Issues That Impact School Performance

Issues such as birth order, gender, learning style, and giftedness have effects on a child's performance in school.

This difficulty can be related to a variety of problems, which are not necessarily negative issues.

Perhaps your child has a learning style that is not a good match for the teaching style used by the teacher. In this case, some students use an essay writing service to get their assignments done. Helping parents, teachers, and children understand these differences can have a positive effect on the child’s motivation and performance in school.

Visual-Spatial Learners

Your child may be a visual-spatial learner (VSL). VSLs think in pictures, rather than in words. When she hears “car”, she sees a car, rather than the word, “car.” This type of thinking takes more time than verbal thinking, so VSLs may have problems finishing tests or class assignments. Thus, VSLs may be labeled learning disabled. Much teaching is done in an auditory-sequential manner, which is the opposite of the visual-spatial style.

VSLs are the future inventors and creators of society. Accommodating for differences should help the child improve school performance and survive the experience until he reaches his late teens when he is likely to blossom. Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Isaac Newton, George Westinghouse, George Patton, Pete Conrad, Chuck Yeager, and many other scientists and astronauts struggled in school because they were highly visual-spatial.

Birth Order and Learning

A child’s order of birth may impact her performance in school and her lifestyle. A firstborn child has adult role models and may tend to be a perfectionist. This is not necessarily a good thing if the child sets unrealistically high expectations. A second child (especially of the same sex) probably will not attempt to compete with the oldest, who gets A’s but will tend more towards a different area of recognition, such as sports.

A third child often is the charming entertainer, who always is seen as the “baby” of the family. Even as an adult, he is called by a childhood nickname, such as Sonny or Junior. A child whose birth is immediately after the loss of a sibling will have a special status in the family, as will the only girl among boys, or the lone boy among girls. Being familiar with the impact of birth order can help an individual understand himself and his family and improve parenting practices

Gifted Children

Gifted children have many unique issues. Among them is perfectionism, feeling different from others, deep concern for issues of the world whose impact can only be understood by bright people (“existential depression”), and uneven development (asynchronous development.) Intellectually, she may be a 12-year-old, while emotionally, she is only seven.

Passion is universal with gifted children, as is a need (not just a desire) to learn. A student may be gifted, but not “identified” as gifted (and eligible for special classes), if he does not test well on the required tests. (Einstein would have been one of these children). So the usage of paper writing help is common among them. Besides that, creative people have a terrible time with multiple choice tests because they can see so many different possibilities for correct answers.

A bright child who is not challenged in a classroom easily finds negative ways to spend her extra time and may quickly become labeled a “behavior problem” when all she wants to do is learn, rather than sit and wait for everyone else to finish. She may also become so discouraged that she cuts off learning or underachieves because so little is expected of her. She does not develop a strong work ethic. It is common for her to have problems in college. She has never had to study to get good grades and may assume that she is not so bright because now she suddenly has to study. Since she has never had to study, she does not now know how to begin.

Boys also have special issues. Current research indicates that these issues are biological, based on the different order in which the male and female brains are formed in the womb. Boys often have difficulty expressing themselves in writing and cannot give vivid descriptions, as girls can. However, in math and spatial areas, they are strong.