21: Why Kids Struggle In School & How to Fix It

CLICK HERE to get your FREE Parents Survival Guide and Good Choices Downloads and Booklets!

When a child brings home A’s but skips class, or melts down when math comes out, something deeper is going on. We dig into why two very different patterns—low grades and high‑risk behavior—can spring from the same broken learning process, and how a simple framework helps parents turn confusion into capability.

We start by redefining what “struggling in school” really means. Mike draws on 35 years of working with kids and families to show how memorization without meaning pushes students in two directions: shutdown and shame, or boredom and boundary‑testing. From there, we introduce the Look, Learn, Practice model. Kids need direct observation to anchor ideas in the real world, plain language to clear up tricky terms, and steady hands‑on practice to turn facts into usable skill. Think neighborhood cultural visits for social studies, small rockets for science, and daily reps that build mastery instead of racing through units.

Then we shift to purpose. Grades alone rarely satisfy a teen who can sense they’re not growing. We walk through simple questions that link school to a future they actually want—career dreams, creative goals, or skills that make them more independent. With a shared aim, projects become obvious and engaging: portfolios, repairs, experiments, and performances that prove progress. Along the way, we offer practical steps any parent can apply now—field trips over worksheets, living glossaries, short daily practice, and visible milestones—while honoring each child’s unique interests rather than forcing a one‑size path.

We share a simple framework—Look, Learn, Practice—and show how purpose, clear words, and real practice restore motivation and skill.

• defining struggle as both poor grades and hidden behavior issues
• one root cause behind shutdown and thrill‑seeking
• Look, Learn, Practice framework and why observation matters
• clearing vocabulary as the gateway to understanding
• restoring practice time to build mastery and confidence
• connecting schoolwork to a teen’s personal purpose
• practical ways parents can add fieldwork, glossaries, and reps
• tailoring support to each child’s interests and goals

By the end, you’ll have a clear way to spot the real barriers, language to use at home, and tools to rebuild momentum without power struggles. If this episode helps, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs it, and leave a quick review so more families can find these strategies.

Click Here to get your FREE Parents Survival Guide and Good Choices Downloads and Booklets!  

© 2024-2026 The Competence Institute. All Rights Reserved. The Competence Institute is a non-profit educational organization and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, nationality or ethnic origin in administering student admissions or any of its policies, programs or activities. COMPETENCE INSTITUTE is a trademark and service mark owned by The Competence Institute, a division of Team Tyler USA. 

Applied Scholastics and the Applied Scholastics Open Book Design are trademarks and service marks owned by Association for Better Living and Education International and are used with its permission. 

Grateful acknowledgement is made to L. Ron Hubbard library for permission to reproduce a selection from the copyrighted works of L. Ron Hubbard. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode. So today we're going to be going over something that every parent, bar none, I'm sure, has struggled with at some point. And that is why is your child struggling in school? And they may be smart, they may be really good at doing things, but they're still struggling. So first off, we're going to go over what exactly that means and give you some examples here. So Mike's going to start us out with that.

Grades Up, Life Down: Hidden Struggles

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Okay. Yeah, struggling in school could mean a lot of different things. And I've seen just about every version of it in the last 35 years, working with kids, working with parents. And so struggling in school could be that they're they're failing to grasp, they're struggling, they don't understand things, they're having a hard time learning. Okay, we talk about that stuff often, and we'll address that situation the same way as we're going to address in this episode the solutions for this other situation. Struggling in school could be something else completely. Struggling in school could be something not quite as easily identified as struggling in school. The kid is getting A's and B's in class, they're they're acing all their tests, they're doing fine, their scores are up there. But they're you find out at some point, your parents usually find out that the kids skipping classes, experimenting with drugs, they're if they're 16 years old, they're crashing cards or doing other crazy, crazy things. And and all of those things, that was me when I was in school. Okay, going you know, go junior high school, high school, okay. Uh that's also struggling in school. Okay, because there is a situation where the the child is just memorizing information, passing tests, but none of it seems to be useful for what they're trying to accomplish in life, which is mostly like, well, they they it it seems to be fun, quote unquote, fun to party, go do things that, well, back in the 80s was illegal. Now a lot of things are becoming legalized, you know, that were illegal back then. But you know, bottom line, you know, non-survival activities. Okay. And and so that's also struggling with school. You don't realize that that that is born out of the same causation as the child who is struggling to learn, trying to understand, doesn't really grasp various things, and they're feeling introverted and bad about the fact that they're not learning. There's this other situation where they're struggling, they're struggling to find any applicability, any usefulness for the information that they're getting. And so they bounce out, they're in a non-participation with the actual process of learning, and they're now exploring a whole different set of activities, which is not what we want. That's also struggling with school.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Makes sense, makes sense. And you talked about or alluded to the fact that both of these types of struggling, whether it's you are struggling with grades and doing well in school, or that's fine, but you're struggling with the behavior side of it, have a similar or same remedy or approach. Can you go over that?

