Learned Helplessness and Dyslexia Part 2: Mindset

To recap where we left off in my last post, learned helplessness is a phenomenon that occurs as a result of a person repeatedly being forced into an uncontrollable negative circumstance. After some time, they stop trying to change the negative circumstance- even when they are later able to do so. Many students with dyslexia experience repeated failures at school that are out of their control. This leads to a vicious cycle whereby they come to believe they will never get better in academics, and give up before even trying.

Caregivers and educators can help break the cycle by providing opportunities for success:

With a lot of care, a new cycle can begin to form:

Providing opportunities for success is the essential first step in creating this new cycle. It doesn't matter how much you try to make a child believe they are capable, if they continue to experience mostly failure they won’t come to believe in their abilities. To do so would require them to ignore what is evident and right in front of them.

Once a student starts having multiple experiences of success in reading and writing, a change in the way they think about themselves and their abilities will naturally start to occur. This can be an extremely slow process, especially if they have had to endure many years of academic failure. We can further nudge their self-beliefs in the right direction by helping them develop a growth mindset.

Let’s break this down.

Developing a Growth Mindset

There is a tendency for both kids and adults to think in terms of dualities: good or bad, smart or stupid, and so on. Attributes are seen as either positive or negative, and as static and neverchanging. Thinking in those terms can slow down progress, as it makes working to improve seem rather fruitless.

A growth mindset is one that focuses more on the journey than the destination. No matter what skill level someone starts at, with time and practice improvements can be made at just about anything. A growth mindset entails believing that one can always change, develop, and improve their skills and abilities.

Parents and educators can promote a growth mindset in their child by emphasizing the positive changes that can be and have been made. Here are 5 ways to do that:

1. Acknowledge the challenge

Going through schooling with dyslexia can be downright heartbreaking, and children need to have their feelings acknowledged. It is counterproductive to try and deny that the challenges are there, or to wave them away with empty platitudes. Overly positive messaging like “You’re the best reader!”, although well-meaning, can also be counter-productive because it sets the child up for disappointment when it becomes evident that it’s untrue.

2. Collect evidence

The more evidence of growth you have on hand that is both measurable and observable, the easier it will be to foster a growth mindset. For example, one of my students started building a tower out of the decodable books that she was successfully able to read. Seeing the tower grow and grow gave her a visualization of what she was accomplishing.

3. Celebrate success!

It doesn’t matter how “small” a success may seem, each one is huge given how much the child has had to overcome to achieve it- and should be celebrated as such! It is natural for both kids and adults to pay more attention to negative feedback than positive. Because of this, it is important to dedicate as much attention as possible to the successes in order to develop more balanced beliefs about oneself.

4. Reframe thoughts

Most of us who have a loved one in our lives with dyslexia have probably heard a lot negative statements come out of their mouths about themselves.

Those kinds of statements hurt us to hear, so it might be tempting to simply want to push them away: “Don’t say that!” “It’s not true!”. The thoughts are real to them though, and can’t be denied, especially if we want them to continue sharing their thoughts with us. We can help them to reframe their thoughts, however, by helping them to see the inaccuracies in their statements. For example, if they say they can’t read, you can show them the stack of decodable readers that they were able to read. You can then help them to modify their thoughts to a more realistic and growth-oriented point of view.

5. Modeling

Kids learn by observing the world around them. Modelling positive behaviour is essential, as they pick up on a lot more than we might think they do. If you have a calm demeanour, they are more likely to feel calmer themselves. (Adults, too, are heavily influenced by who and what is around them.) If you model a growth mindset yourself, kids will pick up on it.

If people with dyslexia are able to successfully adapt a growth mindset, working to improve won’t seem so fruitless to them. The feelings of hopelessness and helplessness will start to go away. This will help immensely with the next topic I plan to write about-motivation!

Next up: Part 3: Motivation