10 Ways to Combat Learned Helplessness in Education – One Kid at a Time

Have you ever heard the term “learned helplessness” in your certification classes, or perhaps it’s been mentioned in a professional development setting? Learned helplessness in education is a serious problem in some school contexts, and it can be difficult to overcome.

However, being aware of learned helplessness as a real problem students face can help you overcome it as a team.

In this post, I hope to explain how learned helplessness becomes a problem for both students and their teachers, and what educators can do to move students’ toward classroom success and higher self esteem.

What is learned helplessness?

Learned helplessness is when a person has learned to be helpless, by having too few successes in their life that they’ve obtained independently. Consequently, when confronted with a challenging problem, they simply give up.

Learned Helplessness in Education

Learned helplessness starts in the home, but it can end in your classroom. Let’s learn more about the origin of learned helplessness.

Learned helplessness begins at home.

Parenting is so hard! And every kid comes with their own unique set of challenges. Often with the best intentions, parents can allow learned helplessness to become a problem for their child.

Teachers often note that children with learned helplessness have “lawnmower” parents who mow down every obstacle in their way. Because these perfectly capable kids have limited experience with problem solving, they quit too quickly and become easily overwhelmed.

A second group of children with learned helplessness may have parents who have allowed them to fail too much by not helping their kids build emotional regulation and the frustration tolerance to tackle difficult challenges. These children suffer from poor self esteem by having caregivers who have failed to support, adapt tasks, and find ways to build a child’s confidence so they have the desire to continue learning.

Neurodivergent or delayed kids are particularly at risk for learned helplessness.

It can be really difficult for parents to know how hard to push a child to overcome challenges that are borne out of developmental delays or neurodivergence.

My own child had some early signs of a few motor delays; he rolled over quite late, didn’t set up well until he was 7 months, and walked at 17 months. He was such a chunky baby and very easy going, so we believed he was just struggling to get mobile.

As such, he hit every milestone on the late side of “normal,” and his pediatrician wasn’t concerned.

He is now 4 and is still struggling to reach a few of those milestones, and we have noticed that he gives up quite easily when confronted with a difficult task, like dressing himself or learning to ride a bike. His instinct is to whine and cry for help, or lose his temper and quit. His frustration tolerance is very low sometimes.

He is also a very emotional child who seems to have difficulty with sensory regulation at times. This seems moderated by a good amount of exercise, quality food and frequent small meals, and more downtime than his siblings need.

But he is improving dramatically and becoming much more confident this year! We are certain he will continue improving, because we got him into an excellent occupational therapy program and we are teaching coping skills, grit, and building his frustration tolerance. But it’s absolutely not easy, and the emotional rollercoaster we have all been on as a family has been challenging. I know our efforts will pay off!

Occupational therapy is a wonderful tool for conquering learned helplessness early.

For kids who seem to be actively learning helplessness, occupational therapy is an excellent resource. Occupational therapists work on exercises for gross motor and fine motor skills, and it often feels like a game to kids.

In my own experience, occupational therapists can work to build up deficits for the child so their playing field is more level.

Second, a good occupational therapist knows when to push harder and build grit for the child. My own child will work far harder for his favorite therapy friend than he will for us. He adores her, and doesn’t want to disappoint.

Finally, his occupational therapist seems to know how to choose activities and games at the perfect difficulty level for him. These activities are not too hard, but they definitely push him to keep working past his comfort level. She is slowly building his successes and teaching him that he CAN do hard things, so that when he’s independent at school and sports, he believes in himself.

If you have a student in elementary school who is struggling with learned helplessness and may be working against some developmental delays, be sure to talk with the parent about completing a screening at an occupational therapist. They will meet with the child and complete some assessments to see if the child would benefit from occupational therapy.

Kids who have tantrums and outbursts sometimes get a free pass on mastering new skills.

Some children are more prone to outbursts and tantrums, and this can be absolutely exhausting for parents, teachers, and other caregivers.

This is simply a matter of biology and brain development. Kids can and do learn to control their outbursts and develop emotional self-regulation, but not all people just naturally grow out of their tendency to erupt. That’s why you see grown ups having meltdowns in the grocery store and behaving like children.

Here is a great article about helping children develop self-regulation skills.

When kids are inclined to have meltdowns, parents will often just tackle whatever challenge is before them to avoid the chaos. In an attempt to spare themselves from the difficulty of a temper tantrum, parents rob their kids of the opportunity to grow their frustration tolerance and collection of personal successes.

