to come later in the day.  Even as an adult she finds that if she has to really focus on something, it is easier for her to do it before she gets on the computer.  Screen time did not affect my other daughters nearly as much.   Some children need to have a lot of physical activity before they are able to sit and focus on reading.  Some children do better if they tackle the most difficult mental task first thing in the day, some need an easier ‘warm-up’ task first.  Each person is different in how they process information and you need to be aware of little things that can make a big difference, and adjust accordingly.

Sometimes you’re just having an off day for no apparent reason.  It happens to all of us.  In our house, the girls would get to know when they were having an ‘off’ day and would tell me, “I’m just having a bad dyslexia day today.”  They didn’t learn to identify those days themselves.  I would look for clues and if I thought it was just one of those ‘off’ days, I would tell them or ask them if they were having a bad dyslexia day.  We would take the attitude, of “Oh, well.  These days happen sometimes.”  Then we would get on with things as best as we could.  It was about the effort put into the work, not about the results.  Some days the results are disappointing, but that doesn’t mean you stop trying.

 

On days like this, the learning is not about reading, writing, or spelling.  The real learning is persistence, effort, and consistency.

 

2) Just look at the next step, not the whole road.

It is human nature to just want to get to the results, see clear progress, and check that goal off your list.  Unfortunately, many learning disabilities including dyslexia are a long, slow path of incremental improvement.  Sometimes it is overwhelming to look at all the work yet to be done and think that you’ll never get through it.   While it is important to keep the overall goal in mind, sometimes that can be overwhelming and it is much more useful to just look at the next step.  Remind yourself, and your child, that it will take time, and what matters is that you keep working at it.

One of the reasons why people with dyslexia can often be very successful entrepreneurs is that they have learned to keep going despite setbacks and disappointments.  They have learned resilience, persistence, and how to overcome obstacles.  It isn’t having dyslexia that makes them successful, although the creative, out-of-the-box thinking that often accompanies dyslexia certainly is a benefit. It is learning to keep going despite having dyslexia that gives them the tools they need to be successful in life.

The best way to develop this resilience and persistence is to find ways to keep going and encourage yourself and your child to keep trying.  Looking at just the next step, doing it, then looking at just the next step is one of those tools that helps you keep moving forward during those frustrating days, and stops that feeling of being overwhelmed.

 

3) Stop and appreciate how much you have accomplished.

Children in particular forget how far they have progressed because learning is such a gradual process.  It doesn’t seem to be getting any easier, because they are always being challenged.  It is easy to miss the fact that even though the level of effort is the same, the difficulty of the things being tackled has increased. 

Periodically, go back through books that your child struggled to read and show them how easy it is for them now.  Pull out old handwriting samples or written work and show them how much better and easier the same tasks are for them now.  They will remember how hard it was for them and recognize that it is much easier now.

One thing I continually reinforce to my children is that we should always be challenging ourselves, even adults who are no longer in school.  If you aren’t learning or trying things that are difficult for you, or require extra focus or concentration, then you aren’t learning anything new.  We should all be learning new things all the time to keep ourselves growing as a person, to stay interested in and connected with the world, and to keep our brains healthy.  This is a life-long learning approach to living and taking this perspective will keep your world rich and vibrant.  You should never be “done” learning.

 

It is always frustrating when you are doing your best and things just aren’t going the way you want them to.  The next time this happens, try some of these strategies and see if they will help turn things around for you.  Leave me a note in the comments and let me know what does or doesn’t work for you, or if you have other ways to tackle this frustration!