Look, Learn, Practice Explained

One Cause, Two Outcomes

Observation And Real‑World Learning

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Sure. We've got our barriers to study, right? And we talk about these uh uh all the time in our episodes. There uh and let's take it back to that magic formula, the look, learn, practice formula. The child who's struggling to understand things usually isn't being given the opportunity to observe the actual thing that they're studying about. Okay. I mean, let's just take something like social studies. You can't you can't learn about people and cultures only from reading a bunch of books. Okay. Right? The where are the field trips? Where are the where are the observational? Let's go, let's go and and check out some of these different cultures. There's little mini cultures in in any given city, in any given area. What let's attend some of these things. Let's learn about the different cultures from around the world that exist right here in the city where you live. Okay. There's all kinds of opportunities that are assisted by more observation. And and we have this term, you know, uh of viewing the actual mass, the thing itself of what you're studying about. Okay, and I just used the social studies as an example. But what about science? Let's let's let's get the kids actually making some little rockets that they shoot up in the air. I mean, why why why just hear about and learn about rockets or or or science? It has to be brought into something that you can look at and participate with. Okay. And those those opportunities are few and far between in most schools, right? There are there are only a handful of what we would really call competency-based schools in America. Most of them are private and expensive, and and that's fine. They it's a good thing that they exist. You say, oh, expensive, but compared to what? Compared to a failing life? No, though they're not really not expensive, but you know, not not all families in America can afford to send their kids to private schools. Every child should be given the opportunity to achieve competency and mastery of everything that they learn. Okay, and so that takes a lot of observation, that takes a lot of practice, and that that learning step that's there in the middle of the look, learn, practice step is a formula that that step of learning has mostly to do with learning about the nomenclature, the words, the vocabulary, the language. What does this mean? What's explaining at the at the kids level? Okay, if you can really get a child to really understand the information, then they're going to be ready for the next step, which is to practice. And it's going to take a lot of practice. And the curriculum in today's school, the curricula, plural plural, I guess, it's changed a lot since 1905. Okay. And one of our guests on on the podcast, Barbie Rivera, uh, she wrote a whole book about uh that very thing.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Right? Of how things have changed since 1905 in terms of and who changed it and what changes have been made. But the kids are not getting enough practice. They're not allowed to practice the most simple things at the early level to become proficient. Okay. And so both of these things of like struggling at the lower level of just learning or or just at the other end of the spectrum, memorizing a bunch of information, spinning it back on a page, getting a bunch of A's and B's and stuff, and but being no participant to the actual and no interest in the learning process, it all it all gets resolved by going back to the fundamentals, learning the words, learning how to master reading, pursuing becoming educated in things of the child's own choosing, that they have a genuine, like self-created purpose and reason for wanting to study this thing, and then assisting them to learn, look, learn, and practice to assist them in their own uh decision to go down that path.

Practice, Mastery, And Modern Curricula

SPEAKER_00 9:00

That's so easily applied, but very takes so much doingness and persistence and you know, these concepts. I think they're they make so much sense to a lot of people, but they do take so much work as well. So it's it's good that you know to get the information. And like you said, there are other episodes where we go over even more in detail how to apply those things and get results with the three different barriers to study, how to do all these things, etc. But I was always so it just kind of didn't make sense that when a child is having behavior problems, it could still be an education situation. So I just wanted to point that up again. That solution, whether they're having trouble with their grades and understanding what they're learning and flunking out or whatever, or they're having behavior problems, what we just went over, it's the same solution because the manifestation is different for every child. Sometimes they lock up and can't learn, and then they're flunking out. Sometimes they are learning, quote unquote, at least they're getting good grades, but they're having all these behavior issues. And if you go back to that education piece, you oftentimes will resolve both sides of it. Correct. Yeah. So speaking from all your experience in helping people with this, what is maybe a good place to start for a parent who's trying to help their struggling teen or preteen? Like with all this information you just went over, what's what's step one?