If parents and teachers want to combat a child’s learned helplessness, they have to be willing to deal with the emotional fallout and let them experience some frustration, anger, and sadness.

Teachers can easily make learned helplessness in education worse.

If a child enters their school years with some of the challenges explained above, teachers can definitely make learned helplessness worse by repeating some of the same mistakes the parent made.

Academic self concept is fully formed by 3rd grade.

Children enter third grade with a fully formed academic self concept. They already know if they’re one of the best students or the worst. They have ideas like, “I’m not good at math,” or “I’m a terrible artist.”

Teachers can fight against learned helplessness in upper elementary and in the teenage years, but it takes a great deal of intentionality, because the child has already made up his or her mind about themselves.

In kindergarten-second grade, teachers can have a greater influence on a child’s academic self concept with less effort.

Teachers reduce the rigor to keep struggling students on task.

Struggling students tend to get off task. They chat too much with their neighbors, they’ll ask to go to the bathroom or nurse more often, or they’ll simply daydream. They’ll rush through their work in hopes that the teacher will let them work on a more desirable “early finisher” activity.

To avoid dealing with the challenge of off-task students, teachers will often reduce the rigor of the assignment so that more students are able to engage with it.

When teachers make the work too easy, future teachers will pay the consequences when they try to assign on-grade level work. The students will have no experience with work that is difficult. Thus, they have fewer experiences with academic success and have learned helplessness.

Here are some first day of school procedures you need to teach for elementary school – or at least plan for them!

Teachers rely too heavily on consequences and punishments for motivating students with learned helplessness.

Children with learned helplessness are already suffering from low self-esteem. They have learned that they’re not capable of success on their own.

It can be frustrating to observe. When children won’t engage with the work that’s assigned to them, it often looks like laziness. So teachers scold, make notes in parent communication folders, force students to miss recess and complete work at that time, and dole out other consequences.

This approach ignores the pain within the student and lacks compassion for children and teens with learned helplessness. What we need is to excite these kids with praise and incentives. I have specific ideas below.

What is an example of learned helplessness?

Here’s a story about a little girl named Ellen, a poster child for learned helplessness.

Examples of Learned Helplessness at Home

Ellen started off life with difficulty nursing and gaining weight. While her mom, Grace, tried so hard to do everything right, she didn’t have much confidence in her parenting abilities. After all, she wasn’t quite ready to have a baby. Grace constantly worried she was doing everything wrong as she powered through sleepless nights and Ellen’s newborn doctors appointments.

As Ellen grew into her toddler and preschool years, she threw lots of fits and always seemed to hit her milestones a bit later than her peers. The doctor wasn’t overly concerned, but Ellen’s outbursts made Grace feel like an inadequate parent. Every time Ellen threw a fit in the grocery store or at church, Grace felt more and more ashamed of her ability to parent.

When it came to learning her letters and trying to do things like tie shoes or play tee-ball, Grace went easy on Ellen. She waited longer to put Ellen in preschool because she feared she wasn’t ready yet. She didn’t practice learning her letters, kicking a soccer ball, or tying shoes because it caused more tantrums.

When the tantrums came, Ellen’s mom didn’t teach her any regulation skills or get help when it seemed like the tantrums were persisting too far into childhood. She just retreated and felt paralyzed by worry.

At home, Ellen had fewer and fewer tantrums, because Grace fed her only what she wanted, did everything for Ellen, and never required her to enter social situations that might cause overwhelm.

By the time Ellen entered kindergarten, she was socially and emotionally quite far behind her peers, and it carried over into her learning at school.

Examples of Learned Helplessness in School

Let’s continue our story about Ellen.

When Ellen entered kindergarten, she continued having multiple meltdowns every day. Her teacher, Ms. Hargrove, was having a difficult time keeping the class focused and creating a positive learning environment.

Overwhelmed by Ellen’s behavior challenges, Ms. Hargrove shifted her focus to teaching Ellen emotional regulation skills. After all, with 20 kindergarteners in the room, she couldn’t give Ellen the constant attention she needed to stay on task, complete assignments, and listen to stories.

So when the rest of the class was singing, learning, and playing, Ellen spent a good portion of the day in the calm down corner. Every time the work felt too difficult or boring, Ellen threw another fit, and was sent out of the room to spend extra time working with the school’s social-emotional resource teacher.

