Improving Academic Performance: Why Children Don’t Always DoTheir Best and What You Can Do About It

As you know, many kids are performing beneath their potential in school, in sports, and at home which can deprive them of the success, joy, and happiness that is possible for them.

Most people don’t know that the mind contains unconscious blocks that keep students from performing at their best or reaching a goal. No matter how hard they try improving academic performance they will not be able to rise above a certain level until they get rid of the blocks.

What are the UNCONSCIOUS reasons for underperformance?

1. They have limiting beliefs such as:

a. I don’t deserve to do well in school
b. I can’t do it
c. I’m stupid, dumb
d. The teacher doesn’t like me

How do these limiting beliefs affect their performance? Beliefs control your emotions and behavior. For example, if a student is introduced to a new math concept and in his mind he believes, “I don’t deserve to do well,” then he will make all kinds of mistakes to sabotage himself (and you).

These limiting beliefs create emotions, which in turn create even more performance destructive beliefs.

What’s the solution to improving academic performance?

• Investigate to find out what the limiting beliefs are
• Eliminate them
• Get rid of the emotions caused by the limiting belief

Now, let’s discover another reason for your child’s underperformance.

2. They have a bad learning strategy

Isn’t it ironic how you go to school to learn but they don’t teach you how? It’s true and so many students don’t have good learning strategies. The process they have for learning isn’t effective. For example, they might have a bad spelling strategy. Good spellers are visual spellers. Poor spellers spell phonetically.

Or they don’t know how to properly encode information which is necessary for recalling information, therefore they test poorly.

Here's what you do to solve the problem and start improving academic performance:

• Investigate to discover what their learning strategy is
• If it is not a good one, get rid of it
• Install a new more effective learning strategy

Now, you might already be aware of this next reason.

3. Emotions play a big part in underperformance

In children, the frontal lobe is not developed so they make decisions based on emotions. This interferes with their scholastic work. For example, say the parents are arguing. In the child’s mind, he or she is afraid there is going to result in a divorce. This creates an atmosphere of fear in the mind. It generalizes to school = their performance is inhibited

Additionally, some emotions create beliefs. For example, the fear of divorce in an immature mind creates the belief, “My parents don’t love me enough".

What can you do?

• Investigate to find out what emotions are blocking them from performing at their best
• Get rid of the emotions because all emotions have beliefs tied to them.

Why is it so hard to control these issues? They are at the subconscious level; therefore, the solutions need to be at the subconscious level too. Fortunately, I can help you pinpoint and eliminate the blocks between your child and his or her academic success.

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