Same Remedy For Behavior And Grades

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Well, it usually comes down to purposes. Okay. Finding out what what innate purpose and bringing out and developing a purpose for going to school. Okay. Let's let's agree on a common goal that we're trying to achieve. What do you want your life to be like when you grow up? Okay. That's a natural inclination on the part of the child. They want to grow up, they want to be able to do things on their own. And that's where they start getting into trouble if they don't have the educational foundation, which is why they're they're they're parents, people talk about, you know, well, they're finding their boundaries or whatever. That that finding the boundaries, you know, and running, running cars into mailboxes and running cars into uh telephone poles, right? That's that's that's not a natural part of life. That is not necessary to the learning process. This is not true. You can learn how to drive a car well, right? Wouldn't wouldn't that be the goal? You want to be able to learn to drive the and sure uh racing cars might be fun for somebody. Maybe somebody wants to race cars when they grow up. Well, okay, they're gonna have to learn how to race cars safely, right? If they want to go down that path, right? And and some parents involve their kids and and and learn how to do that stuff or race motorcycles or or dirt bike racing or whatever. Okay. Let's let's let's take the approach that it can be learned to be done safely. And then, but you can't try you can't just take all your children, you've got five of them or something, and we're in this family, we are dirt bike racers. Well, you know, little susie Q might she might not want to, right? Or might she Susie Q might be the only one who wants to uh you know race dirt bikes, okay? And the other kids are like they they have other things they want to do. They're interested in basketball or learning how to play that piano that looks so appealing or whatever, right? Let's find out what that child wants to learn how to do, and then find out where they're what what are they running into? Where along in the learning process are they? Okay. And and and then let's assist them to back up and get a little bit better grip on that thing and and but do you guys teamwork. Let's assist them in accomplishing what they want to accomplish. So it always starts from that.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

That's so awesome. And it made me think of what I've been I love watching the Olympics, as probably many people do, and they're happening right now as we do this episode.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Um, and I noticed they give the backstories of some of the these world-class athletes. And as you were saying that, I was going, oh, you know what? So many of these Olympic level athletes had stories where their parents observed that they had this passion for hockey or figure skating or whatever it was, and they really structured a life for them that allowed them to pursue that obvious interest that they had. Now, not all of us, especially those of us with two left feet, are gonna become uh figure skaters or something. But, you know, we have our own passions, and that, you know, when you create that environment for your for your child that they can then pursue that, they become the best they can, maybe in that area or sufficient for their object objectives and purposes for whatever they're pursuing. So I just had kind of a light bulb moment when you were saying that. I was like, oh, that's what happened to some of these Olympic athletes. The parents like doubled down and allowed them to navigate and become who they were, who we're watching right now on TV.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Exactly. And and not every child can be expected to become an Olympic champion. That's just ridiculous, right? That's in the area of of sports and so forth. If that's but but what's what's this what's the similar level accomplishment in other fields? One could become an award-winning illustrator, uh, an award-winning writer, okay. What is it that that's that child's interest, and and let's let them develop in in the direction that they want to go, right? And I'm sure successful people in any field, successful business owners, okay, they they wanted to go down that rot road. Okay, they probably observed certain things and learned certain things along the way. It's part of that uh definition of ability, right, to observe, to uh make decisions, to act. And they were allowed to make those observations, they were allowed to make those decisions and act and move in that direction to become a successful business owner, right? So, yeah, let's find out what what they want to do and let's uh help them and assist them to accomplish competency and mastery in the area that they choose. Awesome.

Start With Purpose And Goals

SPEAKER_00 16:25

I love that. I think that's really, really powerful. I don't even think we need to go over this more in this episode. We're a little shorter than we usually are, but uh I don't know if you have anything else you want to add to that, but I I think this idea of getting the purpose of the child and that helps bring them out of the struggles they might be in by giving them something to create on in life and whatnot. What do you think? Absolutely. It's a good place to start. Awesome. Okay, great. So thank you everybody for listening. And uh, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us anytime, of course, and stay tuned for the next episode.