As Ellen progressed farther into elementary school, she gradually gained better control over her moods, which made her much easier to manage in the classroom. She was finally getting the social and emotional support she required.

Unfortunately, due to the time she missed focusing on academic learning, Ellen was now far behind her peers in reading, math, science and social studies. Every day, the work felt far too difficult. She was a smart and capable girl, but because she had so few successes early in her education, Ellen feels unable to do any grade-level work.

By the time Ellen reaches third grade, she’s convinced that she isn’t smart. She decides to place her energy elsewhere.

How does racism, classism, and ableism play a role in learned helplessness?

Anytime a classroom full of children is perceived as incapable of completing grade-level, rigorous tasks, the teacher may be inclined to reduce the level of rigor in the classroom. This can also happen on an individual level, as described above in my examples of learned helplessness.

When teachers lower their standards and make the classwork easier, they have just perpetuated the problem of learned helplessness, and made an even bigger mess that will need to be addressed the following year by another teacher.

American schools are highly segregated, and it’s not uncommon for a teacher to enter a classroom full of minority students and be the only white person in the room. The reverse is also possible, of course. When the teacher scans the reading levels of the students in her class in the first week of school, she may find that they are collectively 1.5 years behind. Will she assume this is because of their race, their family’s education levels, their raw intellect, or because of learned helplessness?

Her implicit bias may be that these children are behind because A) their parents didn’t read to them or B) their parents don’t speak to them enough at home or C) these students just aren’t motivated. Whatever she might assume, it’s possible those assumptions are being shaped by racism or classism. Of course, this is not pleasant to think about, and the teacher may be entirely unaware of her own thoughts and feelings about her students.

Check it out! Here’s a post about how administrators and teachers can create an assets-based school culture.

How can teachers help students overcome learned helplessness?

Learned helplessness can be overcome in the school building, but it takes a great deal of intentionality by multiple teachers and leaders in the building. Here are my best ideas for combating learned helplessness.

Analyze one student at a time.

One thing I noticed during my time as an interventionist was how much better I knew the kids than I did as a classroom teacher. Of course, this was a luxury. Interventionists like myself rarely have more than 6 kids in any single group.

Classroom teachers are so busy with curriculum, managing behaviors, and all the other demands placed upon them. Small group teachers are able to study and figure out where the problem lies with each and every student.

If you’re overwhelmed, request that your interventionists, counselors, special education teachers, and co-teachers can help you pay extra close attention to your struggling students. Have meetings and name them one at a time.

In order to figure out why they’re struggling, you have to consider the physical, mental and emotional health of each child. You also must pay close attention to environmental concerns and home life.

Knock down low hanging fruit for quick wins.

Every once in a while, when analyzing each student carefully, you’ll discover a problem that was simple to solve all along but was missed by previous teachers.

For example, this year, I had one student in my small group who seemed so bright conversationally. It didn’t make sense to me that reading would be such a huge problem for him. He previously scored only a 32 on his third grade STAAR test, and now in 4th grade, he still couldn’t read well.

It looked like dyslexia to me, because he had many of the indicators for dyslexia: strong communication and comprehension skills but weak decoding. So I referred him to our counselor to see if we could get him tested.

The counselor added him to her queue. She refers each and every child for hearing and vision tests with the school nurse before moving forward with testing. Lo and behold, he was almost completely blind in one eye, and every teacher (and his mom) had missed it. Because he was able to see fine from a distance and wasn’t complaining or squinting while reading, he slipped through the cracks.

Next, I called his mom, but she couldn’t afford the glasses. We used Communities in Schools vouchers to get both him and his sister free eye appointments and glasses. Six weeks after our counselor sent him to the nurse, he scored a 66 on his STAAR test. He was so proud of his glasses, and even prouder of his reading scores.

Do NOT miss this opportunity to notice little things and investigate further. This child was on the brink of no longer putting forth effort in school, and would have been yet another victim of learned helplessness.

Model frustration tolerance and grit.

Students need to know if it’s not their abilities that are the problem, but rather their effort and willingness to fight past the discomfort of difficult problem solving.

As you’re solving a math problem or writing an essay, speak out loud the occasional negative thought. Then, correct yourself and explain that you won’t let your thoughts win. Here’s an example:

“Ugh! I have writer’s block. I don’t know how to do this. I kinda wanna quit!”

