Why your child spends countless hours studying and still doesn’t do well in math.
There are 4 reasons why your child is experiencing this.
Focus issues (even if they don’t have ADHD)
Just because your child studies for, let’s say, 8h it doesn’t mean that they study effectively or progress for 8 hours.
As a matter of fact, it’s hard to study new, challenging topic consistently with no breaks for more than 2 hours. Your child likely studies while watching TV, chatting with their friends, eating, watching YouTube or swiping through Instagram.
That means that most if not all of the work they do is ineffective.
Ineffective study methods.
When children say “study,” not all of them mean the same thing.
Let me give you several real life examples of what your child might mean when they say “I studied”:
1. I read the textbook
2. I read the notes
3. I read the problems from my notebook
4. I solved example problems from the textbook
5. I redid the problems I already solved
Unfortunately all of these activities produce almost zero results.
Longer vs Better
Studying longer does NOT mean studying more effectively or learning more.
Effective study sessions are usually relatively short (up to 1.5h), intense and focused.
As a matter of fact, your child should get the fundamental idea of the concept within the first 15 minutes, depending on the complexity of it. After that, they should nail down the details, which should take roughly another 10-20 minutes.
If your child studies for long hours, they most likely waste their time on ineffective activities that don’t actually help them understand anything.
Procrastination
Most students study sessions are accompanied by social media, TV, music, friends, TV, food and more.
Also known as procrastination tools.
When we want to avoid doing something uncomfortable, our mind produces thousands of other things we really, really need to do right now.
For example:
I can’t study without music.
I need to ask my friend just one question.
Was this the homework, for sure? Let me ask my teacher.
I study best when I’m full, I will eat while studying.
I can’t put my phone away, what if an emergency happens and I have to pick up?
And so on.
To study effectively, your child needs to tune out all the distractions to be able to maximize their focus with no distractions.