<long pause>

“But I’m not going to quit. I can figure this out. Let me look at an anchor chart and re-read what I’ve written.”

<continues writing>

“This is still hard. I’m getting frustrated and I’m noticing my heart rate getting up. Let me try some breathing tricks we’ve learned.”

Some students need to hear this sort of modeling regularly from their teacher and classmates, especially if they’re not getting any mindset training at home. It may feel silly at home, but many of our kids need mindset help before they can learn new, challenging material.

Notice and celebrate every win.

A student who previously turned in blank pages, or essays with only a few sentences written, needs to be regularly praised and celebrated for any growth at all.

Attempting the work and progressing tiny amounts further should be noticed and recognized with stickers, positive text messages home, and more. It’s not necessary to hold every child to the same standard. Instead, we should allow for different starting points and focus on individual growth.

Use external rewards to create desire for success.

Students who are struggling with learned helplessness do not have an intrinsic desire for success or growth. They haven’t had enough success to desire more of it. If a child has never learned to read well, they don’t know that improving their reading will make them feel better. They’re simply inexperienced.

Therefore, these students need to be incentivized with external rewards. They need to know that their teacher will notice small improvements and give them a sticker for their Chromebook or a piece of candy. While many teachers scoff at this sort of classroom economy, it’s necessary for motivating kids with learned helplessness.

Ideally, kids with learned helplessness will come to desire success over time, even when there’s no “prize” attached. But even if they don’t, it’s better to motivate children in a superficial manner so that they experience growth, rather than not at all.

Discuss facts vs. thoughts.

Children with learned helplessness will often have self-defeating thoughts, without any recognition that thoughts are not factual.

Frequently talking about the difference between thoughts and facts will help kids stop destructive patterns of thinking they can’t do something difficult.

Of course, you can have this conversation without suggesting that thoughts aren’t powerful, because they are indeed. The next step is to teach kids that they need to think positive, motivational thoughts instead, without lying to themselves.

Therefore, when a child is two years behind in reading, it’s not helpful to teach them to think, “I’m a great reader,” because it’s simply not true, and children are smart enough to know that. Instead, coach a child to think, “I’m not a great reader yet, but I’m working hard to improve.” This statement is both factually accurate and rewards effort.

Need some practical tips for new teachers? Check these out!

Creating a Growth Mindset School Culture

There are ways that school administrators and teachers can develop a campus culture that works to defeat learned helplessness in the student population.

Help students identify a growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset with direct teaching.

Growth mindset needs to be explicitly taught, and then reinforced often through positive conversations and integrated into the classroom culture. There are many fabulous resources available for purchase on TPT if you need help creating quality assignments targeting growth mindset in the classroom.

• For growth mindset room decor, check out this adorable poster set.
• Use these growth mindset coloring pages as an early finisher activity.
• Angela Watson has an outstanding resource on TPT full of growth mindset lesson plans, activities, and a student journal.

Do regular growth mindset check-ins when a child struggles with an assignment.

Frequently check in with kids who are failing to motivate themselves. If a child is often not completing assignments, or is off task and playing during independent work time, be sure to start conversations with them and find out their thoughts. When they are honest with you, it’s an opportunity to circle back to the thoughts vs. facts conversation.

Have a campus-wide or classroom “goals” conference that is tailored to each child.

Ideally, a goals conference will take place in October and February, with the student, adult caregiver and teacher all in conversation together.

By October, teachers will have a sense for where students are academically, and they can help students set reasonable yet challenging goals. At the conference, students and teachers can discuss these goals and the progress made toward achievement. These goals should be unique to each child’s current ability level, and there should be a plan made together to help the student reach each goal. These sorts of conversations work to reduce learned helplessness in the classroom and at home.

Incentivize growth over achievement for the entire student body.

When campus leaders talk about standardized tests in terms of achievement for the student body, they are leaving vulnerable kids out of the conversation completely.

Truthfully, many kids aren’t ready to achieve at the standardized level. They could accomplish a huge amount of growth yet still miss the benchmark set by the school. This simply won’t do!

School leaders and teachers will get far greater results by emphasizing each child making progress. If a 5th grader entered on a 2nd grade level, they probably won’t pass the end-of-year exam. But finishing on a 4th grade level would be a victory worth a huge celebration!

What growth measures can you assess instead of just expecting every student to fit the mold?